Reason Read: Reading 1001, March botm
This is an odd book and it seems I’ve heard of this idea of putting the poor to work as beggars and I also know of Mac the Knife and enjoyed the music back in the day. A funny book to find on the 1001 list as this is a play/opera and not a novel. It is the story of Mac the Knife and the King of the Beggars coming together around a girl named Polly, Daughter of Peachem (the king of the beggars). A person can watch this on u tube. It is considered to also be Marxist and political. It has all of that but it is also a crime novel with an Dicksonian atmosphere. ( )

Plus another half star because actually I really loved it - but I put it down and I just can't pick it up again. There's just too much of it and I just don't have the impetus at the moment. It's a bit Dickensian - or perhaps a bit like I imagine Dickens ought to be (as I don't enjoy Dickens much) and it deals with economics and capitalism and stuff but not in a way I can engage. The characters are great but I don't need to know how the drama plays out. Maybe at another time in my life. ( )

Plus another half star because actually I really loved it - but I put it down and I just can't pick it up again. There's just too much of it and I just don't have the impetus at the moment. It's a bit Dickensian - or perhaps a bit like I imagine Dickens ought to be (as I don't enjoy Dickens much) and it deals with economics and capitalism and stuff but not in a way I can engage. The characters are great but I don't need to know how the drama plays out. Maybe at another time in my life. ( )

This was a strange one. I had no idea about any of the background to the novel at all, not even the play it’s based on, John Gay’s Beggar’s Opera. While the novel can be taken at face value as a tale of the business rivalries amid the slums of Victorian London, Brecht would not have us remain on the surface. It was important to him that the play he originally wrote, Threepenny Opera, and this subsequent novel should serve as a vehicle for his ideas about capitalism and its impact on the masses. In this regard, it has not lost its relevance to our lives.

The plot twists and turns around various characters and chiefly centres on the business rivals Peachum, Coax and Macheath. Each of these is pursuing his own method of developing capital: pimping beggars, trading commercial shipping and discount shops respectively. Each of these lives intertwines, not least due to the secret marriage of Macheath to Polly, the daughter of Peachum.

Now, I don’t for a minute claim to understand economics and how trade achieves capital. I found quite a bit of the business discussions hard to follow. But never once did I feel that made me want to stop reading. Brecht has built on Gay’s characters to create vivid portrayals of archetypal capitalists.

And that’s why the novel is so relevant today. It has a lot to teach us about how a focus on capital can mean people are reduced to the simple status of drones who generate profit. Had this been written only recently, it would not be hard to imagine individuals today who these characters would be based upon. Foxconn and Amazon came to mind.

Some might argue, correctly, that this is Marxist ideology. That, of course, doesn’t make it irrelevant per se. If anyone wants to attempt to convince me that this element of Marx is somehow irrelevant to issues we face in 21st century society, please do. Threepenny Novel is a brilliant illustration of how “the love of money is the root of all kinds of evil. And some people, craving money, have… pierced themselves with many sorrows.” (1 Timothy 6:10)

It’s a desperate narrative which ends with an imagined trial of humanity by the dead which results in all round condemnation for the exploitation we depend on to further our lifestyles. Again, the relevance is resounding and I can’t understand why a novel like this, with very real historical significance, was removed from the 1001 Books list in favour of banality like The Marriage Plot. ( )

A disturbing novel based on the business dealings of Peachum and Macheath, unscrupulous businessmen from Victorian London. Peachum runs a business outfitting individuals who rent clothing, props, and locations for begging. Macheath rents out bargain basement stores to would be entrepreneurs who he then supplies with stolen goods from other cities. Peachum is satisfied with his lot but Macneath yearns for bigger things and eventually branches into buying dilapidated ships to sell to the British government to move troops to South Africa for the Boer War. Peachum is brought into the business but both run into financial trouble when a competitor arrives. Macneath, through nefarious means, gains control of the competitor’s bank and manages to wiggle both himself and Peachum, his father-in-law, free of disaster, but cannot help the small entrepreneurs out of the financial disaster that befalls. The cutthroat world of big business at the expense of the small shop owner is laid bare for all to see. The use of the Biblical parable of the three servants left to look after their master’s investment is used to chilling effect by a religious figure to rationalize the lack of sympathy to failed shop keepers. Jesus would cry at this perverse use of His parable. ( )