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Three Men in a Boat: (To Say Nothing of the Dog)

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Imagine Bertie Wooster and two of his idiot friends out on a boat... with no Jeeves. That about describes "Three Men in a Boat : To Say Nothing of the Dog," Jerome K. Jerome's enchanting comic novel about three young men (to say nothing of the dog) who discover the "joys" of roughing it.

The three men are George, Harris and the narrator, who are all massive hypochiandriacs -- they find that they have symptoms of every disease in existance (except housemaid's knee). To prop up their failing health, they decide to take a cruise down the Thames in a rented boat, camping and enjoying nature's bounty.

Along with Monty -- an angelic-looking, devilish terrier -- the three friends set off down the river. But they find that not everything is as easy as they expected. They get lost in hedge mazes, end up going downstream without a paddle, encounter monstrous cats and vicious swans, have picnics navigate locks, offend German professors, and generally get into every kind of trouble they possibly can...

Even though it was published more than a century ago, "Three Men in a Boat" remains as freshly humorous as when it was first published. While editor/playwright/author Jerome K. Jerome wrote a lot of other books, this book remains his most famous. And once you've read it, you'll see why.

Jerome's real talent is in finding humor in everyday things, like trying to erect a tent in the woods, getting seasick, or questioning whether it's safe to drink river water. Written in Jerome's dry, goofy prose, these little occurrances become immensely funny. One of the funniest parts of the book is when the boys listen to a fishermen telling of his prowess, only to accidently knock down his record-breaking stuffed fish.... and discover it's made out of plaster. Oops.

But Jerome takes a break from the humor near the end, when the boys find a drowned woman floating in the river. And here he becomes solemn and quietly compassionate: "She had sinned - some of us do now and then - and her family and friends, naturally shocked and indignant, had closed their doors against her."

But back on the funny stuff. The capstone on all this humor is the "three men." These guys are basically pampered Victorian aristocrats, who have a romantic yearning for the great outdoors. You'll be laughing at them and with them, as they struggle through the basics of boating and camping.

It's worth noting that the Digireads edition of this book is very good, with a flexible cover, extremely strong binding, and a nice reproduction with rather small print. Think "Dover Thrift," but of higher quality.

Funny, wacky and creepily true to life, "Three Men in a Boat" is an enduring comic classic in the vein of PG Wodehouse. Not to mention the dog!

Jerome K. Jerome originally meant to write a real travelogue about a trip up the Thames. He writes in his memoirs: "I did not intend to write a funny book, at first. The book was to have concentrated on the river's scenery and history with passages of humorous relief. Somehow it would not come. It seemed to be all humorous relief. By grim determination I succeeded... in writing a dozen or so slabs of history and working them in, one to each chapter." His editor deleted most but not all of the seriousness. (the dead body at Goring in chapter 16 is based on the suicide in July 1887 of a Gaiety Girl named Alicia Douglas.)

The editor's decision greatly strengthens this amusing book. It's remarkable how fresh and funny the jokes seem to a modern reader. In the preface, Jerome writes that he recorded 'events that really happened. All that has been done is to colour them; and, for this, no extra charge has been made.'

The three human characters were really three friends -- George Wingrave, Carl Hentschel and Jerome himself. The three made scores of trips on the Thames over the years. They also cycled together across Europe to the Black Forest. (Their cycling led to Jerome's Three Men on the Bummel, a less funny but still interesting journal of a trip to the Black Forest.)

Montmorency never existed: "Montmorency I evolved out of my inner consciousness. Dog friends that I came to know later have told me it was true to life." Montmorency does ring true to life; "fox-terriers are born with about four times as much original sin in them as other dogs are." Montmorency almost fights with a tom cat, he does fight with a tea kettle and loses, and at Oxford he gets into 25 fights.

George was a bank clerk (who "goes to sleep at a bank from ten to four each day, except Saturdays, when they wake him up and put him outside at two.") He must have been awake enough to have some banker sensibility: "We must not think of the things we could do with, but only of the things that we can't do without." (I must remember that great advice before my next hiking trip.)

There are inside jokes. Harris is based on Hentschel, and Harris/Hentschel is fond of a drink. Jerome makes a point of the small number of pubs in the country which Harris has not visited. In fact, Hentschel/Harris was the only teetotaller.

Boating on the Thames became a craze. In 1888, the year in which Jerome wrote Three Men in a Boat, there were 8,000 registered boats on the river; by the following year there were 12,000. "At first we would have the river almost to ourselves... and sometimes would fix up a trip of three or four days or a week, doing the thing in style and camping out."

