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3.87 AVERAGE
3.87 AVERAGE
Shout-out to the character who ran into a burning building to save his manuscript, because same.
George Gissing, though he writes later than Dickens and though he lacks Dickens' humor, tackles some simliar issues, particularly in his descriptions of living in London. This novel is about people trying to make it as writers and it's not upbeat but well worth the read. An author I'm glad I discovered.
Don't recall reading this author in college, really tried to appreciate it from an English literature major, but I couldn't. Jasper Milvain was loathsome.
dark
emotional
informative
tense
medium-paced
Plot or Character Driven:
Character
Strong character development:
Yes
Loveable characters:
No
Diverse cast of characters:
Yes
Flaws of characters a main focus:
Yes
Very interesting on late nineteenth century London and journalism at that time
Excellent, a very interesting mix of Victorian plots and a sometimes almost modern sensibility. Fascinating portrait of the literary life. A little humourless, but not without wit. Especially striking is Gissing's sympathy for and insight in his female characters, and his anatomies of failed marriages (or near-marriages). Some of the dialogue is padded to make his novel the required three volume length (a procedure he comments on in the book himself), but often the dialogue is also strikingly modern, totally different from what I'm used to in Victorian novels. Especially when two characters dissect their (usually failed) relationship. One of the female characters seems to decide to divorce her husband. And me thinking that Evelyn Waugh's set piece about organizing a divorce in A Handful of Dust was ground-breaking!
Did you ever hear of the phenomenon of 'the three-volume novel'?
It wasn't a trilogy as we know the concept today but a single novel published in three parts. It became very popular in 19th century England around the time that 'subscription libraries' were common, and there's a link between the two. You see, the owners of subscription libraries charged the users a yearly rate. There was a cheap rate, which allowed subscribers to borrow one book at a time, and a more expensive rate which allowed them to borrow up to three books at a time. If all the popular novels of the day were in three volumes, and you were paying the cheap rate, you can imagine the frustration of having to wait to read the next chapter of the novel you'd become engrossed in until it was available. You'd soon change your subscription! So the three-volume novel suited the subscription library owners very well. It also suited the publishers because they made enough money out of selling the first volume to the subscription libraries to help with the costs of printing the second, etc.
How did it suit the writers of three-volume novels though? Not so well, if we are to go by George Gissing's story of one such writer in London in the 1880s. When a publisher agreed to buy the first volume of a novel main character Edwin Reardon was working on, they gave him a low price because he hadn't yet finished the final volume. But that wasn't the worst aspect for the poor writer. In order to make his novel fill three volumes—a total of maybe eight or nine hundred pages—he had to stretch out what might have made a good quality single-volume novel by adding all sorts of filling, including melodrama and stock-phrasing. If he couldn't or wouldn't do that, he was doomed. Edwin couldn't do it. Would you blame him?
I was curious about the phenomenon of the three-volume novel so I did a bit of wiki research and that's how I found that cartoon from Punch.
I found some great quotes about the three-volume novel too, including this one from Oscar Wilde: 'Anybody can write a three-volume novel, it merely requires a complete ignorance of both life and literature!'
And here's another Wilde quip from 'The Importance of Being Earnest': [The attaché-case] contained the manuscript of a three-volume novel of more than usually revolting sentimentality'.
In [b:Three Men in a Boat|4921|Three Men in a Boat (Three Men, #1)|Jerome K. Jerome|https://i.gr-assets.com/images/S/compressed.photo.goodreads.com/books/1630492021l/4921._SY75_.jpg|4476508], written in the 1880s around the same time as Gissing's book, Jerome K Jerome's narrator says: 'the heroine of the three-volume novel always dines [at Maidenhead] when she goes out on the spree with somebody else's husband'.
