Three Men in a Boat, by Jerome K. Jerome

BIOGRAPHY
Jerome K. Jerome was born in Walsall, West Midlands, in 1859, but when he was two years old, his family moved to London. He was the fourth child of a family with economic difficulties, but he got some education in a grammar school. His father lost all his money because his mines business failed; then he became an ironmonger and a lay preacher. He died when Jerome was 13, and his wife when he was 15. From the moment he was an orphan, he had to earn his living. He got a job in a railway company, where he worked for four years, sometimes collecting coal.
When he was 18, he tried to be an actor, and then a journalist, but his writings were rejected. He also worked as a teacher, a packer and a solicitor clerk. But finally, when he was 27, he got his Idle Thoughts of an Idle Fellow published. They were a collection of humorous essays that had appeared in a weekly London magazine.
Two years after this, he got married to a divorced woman with a child, Just after the wedding, they went on their honeymoon on a boat along the River Thames, where he got his inspiration for his most famous work, Three Men in a Boat (To Say Nothing of the Dog), published the next year.
The book is a kind of humorous travelogue, or “riverlogue”, that narrates the adventures of three men and a dog on a boat; they go rowing from a quarter in the south of London to Oxford and back, covering a distance of 125 km going. The book was first intended to be a Thames touristic guide, but then became a farcical novel.
Later he tried the same formula about a journey by bike around Germany in his Three Men on the Bummel, but it wasn’t so successful as the first one. He also wrote several plays.
Three Men in a Boat is a kind of classical book, because its comical situations are still making people laugh today.
He volunteered for the WWI, but he was rejected because he was 55, but then he got a post driving an ambulance in the war.
He died at 68 years old from a cerebral haemorrhage.
 
SUMMARY

This is a group of three friends talking about how unwell they feel. Our hero starts wondering at its reason, and then remembers a time when he read about illnesses and started feeling he had all the illnesses described…, all but one called the housemaid’s knee. He went to see a doctor, and the doctor gave him a prescription to have a healthy life: nice food and exercise. Then he remembers that when he was a child and had a problem with the liver, whose main symptoms were laziness, the best remedy was a nice slap.
The group of friends realizes that they feel unwell because they have worked too much, and so they need a rest. One of them proposes to go on a sea trip, but they discard it because of the sea-sickness. At the end, they decided to go up the river on a boat. And thus our story begins.

 
QUESTIONS
-Try to make a definition for all the diseases mentioned on the first pages of the first chapter.
-How hypochondriacal are you? What illnesses are you most afraid of?
-Why don't we say now “natural death” and we prefer to attribute the death to some malfunction?
-What other road movies, or road trip novels, do you know? And what about “river trip novels or films”?
-For you, what is the best way to relax: what kind of holidays are your favourite? What is your opinion about the “dolce far niente”? According to you, is it possible to have a healthy life without working?
-What do you know about Captain Cook and Sir Francis Drake?

VOCABULARY
rolling deep, seedy, it was borne upon me, listlessness, sift it to the bottom, slight, chum, a good turn, pass away, butted, oblige, hampers, clumps, hearth-rug, charge-sheet, humpy, wan, gunwale, return, berth, somersaults, Sheerness, leeward, second mate, my!, to a “T”, sensible, bally

Three Men in a Boat, film. Wikipedia.

The film

Read more

The Fishing-boat Picture, by Alan Sillitoe

BIOGRAPHY

Alan Sillitoe was born in Nottingham in 1928 to a working-class family. His father was an illiterate, couldn’t keep a job for long, and was usually violent. His mother worked in factories and, for a short time, as a prostitute. They had, besides Alan, four more children. They often moved house because they couldn’t pay the rent.
Alan left school at fourteen because he failed the entrance exam for the grammar school (the secondary school at the time). He worked in the factories of the county for four years, and then he joined the RAF, although he didn’t serve in the WWII because he was too young. But he did serve as a wireless operator in the war against the rebel communists in Malaya.
When he got back, he discovered he had TB. While in the hospital, he read a lot, but with no judgement nor model, and decided he wanted to be a writer.  He got together with the poet Ruth Fainlight (whom she married ten years later). Then, with a pension from the government, he travelled to France and Spain to try to get over his disease. When he lived in Majorca, he met Robert Graves, who helped him in his career as a writer. Thus, he started writing Saturday Night and Sunday Morning in 1958. The novel is about the Saturday night-life of a factory worker who gets involved in a booze competition and in a love affair with is mate’s wife, and then, the next morning, the hangover shows him the reality of life.
His other famous novel is The Loneliness of the Long-Distance Runner, published in 1959. It's about the life in a Borstal, a youth detention centre.
In 1968, he was invited to visit the USSR as a working-class writer, but there he denounced the human rights abuses in the communist system, surprising this way the soviet authorities. But, on the other hand, he always supported Israel in front of Palestinian movements.
He belongs, although he doesn’t like being classified like this, to the “angry young men” of the 50s in the UK, a group of artists and intellectual people who rejected the middle-class morals of the post-war Great Britain. He avoided all literary awards, although he accepted honorary doctorates from some universities.
He had two children from his wife.
Alan Sillitoe died in 2010 in London, of cancer. He was 82.
 
