Three Men on the Bummel by Jerome K. Jerome

Rating - 3: worth reading once (borrow it from a library)

This could be a "buy it" as bathroom reading. It has short, light, loosely connected anecdotes, with no loss incurred if you open it at random or read a few pages sporadically.

J., George, and Harris are back, this time on a bicycle tour of Germany. They struggle with geography, mechanics, the perversity of human nature, and German police.

As in the previous volume, this is a light Victorian comedy comprising a series of humorous instances and observations. It does not have the lulls of Three Men in a Boat while the best scenes are at least as good, so I hereby rule this a better book. Let it henceforth be the more famous of the two.

I don't get to declare things like that, do I? I also cannot levitate. Life is harsh.

While the beginning of Three Men in a Boat (hereafter "Boat") has the most consistently high quality chapters, I was less fond of Bummel's opening. That may be simple personal preference, or maybe that relationship humor was not stale 110 years ago, but I think we have all seen many versions of the standard marriage conflict and hypocrisy comedy. The opening also includes a bit that is a very minor variation on a scene from Boat. It does, however, include a rather good bit about overhauling a bicycle that reads like upgrading a modern computer.

The turning point where things start getting really good is when the narrator explains that he will be avoiding the problems I cited in Boat: scenery, useful information, and a tour guide narrative. There is to be no waxing poetic about the effects of nature on human goodness, nor on which king toured the area centuries ago, nor on the passage by various towns and hamlets. Which is not to say that it does not happen, just that it is tied to a funny bit rather than being a three-page "lull."

It instead focuses on the previous book's strengths: humorous anecdotes, comic scenes, tangential digressions, and wry observations on people, places, and history. Explaining that there will be no useful information leads to a lengthy digression on the narrator's past work in journalism, where truth was the minor party in a partnership with entertainment.

The three do not have a dog along with them this time, so they are forced to encounter other dogs for the animal comedy scenes. People love a bit with a dog. If anything, the dogs are more prominent here, because they take center stage for their scenes rather than being a running joke about a misbehaving mutt.

I find the physical humor in this one more effective. Perhaps it is greater experience with road trips than boat trips. Struggles with a sail do not hit close to home. Jerome K. Jerome's quality of description has also improved over time; compare the hose scene in Bummel with any Thames water issues in Boat, or Bummel's dog-precipitated restaurant brawl with any Montmorency scene in Boat.

Having said this much, I have difficulty summarizing the book or even usefully pointing out sights along the way. The vignettes have a unifying theme but not a narrative, so it is just a series of funny scenes. If one does not work for you, no problem, it will be over in a page or three and the next one might be more to your taste.

I may find more personal appeal in the mockery of Germans because of German ancestors and local towns with German history. Again, it is more familiar humor, although perhaps not for you. The last chapter is really something in retrospect. It treats upon the character of the German people: orderly, deferential to authority, guided in all things by The State. People will do anything the police tell them to, and they make excellent soldiers if you put uniforms on them and march them into some other country. They seem happy and virtuous without any desire to defy regulations or step outside the prescribed order; this should go well, the narrator explains, so long as they have good governors.

There are also some paragraphs about how German feminism and femininity are growing simultaneously, and how this seems the likely driver for change and improvement in German society. My grasp of history suggests that patriarchy was very soon to eclipse that, but it is a nice view from 1900 of how liberating women from the confines of the kitchen and letting them use their minds makes everyone happier. And it manages to toss that it while remaining a light comedy.

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