Customer Reviews

The Way of All Flesh

5 star:		(8)
4 star:		(5)
3 star:		(7)
2 star:		(4)
1 star:		(2)

 

 

It's a hoot to read the clipped, sullen dismissals of this book by readers from Topeka to Boston. They obviously hate Butler's novel, and for good reason: the mealymouthed, Christian, moneygrubbing Victorian family on which he spits with such accuracy moved west in the course of the twentieth century. It is now only rarely to be found in England; its true home is...Topeka...and Boston...and a thousand other American whited sepulchres. One reviewer whines that this is the "irrelevant" story of "an average middle-class man from an average middle-class family." What an interesting form of "irrelevance"!

In fact, the novel is brilliant and has endured surprisingly well. To see its relevance, all you need do is move its setting 3.000 miles to the West.

I read this book after reading all the reviews on Amazon not knowing what to expect: Incredibly boring or amazing insightful? I have read many books written in that same time period. I believe this to be the most mature work to come out of England in the late 19th Century(although it was published later). I enjoy Dickens, Hardy, and Eliot very much, but Butler makes their works look like grocery store fiction. I can see how many people might be bored if they were expecting a great story. While the story is excellent, it is more a book about ideas. Butler uses his hero to voice his commentary on Victorian ideals. Most of it is still very relevant today, though. I think it will be most relevant for people that have been exposed to the religious right wing who still hold many Victorian values. I enjoyed the characters and the story was compelling. There are many beautiful passages. It was very funny at times and somewhat sarcastic. The narrator reminded me of Hemmingway born 50 years earlier in England. What impressed me the most was Butler's modern style of writing. Much less wordy than Dickens. Dickens would have taken 800 pages to express the same thoughts. I also felt a real kindred to the main character Ernest. This is ultimately a coming of age book which most people will be able to relate to in one way or another (unless you haven't grown up yet). I would recommend it to all serious readers.

Self-deception is falsity in thinking and feeling, in ignoring common sense. It goes beyond mere falsehood in that the deceiver succeeds in convincing himself, not others, of a false reality by subordinating fragments of his own inner voice. He does this because he wishes to take charge of his own destiny without facing unpleasant facts. Parents, according to Samuel Butler, are chiefly responsible for creating the lack confidence that is at the root of self-deception by impressing their own insecurities, prejudices, and false sentiments in the characters of their offspring. Of Butler's dramatis personae, Theobald Pontifex, his wife Christina, and their son Ernest deceive themselves in turn. Overton, Ernest's godfather and the novel's narrator, offers a wry commentary on the disparities between who these characters really are and what they choose to believe about themselves. Each of the three practices his own form of self-deception--the parents irredeemably, the son eventually recovering his common sense at torturous emotional expense. Butler creates in Ernest a character that must recognize his own insincerity and that of others in order to achieve a measure of self-actualization. He does this so effectively that the book grows upon the reader, who grows with the character. As such, this is a must-read for all self deceivers. In short, for us all.

Somehow, "The Way of All Flesh" doesn't make it on to many lists of "the world's greatest novels." It certainly was not written with the superb artistry of Flaubert, true! But it soars high, high above the turgid inanities of Fyodor Dostoevsky.

There is a specific edition of this book which I love, and which can be found easily among used-book dealers. This edition was issued by The Heritage Press, and contains a remarkable introduction by Theodore Dreiser. The introduction is something which I have re-read many times. As a beginning, Dreiser recounts his interaction with an intelligent American engineer, aged about 40, who was looking for a book "with some meat to it." After long hesitation, and after compiling a list of some dozen books, Dreiser finally decided to recommend "The Way of All Flesh."

Six months later, he met the engineer by chance while strolling along a street in San Francisco, and the engineer immediately started praising the novel. "Now there is a book which is honest! I can't think of another book from its time which contains more honesty, and more direct dealing!"

And indeed, this may be the main thing working in favor of "The Way of All Flesh." Samuel Butler read Darwin, and became a believer in the theory of evolution. He was a penetrating observer of the cruelties of Victorian society, and of its hypocrisies. Few people will read this book without being able to remember this startlingly honest portrayal of a man who has just lost his wife, whom he did not love in the slightest:

"Theobald buried his face in his hands to conceal his want of emotion."

Oh, touche!

