With the predecessor titled Three Men in a Boat, you’d be safe to assume that a bummel might be some sort of mode of transport. I initially thought that a bummel was a boat because the men were just going on a sea trip, but nope, it wasn’t to be. Then I thought it was some sort of weird 19th century bike, because that was on the cards. When I type “bummel”, it’s got that annoying But a bummel is actually none of these. We get to know what it is at the last page of the book, as defined by the author himself:
“…a journey, long or short, without an end; the only thing regulating it being the necessity of getting back within a given time to the point from which one started. Sometimes it is through busy streets, and sometimes through the fields and lanes; sometimes we can be spared for a few hours, and sometimes for a few days. But long or short, but here or there, our thoughts are ever on the running of the sand.”
So I say: BRING BACK BUMMELING, it’s fucking great. And I say, bring back comedy in novels, because I shit you not, most books are just deprived of the joy that makes you laugh out loud, that makes you think that no matter how absurd something might be, that you’re glad you’re not like these idiots. It is a book that lacks meaning, as Jerome would admit in the pages of the novel, but it is a rare book that brings a lot of cackles, a few laughs and more than one occasion where you spurt coffee out of your nose.
An expensive trip to the German Dark Forest, in more ways than one
The same characters that we met in the Three Men in a Boat: the narrator — married but no kids, Harris — the family man and George- the mischievous bachelor, decided that one day, that they needed a change. What kind of change they really can’t day, but a change is needed and by the necessity of a book’s plot some sort of change is contrived.
The change is travel: An escape from the daily routines of the Victorian English daily life, to some place quite different but not too different, thus they settled on Germany. The men managed to convince their wives (minus George, who was free of marital slavery) hilariously of the necessity of the trip. After some preliminary discussion of whether the sea should be involved, or any body of water, considering that the previous book was largely water-borne, they decided on a land trip.
What follows is a tour-de-force tour around Deutschland, and the men’s impressions of the country and its people based on their misadventures. During the journey, they managed to get arrested for different crimes, find out how absurd catching a train was in Germany, got belted by the weather in the forest looking for shelter (when the hotel was only ten metres away) and getting into a tussle with a man with a hose. This, of course, is only the tip of the iceberg.
Let’s not overanalyse pure, hilarious fun
In the scores of novels published as a classic, Three Men on the Bummel stands unique in the repertoire of well-known publishers. We can view the novel as capturing the opinions of the time, especially in regards to a Germany unawares of the great war coming a decade later, much of it broken into separate republics from the original Austro-Hungarian empire. But the book stands unique for its lackadaisaical approach to its writing.
Jerome is barely trying too hard to convey anything, to make any strong statements about the state of the world. There is not much of a story here, it is a meaningless travelogue of three men in constant misadventure. Jerome himself, who intended to be a serious writer, only stumbled upon writing comedic satires when he found that it suited his style. I guess this makes his work all the more impressive.
And I do remember reading Three Men in a Boat a long time ago, when I still had my ambitions intact and I was more untarnished than I am now. I remembered really loving the book because it made me laugh non-stop. But fuck me dead, I couldn’t tell you what the book was about, what some of the anecdotes were and if there was any story at all. All I recalled were three rather obnoxious but endearing men in a boat, and a dog wreaking havoc. And I’m damn hazy about the dog.
But it matters not. It is a book that’s meant to be enjoyed. Call it light reading if you will. Call it a piece of history of Victorian England, an idyll before the coming of a great war, which would decimate the population of the two countries featured here. We get books that try to be funny these days. Comedians write books to showcase their comedic chops. Yet, none of them ever comes close to the heights of Jerome.
