Tres Homes Dins D'una Barca (sense Comptar-Hi El Gos)
Tres Homes Dins D'una Barca (sense Comptar-Hi El Gos)
Translated by Jacinto María, 1887- Mustieles
Three Victorian-era men decide they're desperately ill and only a quiet boating trip can save them. They pack enough food to feed a small army, acquire a dog who may or may not be sensible, and set off down the River Thames with catastrophic results. They fall in. They get lost. They argue about the correct way to pack a hamper. They venture into Hampton Court Maze and emerge older, wiser, and more confused than when they went in. What elevates this 1889 comic masterpiece beyond mere farce is Jerome K. Jerome's gorgeous, meandering narrative voice, which gets distracted by tangents, philosophical musings, and increasingly absurd digressions while the actual boat trip happens almost in spite of itself. The three friends are wonderfully realized: the narrator who can never quite finish a story, Harris who confidently makes everything worse, and George who owns the boat and regrets everything. Their hypochondria, their petty disagreements, and their absolute certainty that they are doomed men make them oddly recognizable across a century later. This is a book about doing precisely nothing in the most exhausting, hilarious way possible.
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“I can't sit still and see another man slaving and working. I want to get up and superintend, and walk round with my hands in my pockets, and tell him what to do. It is my energetic nature. I can't help it.””
— Jerome K. Jerome
“Let your boat of life be light, packed with only what you need - a homely home and simple pleasures, one or two friends, worth the name, someone to love and someone to love you, a cat, a dog, and a pipe or two, enough to eat and enough to wear, and a little more than enough to drink; for thirst is a dangerous thing. ””
— Jerome K. Jerome
“I don't know why it should be, I am sure; but the sight of another man asleep in bed when I am up, maddens me.””
— Jerome K. Jerome
“But who wants to be foretold the weather? It is bad enough when it comes, without our having the misery of knowing about it beforehand.””
— Jerome K. Jerome
“I don't understand German myself. I learned it at school, but forgot every word of it two years after I had left, and have felt much better ever since.””
— Jerome K. Jerome
“It always does seem to me that I am doing more work than I should do. It is not that I object to the work, mind you; I like work: it fascinates me. I can sit and look at it for hours. I love to keep it by me: the idea of getting rid of it nearly breaks my heart.You cannot give me too much work; to accumulate work has almost become a passion with me: my study is so full of it now, that there is hardly an inch of room for any more. I shall have to throw out a wing soon.And I am careful of my work, too. Why, some of the work that I have by me now has been in my possession for years and years, and there isn’t a finger-mark on it. I take a great pride in my work; I take it down now and then and dust it. No man keeps his work in a better state of preservation than I do.But, though I crave for work, I still like to be fair. I do not ask for more than my proper share.””
— Jerome K. Jerome
“Everything has its drawbacks, as the man said when his mother-in-law died, and they came down upon him for the funeral expenses.””
— Jerome K. Jerome
“How good one feels when one is full -- how satisfied with ourselves and with the world! People who have tried it, tell me that a clear conscience makes you very happy and contented; but a full stomach does the business quite as well, and is cheaper, and more easily obtained.””
— Jerome K. Jerome
“We must not think of the things we could do with, but only of the things that we can't do without.””
— Jerome K. Jerome