But other themes are extremely interesting: the idea of taking up a Christian vocation and going into the slums to dedicate your life to serving the poor -- it might work, but it might be a dreadful idea if you don't know what you're doing.

And how about the narrator's bald statement:

"I know of no better thing for a young man than an independent income." (!!) That sentiment is not going to sit well with the people who believe that only a lifetime of wage-slavery is worth living! But Samuel Butler spoke from experience: when he was in his twenties, he escaped to New Zealand and took up sheep-farming, of all things. But... he did WELL as a sheep-farmer, sold out five years later at a very nice profit, and cleared eight thousand pounds. He invested it at ten percent and therefore had an independent income of eight hundred pounds per year. He returned to London, rented an apartment, and devoted the rest of his life to his intellectual life: writing, painting, and music. He is well-known as the author of "Erewhon," as well as "The Way of All Flesh."

You should really take a look at this book. In some ways, it has shaped my life, in ways that sometimes surprise me. There's a lot of good, honest meat in this book -- and that's probably why it has been continuously in print for over a century, despite the fact that the academics pass over it in silence.

Extremely high recommendation!

"The Way of All Flesh" seems to be best known as the Victorian novel that thumbed its nose at Victorian novels. For this reason, it's frequently mentioned in talks of literary history, but I don't ever hear of anyone praising Samuel Butler's novel from an artistic perspective. Actually, I find the book more interesting for its story than for its place in the development of 19th and 20th century literature.

I tried to read this novel once and only got through the first 100 pages or so. I found it remarkably dull and dry, and the tone of the first-person narrator (Mr. Overton), who stops the action every 10 pages or so to offer personal asides that reveal more about him than about the characters he's writing about, I thought to be snide and irritating.

But I hate not finishing a book, so I picked it up again, this time understanding that it would be a dry read and prepared to appreciate it for its historical context. To my surprise, I found myself caught up in the story and thought the whole thing very funny. I can't believe I missed all the humour the first time through.

I hesitate to give this novel too much credit for deflating the pompous bubble of Victorian morality, because other authors writing at the same time as Butler were doing the same thing (Dickens for one can be incredibly caustic). But there is a maturity to Butler's writing that is not present in other Victorian writers. This novel feels much more modern than anything else written pre-1900, and even feels more modern than some books written after. Unlike Dickens, whose characters are either all good or all bad and have about as much depth as the characters you'd find in a comic book (this isn't a criticism--I like Dickens), Butler's characters (at least Ernest, his protagonist) seem very much alive and flawed. Ernest is easily influenced by everyone around him and makes decisions based on how he thinks he should act rather than how he wants to act. He doesn't know what he wants out of life, he's a screw up, he's got lousy luck. All of these things make him quite endearing because they make him so human. The scathing criticism of religious hypocrisy and moral bombast exhibited by the majority of people in Ernest's life can be funny, especially if you agree with it (as I do), but the story itself is much more interesting than the social commentary.

I would definitely recommend this book. It's not necessarily a page turner, but it consistently held my interest. Just remember that it's supposed to be funny. Think of Butler as a 19th century Evelyn Waugh, and you should do just fine.

A very important novel of the 19th Century. How it is included in the best novels of the 20th Century by the New York Times is beyond me. The book was begun more than 30 years before 1900. Although completed in 1872, it lay unpublished for nearly 30 years; presumably until such time as some of its anti-Victorian ideals would be more palatable to the British public.

The story principally centers around the life of Ernest Pontifex, an impreesionable and naive young man who is reared by devout Anglican parents. Their well meaning cruelty shelter Ernest and cause him to make bad decisions and derail his ambitions. As a result of the consequences of these bad decisions, Ernest learns to manage his own life and becomes a success despite his early failures.

Although important in its time, the novel is brutally slow.

Written in the 1870's and 1880's, "The Way of All Flesh" is a semi-autobiographical account of Samuel Butler's life as the son of a clergyman and his attempts to abandon the religious influence of his parents. The protagonist, Ernest Pontifex, is the oldest of three children of the rector of a small English town. His father, Theobald, beats and browbeats his children into learning their hymns while his mother, Christina, solemnly and unsympathetically condones the excessive discipline.