The book has a historical interest. Unlike much of the literature of the Victorian Age, it was based on ordinary people having an adventure near their homes. As Jerome wrote in The Idle Thoughts of an Idle Fellow: "What readers ask now-a-days in a book is that it should improve, instruct and elevate. This book wouldn't elevate a cow."

Three Men in a Boat instructs but more than that delivers a view of the era that is revealing and very very funny.

Robert C. Ross 2008

Imagine Bertie Wooster and two of his idiot friends out on a boat... with no Jeeves. That about describes "Three Men in a Boat : To Say Nothing of the Dog," Jerome K. Jerome's enchanting comic novel about three young men (to say nothing of the dog) who discover the "joys" of roughing it.

The three men are George, Harris and the narrator, who are all massive hypochiandriacs -- they find that they have symptoms of every disease in existance (except housemaid's knee). To prop up their failing health, they decide to take a cruise down the Thames in a rented boat, camping and enjoying nature's bounty.

Along with Monty -- an angelic-looking, devilish terrier -- the three friends set off down the river. But they find that not everything is as easy as they expected. They get lost in hedge mazes, end up going downstream without a paddle, encounter monstrous cats and vicious swans, have picnics navigate locks, offend German professors, and generally get into every kind of trouble they possibly can...

Even though it was published more than a century ago, "Three Men in a Boat" remains as freshly humorous as when it was first published. While editor/playwright/author Jerome K. Jerome wrote a lot of other books, this book remains his most famous. And once you've read it, you'll see why.

Jerome's real talent is in finding humor in everyday things, like trying to erect a tent in the woods, getting seasick, or questioning whether it's safe to drink river water. Written in Jerome's dry, goofy prose, these little occurrances become immensely funny. One of the funniest parts of the book is when the boys listen to a fishermen telling of his prowess, only to accidently knock down his record-breaking stuffed fish.... and discover it's made out of plaster. Oops.

But Jerome takes a break from the humor near the end, when the boys find a drowned woman floating in the river. And here he becomes solemn and quietly compassionate: "She had sinned - some of us do now and then - and her family and friends, naturally shocked and indignant, had closed their doors against her."

But back on the funny stuff. The capstone on all this humor is the "three men." These guys are basically pampered Victorian aristocrats, who have a romantic yearning for the great outdoors. You'll be laughing at them and with them, as they struggle through the basics of boating and camping.

Funny, wacky and creepily true to life, "Three Men in a Boat" is an enduring comic classic in the vein of PG Wodehouse. Not to mention the dog!

Basically, it's a narrative of three men (and a dog) taking a boat trip down the river in the late 1800s. Filled with flashbacks and tangential stories that range from the hysterically funny to tragic and heartwarming.

"...and you look back and realize that you have been swimming for your life in two feet of water."

There is so much going on, so much jumping around that it (occassionally)is hard to keep track of where you are (in the main story or in a tangent...). So there were probably things I missed, and I may go back and read it later, because it was truly well-written and very engrossing. There were parts that made me laugh out loud, and then... there were even some rather tragic, touching moments. All blended together with well-crafted prose and great scenic description.

I will warn you that the humor is, well, a certain type of humor. It's very dry and British, so if that's not your style you probably won't find it as funny as I did. But even without that there's still enough to recommend the book.

I saw this book originally marked with the notation, "Not suitable for reading in doctors' offices, railway stations, or other places where sudden, hysterical laughter is discouraged." This is true in the very best possible sense. I haven't laughed so hard in years, and the fact that this is a period piece makes it all the funnier. I highly suggest having a map, or better yet, Google Earth, open when you read this book, as you can then follow the route and see what they were seeing. (And oh yes, the description of Montmorency is spot on for a breed affectionately known as a "Fox Terror.") Why, oh why, couldn't a book like this have been on our high school reading lists, rather than Ernest Hemingway or Robert Steinbeck? I'd have read my high school reading rather than burned the list!

It was by way of Monty Python, that I came to know about "Three Men in a Boat", which was incidently the reason why I picked it up. I had no idea of the premises of the story, the characters, the writing or indeed anything but the suspicion that there were to be found three men in a boat.

I started reading it, and was delightfully surprised to find it, not merely good, but excellent. The writing style, the plot, and the characters all seem to be very contemporary, or at least not as old as 130+ years. I actually thought it was a misprint, when I read that it was from the 19th century. There are definite parrallels to be drawn to the great P.G. Wodehouse in the style and content of the volume, and that is just about the best there is to be said about any writer of light entertainment. The characters are typical without being charicatures, and trouble, as well as the ways in which they are solved, are timeless. It is easily read, and should be read by any and all.

Highest possible recommendation.

