Oliver Goldsmith (1730–1774)

4.5*
2020 reread - just what I needed today!
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2016 reread:
I still think that this play needs to be seen to fully appreciate it but I liked this audiobook recording of a live performance. It was easier to listen to this time (I have had more practice!) and thus I found it even funnier than when I heard it a few years ago.
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May 2014 review
4.5 stars. This full cast audiobook was a fun way to revisit one of my favorite Restoration comedies. However, I did find that some of the humor was a bit harder to visualize listening rather than reading.… (more)

I was a bit surprised to learn that there was a debate over whether or not this 1766 Goldsmith novel is a satire. I think if it is read as anything other than a satire, its import is lost. The humor hidden just beneath the surface is the only thing I can imagine would have garnered it its popularity or held its recognition over the years. It was very popular in the 19th Century and has reportedly influenced many writers.

The Vicar is a sanguine character, who grabs the silver lining from cloud after cloud. He’d tell you that glass is half full and then say it was more than one body needed and give part of it away to his fellow man. He seems a little naive with today’s vision, but he cares far more about honor and integrity than money or position, and we could use a few more of his ilk, I think.

Goldsmith made me laugh more than once with his dry humor, i.e.

However, when any one of our relations was found to be a person of very bad character, a troublesome guest, or one we desired to get rid of, upon his leaving my house, I ever took care to lend him a riding coat, or a pair of boots, or sometimes a horse of small value, and I always had the satisfaction of finding he never came back to return them.

Or, in a longer passage, one of the characters embarks to Holland where he means to earn his living by teaching English to the Dutch. I addressed myself therefore to two or three of those I met whose appearance seemed most promising but it was impossible to make ourselves mutually understood. It was not till this very moment I recollected, that in order to teach Dutchmen English, it was necessary that they should first teach me Dutch. How I came to overlook so obvious an objection, is to me amazing; but certain it is I overlooked it.

Tell me you didn’t nod a little and smile.

The plot is thin and full of cliches. In a modern writer, I would toss it out the window, but somehow its date and language make it very palatable. There is some sermonizing (what would you expect from a book written in the 1700s?), but again, I didn’t find it objectionable and actually thought many of his ideas well ahead of his time. He pressed for reform efforts instead of punishment for minor crimes and decried a system in which two crimes, dissimilar in nature, such as murder and theft, often received the same punishment, death by hanging.

But a contract that is false between two men, is equally so between an hundred, or an hundred thousand; for as ten millions of circles can never make a square, so the united voice of myriads cannot lend the smallest foundation to falsehood.

I was struck by the wisdom of that statement and how it applies, perhaps even more, to us in this day of mass media. The truth can be buried beneath so many lies that it seems to disappear, but the lies will never be the truth, no matter how many times they are repeated.

I found this book easy to read and mostly fun to watch unfold. It was pretty predictable, but that is because subsequent authors have used the same intrigues since. I caught glimpses of Charles Dickens and Victor Hugo and Alexandre Dumas, and had to remind myself that Goldsmith predated them all.… (more)