So I recently plowed through Samuel Butler’s The Way of All Flesh, which I found langorously enjoyable in the manner that only 19th century clause-heavy English prose can be enjoyable. If you’ve ever gone tubing down a river with a cooler full of beer floating along with you, it’s much like that; one simply cannot hurry, and is instead carried along by the current of meandering thoughts which eventually gets one to a destination. I suspect Mr. Butler would be mortified by this comparision involving sluggish rivers and beer, but thankfully, he’s dead.
After reading about the generations of Pontifexes and their various mishaps regarding the navigation of Victorian waters, I decided to plunge into Ernest Hemingway’s The Sun Also Rises. The transition from four generations of slowly disillusioned Calvinists to the Lost Generation was somewhat like being bathed in ice water — it just can’t be done gently. I didn’t mind, though. In fact, I found some odd connections.
For example, the way each author handles the topic of social impotence [see Theobald Pontifex's helpless ensnarement in a machiavellianly arranged engagement, compared with Jake Barnes' actual impotence]. I found it an odd role reversal in the handling of themes: Butler gives a behind-the-scenes scathing report of Victorian life [albeit couched in literary curlicues], while Hemingway speaks volumes [of course in his terse newspaperman style] about the expatriate psyche in post-WWI with hardly a mention of the war at all. Butler refused to have The Way of All Flesh published during his lifetime, while The Sun Also Rises was Hemingway’s big literary breakthrough.
Odd. The Englishman is straightforward [style aside], revealing what was previously hidden. The American reveals by hiding in the mundane. I’ll not wax poetic on the nature of illusion at this point, suffice to say I found the reading of the two works back-to-back surprising.