Where did the expression 'tongue in cheek' comes from? It must be that you cannot laugh outloud if your tongue is in your cheek--and you are biting it. If your goal is to surprise your listener (or reader) by piling absurdities on top of one another, be a trifle solomn to increase the contrast then, tongue in cheek, learn to write humor from this book. The reader starts to pile a chuckle on a guffaw until finally the milk goes up his nose, and snorting and weeping, the reader is reduced to nearly as much a simpering wreak as ... the beleagured heroes of this book. Three Victorian gentlemen rent a boat, take dog and prepare to punt gently through the English rivers. Nothing goes as planned, in part because of their confidence in their skills in nearly anything are misplaced. This is the funniest book I ever read, tempered by some lovely and romantic moments. If you liked the movie "The Gods Must be Crazy" with its set pieces of the Jeep and the Gate, the Jeep in the Tree, and the Scientist and the Picnic Table, you will love this book. If you laughed at "A Fish Called Wanda", you will love this book.

Imagine Bertie Wooster and two of his idiot friends out on a boat... with no Jeeves. That about describes "Three Men in a Boat : To Say Nothing of the Dog," Jerome K. Jerome's enchanting comic novel about three young men (to say nothing of the dog) who discover the "joys" of roughing it.

The three men are George, Harris and the narrator, who are all massive hypochiandriacs -- they find that they have symptoms of every disease in existance (except housemaid's knee). To prop up their failing health, they decide to take a cruise down the Thames in a rented boat, camping and enjoying nature's bounty.

Along with Monty -- an angelic-looking, devilish terrier -- the three friends set off down the river. But they find that not everything is as easy as they expected. They get lost in hedge mazes, end up going downstream without a paddle, encounter monstrous cats and vicious swans, have picnics navigate locks, offend German professors, and generally get into every kind of trouble they possibly can...

Even though it was published more than a century ago, "Three Men in a Boat" remains as freshly humorous as when it was first published. While editor/playwright/author Jerome K. Jerome wrote a lot of other books, this book remains his most famous. And once you've read it, you'll see why.

Jerome's real talent is in finding humor in everyday things, like trying to erect a tent in the woods, getting seasick, or questioning whether it's safe to drink river water. Written in Jerome's dry, goofy prose, these little occurrances become immensely funny. One of the funniest parts of the book is when the boys listen to a fishermen telling of his prowess, only to accidently knock down his record-breaking stuffed fish.... and discover it's made out of plaster. Oops.

But Jerome takes a break from the humor near the end, when the boys find a drowned woman floating in the river. And here he becomes solemn and quietly compassionate: "She had sinned - some of us do now and then - and her family and friends, naturally shocked and indignant, had closed their doors against her."

But back on the funny stuff. The capstone on all this humor is the "three men." These guys are basically pampered Victorian aristocrats, who have a romantic yearning for the great outdoors. You'll be laughing at them and with them, as they struggle through the basics of boating and camping.

It's worth noting that the Digireads edition of this book is very good, with a flexible cover, extremely strong binding, and a nice reproduction with rather small print. Think "Dover Thrift," but of higher quality.

Funny, wacky and creepily true to life, "Three Men in a Boat" is an enduring comic classic in the vein of PG Wodehouse. Not to mention the dog!

Three Men in a Boat: (To Say Nothing of the Dog) (Dover Value Editions)
Three rather peculiar young Englishmen swan their holiday punting up the Thames. Their colorful adventures are in a soft and humorous key. It is partly a touring guide and partly a humorous introduction to the history of the villages and towns in their path, and partly about the foibles of the participants and their involvement with punting. Little lectures, little lesson, little family fictions all go to making this funny slim volume from 1889 a complete reading pleasure.

This is a funny book. The categorization of comic novel is right on. At one point, I was averaging one out-loud laugh per page. Then I lost count. Plus: It's short. The narrator is a resistentialist, which is fun, too. This was a good diversion for me.

The book is about three friends (plus the dog, Montmorency) who decide it's time for a break and set out, sculling up the Thames, camping at night or, alternately, staying at a local inn. Interspersed with the actual events of the book are many back stories, which, at least to some degree, really make the book.

This is not a book to skim, though, despite its brevity. I think it may have had to do with this particular edition, but sometimes I realized that I didn't know what I was reading about and have to back up. I'd never missed much (never more than a few lines), but still.

There are just so many reasons to recommend this book: If you like dogs. Boating. England. History. Humor. Performing. Camping. Resistentialism. Traveling. Cheese. A fondness for any one of these, I think, would be enough to commend this book to you.

Because of the success of this book, Jerome went on to write Three Men on the Bummel.