Back to the Classics Challenge 2021 #18

I read this book for the Back to the Classics Challenge 2021.

Classic Humor: Hardcore readers often mention The Diary of a Nobody in the same breath as Three Men in a Boat, which I didn’t find funny at all. So I was leery of this one. But I saw this recommendation in George Orwell’s column: “I have always wondered what on earth The Diary of a Nobody (1892) could be like in a Russian translation, and indeed I have faintly suspected that the Russians may have enjoyed it because when translated it was just like Chekhov.”

The Diary of a Nobody - George & Weedon Grossmith

Our diarist Charles Pooter* is quite an ordinary man, whose only step away from the conventions is that he does not see why his thoughts and jokes should be less worthy to be written down as those of anyone else in late Victorian England. English to the backbone (as E. F. Foster’s Aunt Juley Munt would say), Pooter is truthful, modest, mindful of hierarchy and distinctions. He respects the dignity of others and expects the same courtesy even though but he himself is too little aware of bourgeois mores and commits blunders that make him the butt.

It’s not enough that he is assailed by his wife Carrie and his friends Gowing and Cummings, but he is troubled by his immature son Lupin who comes home after being canned from his job for laziness. Pooter tries to buck up his son’s ambition and build a base to a stable future, but it is no easy task to compete with clubs, theaters, and drinking establishments. Among  his daily office life, dreary but satisfying, his wife's bosom friend who always tries to bring Carrie up to the latest fashions and fads, and Lupin's escapades, Pooter describes his joys and trials with humility and sincerity.

It’s comic even for those of middle-aged enough to tire easily of the light comedy of embarrassment. It also stands up with those well acquainted with the high standards of Lardner, Thurber and Perlman when it comes to stories starring the Modest Bumbling Every Man.

One hesitates to read too much into an amiable comic novel. But. Pooter personifies the staid Victorian papa of the 1880s in contrast to his Edwardian son who unfailingly advocates modernity and the unavoidable adaptation to it. Lupin, too, knows that time and tide are on his side. I for one was on Pooter Senior’s side, not having the same touching faith in technological advances as an Edwardian like H.G. Wells did.

George Orwell saw Don Quixote as the source of this character, saying, “Pooter is a high-minded, even adventurous man, constantly suffering disasters brought upon him by his own folly, and surrounded by a whole tribe of Sancho Panzas.” This is well put and reminds us in our own popular culture the put-upon hapless male has been a constant presence: Chester Riley, Ralph Kramden, Ozzie Nelson, Fred Sanford, Homer Simpson, Peter Griffin, Ray Romano, and the doughy bearded bros, barely adult, in ice cream ads. 

*poot - British English child slang for a silent, airy fart.