Sailors' Knots (entire Collection)
1909
W.W. Jacobs spent decades working as a clerk in a London shipping office, and it shows in every sentence of this collection. The tales are steeped in the music of dockside pubs and the particular logic of men who measure life in tides and rope. The frame story introduces a night-watchman whose salty philosophy about the difference between sailors and land-dwellers serves as a perfect launching point for a series of comic misadventures. The centerpiece follows Rupert Brown, a seafarer with more ambition than sense, who schemes to abandon the monotony of maritime life and stumbles into a theatrical manager's orbit with predictably disastrous results. But the real pleasure lies in Jacobs' eye for the small humiliations and grand delusions that make human beings endlessly funny to watch. These are not adventures in the heroic sense; they are comedies of aspiration gone slightly wrong, populated by men who dream of escape and find exactly what they deserve instead. The humor is dry, observational, and entirely of its Edwardian moment, yet the target remains painfully recognizable: we all believe we deserve more than we have, and Jacobs watches us admit it through his wretched, wonderful characters.
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“It's a bit o' real lace," ses the gal, twisting her 'ead round to look at the collar; "it cost me one and two-three only last night." "One an' wot?" ses Charlie, who, not being a married man, didn't understand 'er. "One shilling," ses the gal, "two pennies, and three farthings. D'ye understand that?””
— W. W. Jacobs
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Jacobs, W. W.. Sailors' Knots (entire Collection). Lex, lex-books.com/book/sailors-knots-entire-collection-223719df-0514-46f0-b75c-9897af9fa875.Jacobs, W. W. (1909). Sailors' Knots (entire Collection). Lex. https://lex-books.com/book/sailors-knots-entire-collection-223719df-0514-46f0-b75c-9897af9fa875Jacobs, W. W.. Sailors' Knots (entire Collection). Lex. https://lex-books.com/book/sailors-knots-entire-collection-223719df-0514-46f0-b75c-9897af9fa875.
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