Customer Reviews:
 On land and sea February 17, 2008
4 out of 4 found this review helpful
Imagine Bertie Wooster and two of his idiot friends out on a boat... with no Jeeves.
That about describes the antics in "Three Men in a Boat : To Say Nothing of the Dog" and its drier sequel "Three Men on the Bummel." Jerome K. Jerome paints his little books with gloriously goofy antics, as we watch three upper-class Englishmen try to rough it -- on land and on water.
The three men are George, Harris and the narrator, who are all massive hypochiandriacs -- they find that they have symptoms of every disease in existance (except housemaid's knee). To prop up their failing health, they decide to take a cruise down the Thames in a rented boat, camping and enjoying nature's bounty.
Along with Monty -- an angelic-looking, devilish terrier -- the three friends set off down the river. But they find that not everything is as easy as they expected. They get lost in hedge mazes, end up going downstream without a paddle, encounter monstrous cats and vicious swans, have picnics navigate locks, offend German professors, and generally get into every kind of trouble they possibly can.
But our valiant outdoorsmen aren't done yet. Some years after the first book, the boys are feeling stifled by domesticity. So they decide to take a vacation from home, hearth, and some equally stifled wives -- by taking a bike trip in Germany. Naturally, they have trouble even before they leave -- hard bike seats, a history of leaving wives behind, and a dog that eats ball bearings.
But eventually they get to Germany, and promptly cycle their way through towns, cities, and the Black Forest. Our narrator reflects on German personalities, customs, and geography... and when he isn't, they are rained on, get lost, get into linguistic battles over cushions, encounter more odd dogs, and finally the most important question: what is a Bummel anyway?
As you'd expect, the first book is an absolute riot of comic disasters, written in Wodehousian prose. The second... not so much. But even though they were published more than a century ago, Jerome K. Jerome was uproariously funny -- he was able to wring humour from any subject, be it poetry, bicycles, pets, plaster fish, or the woes of setting up a tent successfully.
Jerome's real talent is in finding humor in everyday things, like trying to erect a tent in the woods, fighting the weather, or trying to fix one's own bicycle. Written in Jerome's dry, goofy prose, these little occurrances become immensely funny. And for stuff that is funny anyway -- like an anatomically correct bike seat -- it becomes hilarious ("it was like riding on an irritable lobster!").
The second book does get a bit dry at times, as Jerome spends a lot of time musing on Germany rather than conjuring wacky hijinks. And the first book's end has its solemn, compassionate moment when the boys find a drowned woman: "She had sinned - some of us do now and then - and her family and friends, naturally shocked and indignant, had closed their doors against her."
But back on the funny stuff. The capstone on all this humor is the "three men." These guys are basically pampered Victorian aristocrats, who have a romantic yearning for the great outdoors and not too many brains. You'll be laughing at them and with them, as they struggle through the basics of boating and camping.
Wacky, self-mocking, and full of odd people, "Three Men in a Boat" and its slightly less funny sequel "Three Men on a Bummel" are still fresh and funny a century after they were written.
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