William Makepeace Thackeray (1811–1863)

Türelem – nos, az kell ehhez a monstrumhoz. Főhősünk, Arthur Pendennis, a nem túl gazdag és nem túl sziporkázó főhős 18 éves, mikor először találkozunk vele e könyv lapjain, és a 175. oldalig kell várni, amíg az író egyáltalán eljuttatja őt az egyetemre. (Megjegyz.: nem az a megfejtés, hogy évvesztes a srác.) Erre mondta egy ismerősöm, hogy azért bámulatos: ilyen keveset ilyen sok szóval elmondani! Nevezett Pendennis uraság amúgy fairoaksi birtokán show more éldegél édesanyjával és Laura nevezetű csodabájos rokonával – aki mindazonáltal elég távoli rokon ahhoz, hogy az olvasó nagy összegben le merje fogadni: előbb-utóbb egymáséi lesznek. Aztán Pendennis pár száz oldal után elhagyja szülőföldjét, és a cselekmény Londonban folytatódik. Aminek következtében üdvösen fel is pörög, úgyhogy nekem senki egy rossz szót ne szóljon az ipari forradalomról meg az urbanizációról, ha ezek nincsenek, ott döglene meg az olvasó az unalomtól a kies angol vidék eseménytelenségében. (Megjegyz.: bennem felvetődött a kérdés, hogy rendben van, Arthur különböző kalandokat él át a nagyvárosban – de mit csinál addig a Fairoaksban ragadt Laura? Gondolom, nagyjából semmit, mert nem az a dolga, hogy csináljon valamit. Legfeljebb horgol pár terítőt. Agyagozik. Playstationnal csapatja agyon az időt. Hibernálva van, mint Ripley az Alien-ben. Mindegy az*.)

Mindazonáltal el kell fogadni, hogy ez a könyv nem elsősorban történetet mesél el. Alig vannak benne dickensi drámai jelenetek és színes dickensi karakterek – az olvasónak az az érzése, hogy ha a szereplők bele is keverednek valami hallatlan konfliktusba, valahogy mindig sikerül lágyan kitáncolniuk belőle. Sokkal inkább ráérős tabló ez a vidéki és nagyvárosi Anglia mindennapjairól, újarisztokratákról és tősgyökeres lordokról, katonákról, cselédekről, lelkészekről és patikusokról – azokról, akiket Thackeray oly jól ismer. Mert meg merem kockáztatni: e regény relatív eseménytelensége annak is betudható, hogy végtelenül személyes. Nem annyira szórakoztatni akarja az olvasót, mint inkább vallomást tenni. Túl sok olyan elem van ebben a könyvben, ami egyértelmű párhuzamot mutat Thackeray életeseményeivel: a fiatalon elvert családi örökség, az anyagi problémák, vagy az újságírók és irodalmárok világa. Az volt az érzésem, hogy Thackeray ugyanúgy saját ifjúkori tévelygéseinek állít emléket e könyvben, mint ahogy az íróvá váló Pendennis is önmagát írja meg regénybeli regényében, a Walter Lorraine-ben. És ez a fajta (képzelt vagy valós) személyesség sokat hozzátesz ehhez a könyvhöz.

Szóval ahogy az a klasszikus gigászoknál lenni szokott: amint elfelejtettem a rohanó időt meg a többi posztmodern fantáziát, finom kis élvezetet volt e ráérős prózán átkorzózni. Nem tagadom, voltak pillanatok, amikor egyszerűen leragadt tőle a szemem, de ha az ember befejezi, és egy nap múltán visszatekint rá, már nem az unalom jut eszébe, hanem valami kellemes, bágyadt jóérzés: mintha lankás zöld mezőkön barangolt volna a minap. Nem nagy hegycsúcsok és szédítő szakadékok kápráztatták el, csak valami nyugodt időtlenség. Valami elegáns puhaság. Jó ám az is.

* Amúgy elkelt volna ebben a könyvben egy rendes, igazán kimunkált, élő nőalak. Néha Laurában, néha Amoryban is mintha fellángolt volna valami, de összességében végig Arthur függelékeiként funkcionáltak. show less

The Kickleburys on the Rhine (1850):

Thackeray's 1850 Christmas Book is a jolly little account of a summer holiday trip the author makes with a lawyer friend to the German spa-town of Rougetnoirburg (not too hard to identify as Baden Baden). Like the other Christmas Books, it's only about fifty pages long, plus a dozen or so full-page drawings by the author.

As a bonus, it comes with a preface in which the author reproduces in full a mocking review of the book that has appeared in the Times show more and then proceeds to tear the pompous reviewer into very small pieces. Something that authors are always advised against doing, but in this case he doesn't seem to have much to fear. It's a satirical book anyway, he's already warned readers that the Times advises them not to buy it and he's sold out the first edition within a week...