SUMMARY

This is a working-class story: the characters are working people, simple, with poor entertainment and poor ambitions, and it typically ends sadly.
Our hero is Harry, a postman who takes his life easily and doesn’t get emotional for anything. His only hobby is reading, mostly books about geography. When he gets a steady position in the post office, he says yes to get married to Kathy, a girl four years older than he.
For six years, they live happily together, although with a lot of rows, sometimes a bit violent. Then, after these six years, they had a silly argument: Kathy throws his book to the fire, he hits her, and she goes away for good. But afterwards he discovers that she had been cheating on him, at least for a year, with a housepainter across the street.
He isn’t sad or angry with Kathy’s departure, and he gets used to living alone, and feels, if not happier, more comfortable. He goes on doing his rounds and reading his books without any of the usually ups and downs of the life.
After six years more, his wife appears again out of the blue. She says she was around there and thought it was worth paying him a visit. Nevertheless, neither of them is excited about this sudden meeting; perhaps they only feel a bit of nostalgia. They sit and have a chat, all the time keeping the distance, but without any resentment. Kathy shows some interest in a picture of a fishing boat hanging on the wall, the last of a collection of pictures her brother gave them as a wedding present, and Harry decides to give her the picture, although at the beginning she declines the offer. They used to say the picture was the last of the fleet.

Some days later, he sees the picture in a pawnshop window; a bit surprised, he buys it and hangs it at the same place, again with any kind of rancour.
Kathy keeps paying him short visits, and all the time their meetings are cold and distant. Initially, neither of them mentions again the picture. Now and then, the postman gives her money and cigarettes, although he only smokes a pipe.
Asked about the housepainter, Kathy tells him he died a long time ago of lead-poisoning. Now, she says, she lives alone in a small flat and has different jobs.
In the end, she asks again for the fishing-boat picture, and he gives it to her again. Afterwards, he finds it again in the window of the same pawnshop, but this time he doesn’t rebuy it.
One day, a lorry runs over her, killing her. The postman goes to the hospital, and there they give him her belongings, and with them there is the fishing-boat picture, broken and dirty with blood. In the cemetery, besides her relatives, there comes a stranger. Harry finds him again in her place, collecting his things: he had been living with Kathy all these six years.
At home again, he thinks he could have kept their pictures and also kept Kathy, and feels that his life had been a waste of time.
At the end, he wonders about the meaning of life, of his life: is it worth living one’s life?
 
QUESTIONS

-What is your advice for a dating couple in order to know each other better and help them to decide on living (or not) together?
-What is better for a couple: a lot of love, or a lot of peace?
-Why do you think the protagonist liked living alone after his wife ran away?
-According to your opinion, why the wife didn’t ask him money?
-What does the picture symbolize for the couple along the story?
-Do you think that, for some people, unhappiness is a kind of happiness?

VOCABULARY

mash-lad, cheeky-daft, ruffled, down payment, hire purchase, prising, rammel, duck, allus, daft, nowt, bleddy dead ‘ead, clocked, skipped off, confined, on the dole, knocking on, clubfoot, rounds, draughts, fag-end, aerials, scooting, in the clock of the walk way, sarky, rouge, wireless, bob, hit it off, in the lurch, dresser, fag, five-packet, dished, wry, triplet, out of pop, doddering skinflint, mildewed, feyther, chinning, measly, scuttle, nippy, got the sack, mystified, blackout, shrapnel, picture house, bloke, sexton, potty, booze, pitted, knight

Saturday Night and Sunday Morning (film)

The Loneliness of the Long Distance Runner (film)

Obituary in The Guardian

Hotel des Boobs, by David Lodge

BIOGRAPHY AND SUMMARY, by Nora Carranza

David Lodge (January 28, 1935, London, England) is an English novelist, literary critic, playwright, and editor renowned for his satiric novels about academic life.
Lodge was educated at University College, London, where he got his degree in Literature and where he is an Honorary Fellow.
He travelled to the United States, where he taught, and received his doctorate at the University of Birmingham, where he was professor of Modern English Literature from 1960 to 1987.
He left this university to dedicate entirely to writing.
Lodge is a Fellow of the Royal Society of Literature and has received numerous honours, including Commander of the Order of the British Empire and Chevalier de l'Ordre des Arts et Lettres in France.
His early novels and fiction works go back to 1960, continuing with novels in which the writer satirizes academic life.
Lodge co-authored different plays and moreover produced works dealing in literary theory, essays written for The Washington Post and The Independent, and other books containing essays, lectures, reviews, and a diary.

 

Mentioning some of David Lodge literary works:

The Picturegoers (1960)

Ginger, You’re Barmy (1962)

The British Museum Is Falling Down (1965)

Out of the Shelter (1970)

How Far Can You Go? (1980)

Changing Places: A Tale of Two Campuses (1975)

Small World: An Academic Romance (1984)

Nice Work (1988)

Paradise News (1991)

Therapy (1995)

Thinks… (2001)

Deaf Sentence (2008)

Author, Author (2004) and A Man of Parts (2011) are based on the lives of writers Henry James and H.G. Wells, respectively.