The three-volume novel is even mentioned in Jane Austin's [b:Pride and Prejudice|1885|Pride and Prejudice|Jane Austen|https://i.gr-assets.com/images/S/compressed.photo.goodreads.com/books/1320399351l/1885._SY75_.jpg|3060926] back in 1813 (itself a three-volume novel originally): Darcy took up a book; Miss Bingley did the same...At length, quite exhausted by the attempt to be amused with her own book, which she had only chosen because it was the second volume of his, she gave a great yawn and said, "How pleasant it is to spend an evening in this way! I declare after all there is no enjoyment like reading! How much sooner one tires of anything than of a book! When I have a house of my own, I shall be miserable if I have not an excellent library."
………….....................................................
Ok, enough with the filling, I hear you say.
George Gissing's New Grub Street isn't just about the struggles of Edwin Reardon to write a three-volume novel. Grub Street itself was an eighteenth century London street where poor writers, and small publishers and booksellers, plied their trades. It was renamed Milton Street in the nineteenth century, but Gissing, by recalling it in his title, is setting out his stall, as it were. Inside the covers of his own very long book (which was originally published as a three-volume novel), there are many subplots and many characters. Some of those characters are novelists like Edwin Reardon, incapable of writing what the publishers demand; some are writers for periodicals; and some are journalists for newspapers. They are mostly poor and mostly struggling but none of them write in the Punch cartoon style illustrated above, it has to be said.
Because while Gissing's story is a little long-winded in places, especially in the first third, I wouldn't dream of accusing him of filling it out with melodrama or stock-phrasing—indeed some of his descriptions of poor writers and journalists are exceedingly good. Take Mr Quarmby who wore a coat between brown and blue, hanging in capacious shapelessness, a waistcoat half-open for lack of buttons and with one of the pockets coming unsewn, a pair of bronze-hued trousers which had all run to knee... You can see him clearly, can't you? And maybe you can hear him too, because, when he was excited, Mr Quarmby talked in thick, rather pompous tones, with a pant at the end of a sentence.
Yes, the writing is colourful and the plots and characters Gissing develops reveal a great understanding of both life and literature.
…………..................................................
Why did I choose to read this very long nineteenth-century novel, you might wonder?
Well, this is a perfect case of 'one book leading to another'. I'd read a lot of books by Gerald Murnane a couple of months ago and he mentioned George Gissing more than once when recalling his favourite writers. So I went looking for one of Gissing's book. The one I found was called [b:The Odd Women|675037|The Odd Women|George Gissing|https://i.gr-assets.com/images/S/compressed.photo.goodreads.com/books/1177017769l/675037._SY75_.jpg|661046], but after finishing that very interesting novel, I wasn't completely satisfied that I understood why Murnane valued Gissing so much—although I had the beginnings of an idea. So I decided to read another one, and now that I've finished New Grub Street, I have a better understanding of the attraction of Gissing's books for Murnane. Murnane was a struggling writer himself for a long time and he refused to write in the conventional way publishers might have preferred. But that may be only part of the explanation for his love of Gissing. As I see it, Gissing writes very fine independent-minded women characters, and unusual women characters in literature are one of the things Murnane seems to value highly in his own reading: the 'odd' women who step outside the norm of their times; the 'odd' women who love reading and writing.
Yes, on reflection, I think that may well be it.
It wasn't a trilogy as we know the concept today but a single novel published in three parts. It became very popular in 19th century England around the time that 'subscription libraries' were common, and there's a link between the two. You see, the owners of subscription libraries charged the users a yearly rate. There was a cheap rate, which allowed subscribers to borrow one book at a time, and a more expensive rate which allowed them to borrow up to three books at a time. If all the popular novels of the day were in three volumes, and you were paying the cheap rate, you can imagine the frustration of having to wait to read the next chapter of the novel you'd become engrossed in until it was available. You'd soon change your subscription! So the three-volume novel suited the subscription library owners very well. It also suited the publishers because they made enough money out of selling the first volume to the subscription libraries to help with the costs of printing the second, etc.
