5 books I love (part 4)

4. Three Men in a Boat In a similar way to The Diary of a Nobody, I find the account of the antics of the boating party invariably entertaining - there is such a gentle pace to the humour making the insults and infighting sound more fun than the moments (few though they are) when they all get on. The language is so modern, it's almost impossible to believe that the book was published in 1889, but the thing that really clinches it for me as a great book was something I learnt from the BBC 'adaptation' featuring Dara O'Brien, Grif Rhys Jones and Rory McGrath*. Jerome K Jerome apparently intended to write a serious travel guide to the Thames including historical facts, significant spots to stop etc, but when he came to it, he found that the comedy couldn't be suppressed and it ended up being textual slapstick**. There are so many brilliant quotations, mostly about the ability of inanimate objects to misbehave willfully when there is a chance that they could create havoc by so doing, that it would be impossible to pick out all the parts which have made me smile. The subtlety of the language, the sincerity of it all, the gentle commentary on society and the nature of friendship all combine to make a book which I really didn't want to end. *For some reason Rory McGrath's surname completely escaped me for a moment, and to try and speed up the process of re-remembering it, I turned to Google. It amuses me that the first search I made was 'Rory annoying celebrity' and it amuses me even more that this provided me with the answer I was looking for. **I think I have just coined a phrase of my very own : a quick Google on the phrase 'Textual Slapstick' reveals that my search did not match any documents, meaning that this blog entry should be a Googlewhack - yay! I am aware that I am sad, not only for being pleased that I might be a Googlewhack but largely for even Googling a phrase I had only just written. I was pleased with it, and (as great artists often do of course) I wanted to check that the reason it had popped into my head wasn't because I had stolen it from somewhere. Now that it seems it is original, I will bandy it around until this post can be cited as the origins of the phrase, and in the sprit of that will have to publish three posts today in case anyone gets in there first!