Jerome K. Jerome

[Serge]

Amazingly, it was his real name.

Spinning off from the English Authors thread, any other fans of 'Three Men In A Boat' or any of his other works? With the exception of the odd Bill Bryson, I would say that 'Three Men....' may just be the funniest book I've ever read. It's one of those books I've got other people into, usually friends who I know are on the same wavelength as me regarding sense of humour, and nobody has ever disliked it. Some of the jokes are so funny even today that it's hard to believe it's nearly 130 years old.

Weirdly, it nearly didn't come out in the form we know it - originally, it was full of more of the flowery 'serious' bits that pop up from time to time, and was a much longer book, but thankfully, he was persuaded to cut it down to just the funny bits, so thankfully we have the comic masterpiece it ended up becoming. The sequel, 'Three Men On The Bummel' is nearly as good, but then has a couple of weird serious chapters at the end, which are a bit of a downer after everything that's gone before.

Most of his other works are long out of print, though based on the snippets I've read in an anthology of his stuff that came out a few years ago, none of them were really up to the heights of either 'Three Men...' book. But it would still be interesting to read them to find out.

[Dr Rock]

I can only say I have read it (cos my gf at the time told me to), found it very funny and this was ages ago. Definitely recommended by me.

[thraxx]

The bit with the swans is the funniest bit of writing I've ever read. All the purple prose is dull though - GCSE creative writing.

[Pranet]

Yes, I love Three Men in a Boat and Three Men On The Bummel.

A year or so ago I tried Idle Thoughts of an Idle Fellow and Second Thoughts of an Idle Fellow and found them a big step down and have not wanted to investigate further. There were good bits in those books though.

I also found a biography of him and he had an interesting life and seemed like a good chap- was thought terribly common and coarse at the time he was writing. Volunteered for the French Ambulance service in World War One and apparently was never the same again. He wrote an autobiography which could be interesting.

Someone on this forum posted a link to the version by Tom Stoppard with Michael Palin and Tim Curry.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=u9xvrbfyKGQ

[shh]

Yes I enjoyed it, I'll get round to reading the sequel too at some point.  There seems plenty of his on Gutenberg, but I don't think I could trawl through it all to find the treasures.

One of his plays is on at the Finborough later this year (http://www.finboroughtheatre.co.uk/productions/2017/the-passing-of-the-third-floor-back.php). I can't find much info on it, but the NYT called it a 'serious allegorical drama'... I might get a ticket out of curiosity.

[Serge]

The bit with the swans is the funniest bit of writing I've ever read.

I think my favourite bit may be the part where they try to open a tin of pineapple without having a proper knife to open it, and end up trying to hammer it open with a stone and then a mast, ending with the line, "Then George went at it, and knocked it into a shape, so strange, so weird, so unearthly in its wild hideousness, that he got frightened and threw away the mast."

Someone on this forum posted a link to the version by Tom Stoppard with Michael Palin and Tim Curry.

Not to mention Stephen Moore! That is a pretty decent play, but it does miss out so many of the diversions - whenever Jerome starts to talk about Uncle Podger or something, he's stopped by one of the others saying, "Not now, J..." or something similar. I'm surprised there hasn't been a more recent version - though having said that, I have never checked out the fifties version, either.

Nigel Williams' 'Two And A Half Men In A Boat' is also worth checking out - he recreates the voyage with two friends (one of whom has to keep rushing off on work-related business), and also writes about Jerome and the book, which is how I found out about how it nearly missed being as good. Mark Wallington also recreated the voyage in 'Boogie Up The River', which is also a pretty decent read.

[Sony Walkman Prophecies]

Idle Thoughts of an Idle Fellow is excellent (better than Three Men, I thought) and can be thrown directly at anyone who says Victorian literature isn't funny. I always thought of him as a latter-day Hazlitt/Dr. Johnson who, for one reason or another, didn't get around to writing as many books as he should have done.

[shh]

Well the cover's certainly a beaut



https://www.amazon.co.uk/Second-Thoughts-Idle-Fellow-popular/dp/1977920268/ref=sr_1_5?ie=UTF8&qid=1509390883&sr=8-5&keywords=Idle+Thoughts+of+an+Idle+Fellow

[gilbertharding]

Jeremy Paxman doesn't like it (he attacked it in the course of one of his 'Paxman on Rivers' documentaries)... which makes me think less of Paxman, naturally.


I also think it's a shame we won't (presumably) get any more of the superb adaptations featuring Griff Rhys Jones, Dara O'Brien and Rory McGrath - New Years Day won't ever be the same...

[ASFTSN]

I think my favourite bit may be the part where they try to open a tin of pineapple without having a proper knife to open it, and end up trying to hammer it open with a stone and then a mast, ending with the line, "Then George went at it, and knocked it into a shape, so strange, so weird, so unearthly in its wild hideousness, that he got frightened and threw away the mast."

Damn it, I came here to post this!  It's like an indescribable Lovecraftian horror in the middle of all the silliness.

[Serge]

Well the cover's certainly a beaut

Seeing his name without the 'K' now has me singing it in my head to the tune of 'Denis' by Blondie.

[Birdie]

Happy memories. It was my dad's favourite book, closely followed by The Wind in the willows.

[poodlefaker]

The K was for Klepka. If you like Three Men in a Boat, you'll love Diary of a Nobody by the Grossmiths. Funnier, I think.

[Serge]

Happy memories. It was my dad's favourite book, closely followed by The Wind in the willows.

Yeah, it was basically because my dad raved about it so much that I read it in the first place. My uncle struggled with it - he didn't understand 'why it takes so long for them to get on the river'.

The K was for Klepka. If you like Three Men in a Boat, you'll love Diary of a Nobody by the Grossmiths. Funnier, I think.

Klapka, although his birth name was Jerome Clapp Jerome, it seems.

I've always thought there was a touch of Vivian Stanshall about him in this painting in the National Portrait Gallery:



And yes! to the greatness of Diary Of A Nobody. The BBC did an excellent TV version of it about a decade ago, with Hugh Bonneville performing it as a one man show in three parts.

[kidsick5000]

"Puts one in mind of a dead baby"

With that line of pure darkness, I knew I'd love that book.

[Serge]

There's a line in that cheese section which I have nicked and used myself on many occasions - when Tom's wife asks if J thinks he would mind if she paid someone to take them away, and J replies that 'I thought he would never smile again'.