How did it suit the writers of three-volume novels though? Not so well, if we are to go by George Gissing's story of one such writer in London in the 1880s. When a publisher agreed to buy the first volume of a novel main character Edwin Reardon was working on, they gave him a low price because he hadn't yet finished the final volume. But that wasn't the worst aspect for the poor writer. In order to make his novel fill three volumes—a total of maybe eight or nine hundred pages—he had to stretch out what might have made a good quality single-volume novel by adding all sorts of filling, including melodrama and stock-phrasing. If he couldn't or wouldn't do that, he was doomed. Edwin couldn't do it. Would you blame him?
I was curious about the phenomenon of the three-volume novel so I did a bit of wiki research and that's how I found that cartoon from Punch.
I found some great quotes about the three-volume novel too, including this one from Oscar Wilde: 'Anybody can write a three-volume novel, it merely requires a complete ignorance of both life and literature!'
And here's another Wilde quip from 'The Importance of Being Earnest': [The attaché-case] contained the manuscript of a three-volume novel of more than usually revolting sentimentality'.
In [b:Three Men in a Boat|4921|Three Men in a Boat (Three Men, #1)|Jerome K. Jerome|https://i.gr-assets.com/images/S/compressed.photo.goodreads.com/books/1630492021l/4921._SY75_.jpg|4476508], written in the 1880s around the same time as Gissing's book, Jerome K Jerome's narrator says: 'the heroine of the three-volume novel always dines [at Maidenhead] when she goes out on the spree with somebody else's husband'.
The three-volume novel is even mentioned in Jane Austin's [b:Pride and Prejudice|1885|Pride and Prejudice|Jane Austen|https://i.gr-assets.com/images/S/compressed.photo.goodreads.com/books/1320399351l/1885._SY75_.jpg|3060926] back in 1813 (itself a three-volume novel originally): Darcy took up a book; Miss Bingley did the same...At length, quite exhausted by the attempt to be amused with her own book, which she had only chosen because it was the second volume of his, she gave a great yawn and said, "How pleasant it is to spend an evening in this way! I declare after all there is no enjoyment like reading! How much sooner one tires of anything than of a book! When I have a house of my own, I shall be miserable if I have not an excellent library."
………….....................................................
Ok, enough with the filling, I hear you say.
George Gissing's New Grub Street isn't just about the struggles of Edwin Reardon to write a three-volume novel. Grub Street itself was an eighteenth century London street where poor writers, and small publishers and booksellers, plied their trades. It was renamed Milton Street in the nineteenth century, but Gissing, by recalling it in his title, is setting out his stall, as it were. Inside the covers of his own very long book (which was originally published as a three-volume novel), there are many subplots and many characters. Some of those characters are novelists like Edwin Reardon, incapable of writing what the publishers demand; some are writers for periodicals; and some are journalists for newspapers. They are mostly poor and mostly struggling but none of them write in the Punch cartoon style illustrated above, it has to be said.
Because while Gissing's story is a little long-winded in places, especially in the first third, I wouldn't dream of accusing him of filling it out with melodrama or stock-phrasing—indeed some of his descriptions of poor writers and journalists are exceedingly good. Take Mr Quarmby who wore a coat between brown and blue, hanging in capacious shapelessness, a waistcoat half-open for lack of buttons and with one of the pockets coming unsewn, a pair of bronze-hued trousers which had all run to knee... You can see him clearly, can't you? And maybe you can hear him too, because, when he was excited, Mr Quarmby talked in thick, rather pompous tones, with a pant at the end of a sentence.
Yes, the writing is colourful and the plots and characters Gissing develops reveal a great understanding of both life and literature.
…………..................................................
Why did I choose to read this very long nineteenth-century novel, you might wonder?