Ernest is not much of a scholar and shows a predilection for music (nothing more modern than Handel, though!), which his father deems a decadent waste of time. For lack of a better calling, he chooses to become a clergyman like his father and is ordained a deacon after completing Cambridge. As a young man, he runs into some misfortune: He gets suckered into giving much of his money to a smooth-talking charlatan named Pryer, a fellow theologian, to invest, and a turbulent encounter with a prostitute lands him a few months in jail. It is here that he decides a religious path is not for him, which is just as well since he has always chosen pragmatism over dogmatism. He becomes a tailor, but his business fails; he gets married, but his wife turns out to be a lush and a bigamist. If this indeed bears any resemblance to Butler's own life, I shake my head in pity.

The narrator is not Ernest himself but his godfather Edward Overton, a close friend of the Pontifex family. Butler probably thought such third-party commentary would provide a more valuable perspective, but it doesn't ring true for Overton to be privy to every single detail of Ernest's life which would not be so easily discovered or revealed. I was reminded of Serenus Zeitblom's obsequious and suspiciously clairvoyant biography of Adrian Leverkuhn in Thomas Mann's "Doctor Faustus." Speaking in general terms about the book, Butler is a good writer who peppers his prose with sly sarcasm and humorous observations to counteract its Victorian-style stodginess.

For a novel that has a reputation of deconstructing and satirizing the piety of Victorian society, "The Way of All Flesh" feels innocuous and tame; what could have been a fiery tirade against religious hypocrisy comes off more as a gentle prodding. For a satire to be successful, the target must be odious and obvious; the book's tone is too dull and soft to inspire the reader to hate the Pontifex family and the religious furor they represent. I respect Butler's motivation for writing this book and I wanted to symphathize with him, but I got nothing more out of it than a recounting of the irrelevant misadventures of an average man from an average middle class family.

This book just didn't stand up for me. The problem with social satires is that once the culture changes its hooks and barbs lose much of their rhetorical force. As accute as it must have been a hundred years ago, Butler's critique of 19th century English culture just isn't as relevant today as it was when it was first written, and so for me the book was a disappointment.
Nonetheless, Butler's insights and (often) insults on the nature of the parent-child relationship make the book eminently readable, and occasionally quite illuminating. And the glimpse into the struggle that went into making a man during that time of industrualization was similarly fascinating. The juxtaposition of the economic realities which faced a young man then versus now was, for me, the most interesting aspect of the novel.

The Way of All Flesh covers six generations of strife in the Pontifex family, and spans a period from 1750 to 1880. However, the bulk of the story concerns the life of Ernest Pontifex, from about age 5 up to age 28, and describes his unsatisfactory relations with his parents, his school, his church, his wife, and his friends. Sometimes we feel sorry for Ernest, because many of his problems are caused by unbelievably cruel or thoughtless people, and sometimes we're furious with him, because he himself is the author of at least half of his troubles, but either way his misfortunes make him stronger and move him steadily along the path to maturity. Throughout, the book remains an easy read, although the writing is very witty and often rewards close examination.

Even today, 100 years after the book's publication, a reader finds many things to identify with. Anyone who felt unjustly treated by his or her parents or teachers will find much to sympathize with here. Anyone who has wrestled with the conflict between Reason and Faith will find much to think about here. Given how much change the last century has seen, it's surprising how many of the issues still seem fresh and relevant, and the book definitely makes you think about them. It is easy to see how many people have described reading The Way of All Flesh as a turning point in their lives.

A point worth keeping in mind: the characters are all described from Ernest's point of view. Several clues tell us that Ernest exaggerates the cruelty of various characters - some of whom seem evil beyond belief, and I think it's quite clear that, at these points, we're supposed to smile at Ernest - not shake our heads at the author. This is most obvious with Ernest's schoolmaster, Dr. Skinner, whom Ernest consistently sees as a pompous fool, but who we also know is very popular with the best students, and who shows other signs of being a much better man than Ernest believes him to be.

The footnotes in my edition (Penguin Classics 1986) are very skimpy, focusing on comparing elements from Ernest's fictional life to Samuel Butler's real one. The failure of the notes to translate passages in French or Latin, or to explain very contemporary references, is inexcusable. (E.g. but for the recent controversy over his Beatification, we'd have no clue that "Pio Nono" was Pope Pius IX.) Hoggart's introduction (1966) is decent but a bit dated, not having weathered as well as the book itself!

Recommended as a classic, I found this book to be dry and uneventful as a book could be. I was only mildly captivated by the character of Ernest and the rest of his self-rightious family. This book is more of a psychology work than a novel.