The prolific writer David Lodge lives in Birmingham.

SUMMARY

This story takes place in some French Riviera hotel; Hotel des Pins seems to be its real name.

But some habits there make Harry, one of the guests, propose a different name: Hotel des Boobs.

Harry and Brenda are a British couple on holidays. They have always gone to spend the summer at Brenda’s parents, in Guernsey, with their children. 

This year, the children have already grown independent, and the couple is well off; thus they consider new options, and finally they end up going to a little hotel with swimming pool near St Raphael.

As Harry’s friends have mentioned, and Harry knows somehow, in some areas of the Mediterranean, at that time, women had started to practice topless. But what Harry finds and experiences there is beyond his previous suppositions.

First of all, there is Harry’s strong personal attraction for women’s breasts, since he’s always spending time and thoughts about this part of the female figure.

Already at the hotel, Harry can observe and enjoy more or less discreetly all the women by the swimming pool.

For instance, Harry remains peeping through the window in the couple room, getting Brenda so angry that she sends him down to the pool “to have an inspection” directly there.

Harry begins to characterize all the women at the hotel swimming pool, according to their nationalities, companions and activities while they sunbathe, but manly according to the shape, size, movement or aspect of their breasts. 

Harry carries a book, that in fact he doesn’t read, and a pair of dark sunglasses, the elements he considers useful to disguise his curiosity over topless women, who only avoid using the upper part of their bikinis by the swimming pool, and immediately cover themselves when moving to other areas of the hotel.

Harry entertains various ideas centred in nakedness, for example, what the other men there could feel, that the women would imagine their topless could arouse those other men... At the end, he gets enthusiastic and excited with the idea that Brenda, who has good boobs, should go topless before the holidays ended. The other men could look, but only he would be allowed to touch. Following this strong desire, Harry offers to buy Brenda some beautiful and expensive dress they saw in St Raphael, if she agrees to take her top off.

 

At this point of the story, there is a sudden change: in fact, there is a writer by the swimming pool, under an umbrella, and he is writing about the created couple Harry and Brenda, and about all the others there, the women in topless, the other guests, the waiter, all of them reflected in a pile of written pages.

But suddenly and unexpectedly, the local mistral wind starts to blow causing the written pages to fly all over, fall onto the water, disappear beyond the tall trees…, a true disaster for the writer, who feels violated.

Some of the presents manages to bring back a few pages to the author, and a lady sends her children to run and try and collect more papers.

The author (unknown name) doesn’t want the papers back and goes to his room to wait the return of his wife (unknown name) from St Raphael, where she has bought a nice, although not so expensive, dress.

The husband explains to his wife about the flying parts of the book, and wants to leave the hotel immediately, just in case someone could read what he has told in the lost pages.

His wife doesn’t consider it is a problem, but wants to know what the end of the story would be.

“Brenda accepts the bribe to go topless”, the author says. The wife doesn’t believe it would happen.

The writer then continues telling the end of the story: Brenda doesn’t go to bed with Harry, she disappears for two hours, gets from Antoine the bouquet-prize for the best breasts, goes to his room where they make love, and Brenda considers Antoine much better lover and much better equipped than Harry.

The author's wife says that is the worst ending.

But then the author goes on saying that Brenda has invented that story, that nothing has happened. But Harry remains disturbed thinking Brenda doesn’t appreciate his male attributes and, shaking his head, he gazes at the blue breastless margins of the pool.

Harry’s obsession about women breasts has changed to anxiety about his own body.

Finally, the writer’s wife asks him if he would like her to go topless, and he answers of course not, but he doesn’t sound really sure, or true. 

*

In this story, there are two couples and one story inside another.

Perhaps in some aspects, the writer uses Harry to express his own feelings or preferences.

Perhaps similarities or differences can be found between the four of them. 

The story gives the chance to think about what women breasts signify in different cultures or societies. From naturally exhibited, to denied or hidden. Female breasts as tender and essential for a baby, or charged with sexual attraction. 

At the beginning of topless time, many people considered it totally indecent and didn’t approve or follow the new style.

For some people, to go naked to the beach is an act of freedom and naturalism.

For others, it means discomfort and shame. 

As the psychoanalysts explain, sexuality is a big and unknown mystery for human beings. 

QUESTIONS

-What ideas do you have to stop the “binge tourism”?

-Do you consider disrespectful / offensive / sexist / anachronistic the beginning of the story?

-Do you think nakedness is sexy only according to the situation?

-“May a cat look at a king?” I mean, can a gaze / stare be bothering? Do you have to ask permission to look at someone / something?

-The writer is telling his wife the story he’s going to write, so what is the difference between a story casually told and a work of art?

 

 

VOCABULARY

Peeping Tom, squint, Geddit, Knockers, were... off, pricey, extravagant, filched, weaned, pore, snooty, tubby, lathe, belied, matey, foolscap, wont, Schadenfreude, longhand, mistral, Paperchase, hard-on