Well, this is a perfect case of 'one book leading to another'. I'd read a lot of books by Gerald Murnane a couple of months ago and he mentioned George Gissing more than once when recalling his favourite writers. So I went looking for one of Gissing's book. The one I found was called [b:The Odd Women|675037|The Odd Women|George Gissing|https://i.gr-assets.com/images/S/compressed.photo.goodreads.com/books/1177017769l/675037._SY75_.jpg|661046], but after finishing that very interesting novel, I wasn't completely satisfied that I understood why Murnane valued Gissing so much—although I had the beginnings of an idea. So I decided to read another one, and now that I've finished New Grub Street, I have a better understanding of the attraction of Gissing's books for Murnane. Murnane was a struggling writer himself for a long time and he refused to write in the conventional way publishers might have preferred. But that may be only part of the explanation for his love of Gissing. As I see it, Gissing writes very fine independent-minded women characters, and unusual women characters in literature are one of the things Murnane seems to value highly in his own reading: the 'odd' women who step outside the norm of their times; the 'odd' women who love reading and writing.
Yes, on reflection, I think that may well be it.
"Literature nowadays is a trade. Putting aside men of genius, who may succeed by mere cosmic force, your successful man of letters is your skillful tradesman. He thinks first and foremost of the markets; when one kind of goods begins to go off slackly, he is ready with something new and appetizing. He knows perfectly all the possible sources of income."
The above quote is from this unforgettable 500-page British classic set in 1880s London about the men and women working as part of the literary hub of New Grub Street. Indeed, we encounter some of the most articulate, refined, educated people in society; however, since these genteel men and women of letters lack the benefit of either family fortune or private wealth, they must continually use their pens to stave off grueling poverty and starvation as they attempt to stake their claim in the world of books and publishing.
Not an easy task even when their writing is going well, a fact author George Gissing (1857-1903) knew firsthand since circumstances hurled him into much the same plight; matter of fact, his earliest published novel, Workers in the Dawn, hit bookstores in 1880, when Gissing was a mere twenty-three years old, a semi-autobiographical three-volume novel recounting the unhappy life of a struggling, half-starved London artist married to a prostitute. Incidentally, when the author read the first book review of Workers he became so outraged he described literary critics as “unprincipled vagabonds.” Ooooo, George! If you were alive today, I hope you wouldn’t lump me in among those nasty, lit crit Brits.
Anyway, New Grub Street is also a “triple-decker,” that is, a novel in three volumes, which was standard fare at the time - almost predictably, the reason for this format was money: rather than purchasing novels, the reading public typically used circulating libraries and these circulating libraries could make a separate charge for each volume checked out. One of the main characters, Jasper Milvain, bemoans how such a demanding structure is “a triple-headed monster, sucking the blood of English novelists.” And Milvain isn’t even a novelist; rather, as we come to know in much more detail, his literary focus is entirely practical and utilitarian – acknowledging his turn of mind and skill level, he writes columns for literary periodicals.
As counterpoise to all these literary folk, there is old John Yule, a wealthy retired merchant who would very much like to see literary production abolished since, by his reckoning, the writing and especially the reading of books makes men weak, flabby creatures with ruined eyes and dyspeptic stomachs, men who should spend their leisure hours not reading but out in open-air exercise. But, alas, John is fighting a losing battle since in 1880s England reading has caught on like wildfire – books, journals, magazines and newspapers are all the rage.
One of the novel’s overarching themes is the hierarchy of social class. A prime example is John’s brother Alfred Yule, a literary man and journalist, who disgraced his family by taking a humble servant woman for his wife. Then when Mrs. Yule gave birth to daughter Marian, Alfred forbade his wife to speak to her daughter since he was horrified at the prospect that Marian might be infected with his wife’s faulty grammar and hackneyed diction. No, no, no – as soon as humanly possible, Marian was separated from her mother and sent off to a day school. Then, some years later, after hearing her mother’s grammatical errors, young Marian innocently asked her father, “Why doesn’t mother speak as properly as we do?”
Along somewhat the same lines, in conversation with his hyper class-conscious wife Amy, young novelist Edwin Reardon stresses the biggest difference in all the world: that the man with money thinks: “How should I use my life?” and the man without money thinks: “How shall I keep myself alive?” Reardon goes on to ruminate that if he should fail to make a great name for himself as a novelist, how such a fate would be a grievous disappointment to Amy.