It isn't really a book about Germany, it's a send-up of the English abroad, a good topic for satire then as now. Mr Titmarsh's fellow passengers on the boat to Antwerp include an appalling noisy, snobby, selfish and self-important Englishwoman, Lady Kicklebury (widow of a baronet) who tyrannises her servants, her two daughters and her son-in-law, whilst slobbering all over anyone they meet who appears to be either rich or aristocratic (and thrusting her unmarried daughter at any of them who appear to be rich and single). Needless to say, the unmarried daughter, Fanny, whom Titmarsh is also half in love with, has quietly arranged for the man who's courting her to travel to Germany on the same boat. And Lady Kicklebury has a splendid humiliation lined up for her in Rougetnoirburg.

In passing, we get a few little glimpses of German scenery (most of which no-one is looking at, as already indicated by the man in the frontispiece), and a few comic notes on the economy of Rougetnoirburg, which depends entirely on the casino proprietor Lenoir, whilst the palace of the hereditary prince crumbles slowly away.

A pleasant little diversion, which still does exactly the job it was designed for 170 years ago. show less

In discussing the origins of The Bonfire of the Vanities, his brilliant satire of the social and economic mores of New York City in the 1980s, Tom Wolfe was always quick to cite Thackeray’s Vanity Fair as his inspiration. Wolfe seemed particularly taken with that earlier work’s subtitle--A Novel Without a Hero--which he took to be a perfect characterization for the story that he himself wanted to tell. He even went so far as to arrange to have his work published in serial form in a show more magazine (Rolling Stone in Wolfe’s case), just as Thackeray did with his magnum opus a century and a half before. There can hardly be higher praise than that for one author to give to another.

Vanity Fair itself owes a considerable debt to a classic work that preceded it by 150 years, John Bunyan’s The Pilgrim’s Progress. In that religious allegory, a person on the path to Heaven first had to pass through the town of Vanity in which there was a fair that appealed to all the basest traits of humanity: greed, infidelity, deceit, avarice, envy, duplicity, and so on. Thackeray saw this as an apt metaphor for his story of the state of English society at the time of the Napoleonic Wars and the dawn of the Victorian Age. In fact, the frame that begins and ends Vanity Fair has two young girls putting on a puppet show during which all of the action in the book takes place. Toward the end of the novel, the author even reveals himself to be the narrator of the tale, and a most unreliable one at that.

If that level of historical detail is not absolutely necessary to summarize Vanity Fair, it is perhaps useful context for a prospective reader to understand what taking on this tome will entail. Because, make no mistake, this book requires a significant investment of time and attention to get through it to the end. It is indeed a meandering and occasionally sprawling tale, written in the style of a time far removed from what the modern audience is used to. But it is also remarkably observant about the human condition as well as wickedly funny; those two things alone make reading it today well worthwhile. Further, in the character of Becky Sharp, Thackeray has created an anti-heroine for the ages—with her resilient and scheming nature, she could hold her own now just as well as she did back then.

How the specific events in the story transpire is not the most important thing about the novel, serving as they do as the backdrop for the societal skewering that was the author’s true purpose. In short, Becky comes from an impoverished background in a culture where that is a serious impediment to advancement. Her school friend Amelia Sedley is from a well-to-do family, but she herself is a rather simple and unambitious girl. Both of these friends enter into disappointing marriages, Becky to a rich but rough-hewn fellow whose family disapproves of her while Amelia devotes herself to a philandering cad and ignores the less-dashing colleague who truly loves her. When Amelia’s family falls on hard economic times, it sets off chain of events that takes several hundred pages to unfold. In those pages, though, there is some real literary gold as Thackeray uses his razor-honed wit and gentle word play to expose a multitude of vanities and foibles as he saw them. I certainly can recommend this book, but only for those who understand what they are getting into first! show less

This novel makes example of Becky's story as a demonstration that she can be the more interesting character versus Amelia; that is, that a reader will be most intrigued by whichever character is most active and eventful, rather than merely the most moral. If this helped widen the door to authors introducing more wicked protagonists in future, so much the better. Charlotte Bronte deeply admired this work and author, so I wonder how she didn't see this parallel with her sister Emily's show more "Wuthering Heights" which only seemed to trouble her.

Perhaps the humour is the difference. Vanity Fair is almost entirely filled with unlikeable characters (Captain Dobbin is the reader's life preserver in this morass, and Amelia to a lesser extent), but at least we can laugh at them, and the author acknowledges their faults by inserting some amusing commentary, ostensibly in their defence. His base argument is that such is life, and only a fool would expect nothing but Amelia to represent the real world around us. We do get a handful of more serious interludes, centred on war and death. I found Mr. Osbourne strangely sympathetic (when he wasn't encouraging his grandson to be a bully). Thackeray can be poignant when he isn't purposely undermining it.

PS - I'm mildly sorry I didn't read Tom Jones prior to this, since Thackeray apparently borrowed much from Henry Fielding's authorial style; and here I'd thought the name Vanity Fair was Thackeray's invention, but discover he rented it from "Pilgrim's Progress" and that society by Thackeray's time had already embraced it as an expression to encompass our world entire. show less