However, when we first encounter the novelist around age thirty, the promise of fame is very much alive as he did write and have published two marginally successful novels prior to his marriage. But shortly thereafter, as we read further on, a crisis is at hand: sensitive, high-principled, Edwin Reardon encounters the ever-looming nightmare for a poor novelist attempting to make money in order to support a family by the publication of his work: writer’s block. In many respects, the drama of Edwin Reardon’s personal and artistic integrity is at the heart of the heart of Gissing’s compelling tale.
Another writer with integrity is Reardon’s friend Harold Biffen, a habitually half-starved scarecrow of a man who has a vision for a realistic novel, a novel depicting life as it truly is, specifically the grimy nitty-gritty of an everyday drudge, in his case, a grocer living hardscrabble in the poorest section of the city. This literary skeleton-man despises romantic novels with their heroes performing predictable heroic acts, so it is something of an irony that Biffen performs the most singularly heroic act in the entire novel.
Listening to Harold Biffen’s philosophy on realism and the realistic novel, I hear echoes of this very three volume George Gissing, a novel realistic in the extreme, reminding me much more of the Paris destitute depicted in Émile Zola’s The Gin Palace than any Charles Dickens misty-eyed yarn with a happy ending.
At one point, a demoralized, forlorn Edwin Reardon shares with Harold Biffen the highpoints of his life, a time prior to his marriage when he was traveling. As he relates: “The best moments of life are those when we contemplate beauty in the purely artistic spirit – objectively. I have had such moments in Greece and Italy; times when I was a free spirit, utterly remote from the temptations and harassings of sexual emotion. What we call love is mere turmoil. Who wouldn’t release himself from it forever, if the possibility offered?”
The novelist’s statement accords with Edmund Burke’s philosophy of the sublime - the magnificent experience of beauty and overwhelming majesty out in nature, so distinct from the toil of even a creative expression such as novel writing, an endeavor forever bound to the pressures of schedule and the anxiety of possible rejection. Also, Edwin’s words speak to English society as a whole in the nineteenth century, where the vast majority of men, women and even children were condemned to a life of unrelenting toil, forever bound to the wheel of Ixian, slaving from dawn to dusk as if they were nothing more than beasts of burden.
Yet again another aspect of nineteenth century British society takes center stage with the unfolding events in the life of Marion Yule. How free is Marion and how eligible is she as a lover and future wife? The answers to these questions are closely tied to how much money, if any, she will receive in her inheritance from her rich uncle, John Yule, along with to what degree she will be obliged to care for her ailing father. With Marion, Gissing provides us with a clear perspective on how a woman’s life and possible tragic fate is so dependent on outside forces, especially the letter of the law.
Toward the end of the novel, we listen in on a discussion of the future face of publishing with Jasper Milvain and others as the forward-looking Mr. Whelpdale proposes a change in the name of a paper: “In the first place I should slightly alter the name; only slightly, but that little alteration would in itself have an enormous effect. Instead of Chat, I should call it Chit-Chat. . . . Chat doesn’t attract any one, but Chit-Chat would sell like hot cakes, as they say in America.”
With this brief exchange George Gissing conveys how well-worn, conventional notions of culture are rapidly transforming, how success in literature is becoming Americanized along with everything else, how what people read will be driven by catchphrases and slick marketing. Utilitarian, optimistic, pragmatic, materialist Jasper Milvain is all for it. The more I reflect on Gissing’s novel, the more I discern distinctly how the entire current day mass-media is the new literary New Grub Street.
dark
emotional
reflective
sad
slow-paced
Plot or Character Driven:
Character
Strong character development:
Yes
Loveable characters:
Complicated
Diverse cast of characters:
No
Flaws of characters a main focus:
Yes
dark
sad
tense
slow-paced
Plot or Character Driven:
A mix
Strong character development:
Yes
Loveable characters:
Complicated
Flaws of characters a main focus:
Yes