Tom Jones concluded

Finished Tom Jones today. There was one bit that reminded me of Wodehouse, of all things, where Tom has to get out of a romantic entanglement. The solution is for him to propose marriage, knowing that the woman will reject it. Of course, in a Wodehouse story this wouldn't have worked; in Tom Jones it sort of does.

We start book 17 at Tom's lowest point, almost. He's in jail for murder, Sophia hates him (and is about to be married against her will), and he's about to find out that he's committed incest. Fielding then has a chapter which essentially says, "Things are really black for our hero, and there's pretty much no way out, since I've promised you not to use a deus ex machina." Of course, we know that things will work out, since this is a comedy, and so we know that Fielding is toying with us when he says that we may as well stop reading now, since he'll probably just have Tom killed off.

Fielding then concludes with about a dozen sudden revelations--Allworthy realizes that Tom always esteemed him, Sophie learns the truth of Tom's engagement, Tom learns that he is not actually on trial for murder, and we the readers finally learn who Tom's parents actually were.
It's easy to mock this style of resolution now--it became a staple of Dickens' fiction, along with other Victorian novelists. But I wonder what Fielding's audience thought at the time. For that matter, I wonder what Fielding intended--he's promised us no deus ex machina (which promise he literally keeps, but certainly not the spirit), but he also says that his last book (with all its resolutions) is very serious, that he doesn't have time in it for the raillery of the previous books. And yet, this is arguably the most comic book of the whole work, in the old-fashioned sense, where comic means a happy ending.

Again and again, Fielding affects to present a history--he calls it a history, he tells us that he can't know certain things, and so on. At the same time, he also subverts the realism of the book with his commentary on the action--when he says that he's now put his hero in an impossible position, and that he (Fielding) can't possibly get him (Jones) out of trouble, he's reminding us that Fielding is the omnipotent author, who can in fact do whatever he wants.

Tom Jones, Girl Genius, Harry Potter, Tintin, Cold Shoulder Road

Whew! That's a lot of titles.

I just finished reading Cold Shoulder Road to the little guys. Joan Aiken writes wonderful dialog--I love the way different characters use different dialects, and you can practically hear their voices. I wasn't so thrilled with the deus ex machina near the end, where it turns out that de la Twite was wearing radioactive stones (or some such thing). Which seems odd to say, considering that just about every book in the series has some sort of deus ex... But I think it's because the others tended to be Dickensian (kids have lockets which just happen to tie them to the Duke, which is exposed at just the right time, that sort of thing), which fit in perfectly with the setting. This just came out of nowhere. Still an excellent book, though.

I just finished reading The Crab with the Golden Claws to the littlest guy. Lots of fun. I think Herge really hit his stride in the book before this one (King Ottokar's Sceptre). There's a lot less herky-jerkiness in the plot, although you can still tell it was written for the newspapers. But Herge was obviously at the point where he could get away with occasional sections that don't have a cliff-hanger or punch-line -- they just move the story along -- and that helps with the pacing. We're now reading The Shooting Star, which isn't one of my favorites; I think it feels like Herge changed his mind about what kind of story it was several times, and it really shows.

Speaking of comics, but for adults, I'm up to book 5 of Girl Genius. Not much to say about it, though, except that the art at the beginning seems sloppy. But halfway through, Foglio seems to have settled down. Fortunately the writing is top-notch all the way through so far.

I was really tired last night, so Tom Jones was a stretch. (Book 13 starts with a long invocation of the muse, which is very funny, but not so easy to read). So I started on the last Harry Potter book. I'm about 100 pages in, and it's feeling a bit stop-and-go. 4 chapters go by where nothing happens, there's a big set-piece where Harry leaves the Dursley's house, and then nothing happens again for a couple of chapters. I'm hoping the pace evens out a bit as the book picks up speed.

Today though, I jumped back into Tom Jones. I love how consistently surprising Fielding can be. The invocation of the muse of avarice came out of nowhere, and was very funny. Then we get the story of Nightingale and Miss Miller. I first expected Nightingale to abandon Miss Miller completely, but Tom convinces him to come back, while he (Tom) talks to Nightingale, Sr. Then I was expecting Tom to be a persuasive orator, but that didn't happen either--Nightingale Sr insists that his son break off the marriage to Miller. But his brother interrupts, and says that a good marriage is more important than money, and I'm thinking the brother will help Nightingale marry Miss Miller. Then it turns out that the brother decides to dissuade Nightingale from the marriage as well--he had been under the misapprehension that they were already married, and was trying to make the best of a bad situation.

None of these developments are surprising in a bad way--they're all consistent with the characters, and each seems logical in retrospect, which makes for some fun reading, and leaves the reader up in the air what'll happen; although this is a broadly funny book, not every character comes out well. In fact, Fielding points out in one of his introductory chapters that the idea that virtuous characters end up well is an absurdly naive idea; since he intends to write a true-to-life novel, he can't have that happen in his novel either.

More Tom Jones

This is just an insanely long book, I suppose. I finished Book 12, and I'm going to take a break with some lighter fare while I'm in New York, then finish the whole shebang.

Thanks to all the political set pieces, I think I know more about the Jacobites than I wanted to know. It's certainly a different point-of-view than what you find in, say, the Willoughby Chase books, which are very anti-Hanoverian. It's just a bit bizarre--the plot's moving along at a good clip, and then everything stops dead while Fielding talks about what idiots the Jacobites are. Then it moves along again.

Of course, as we see in the intro to this book, Fielding kinda-sorta condones jumping around anyway--he writes that he knows it happens, and his goal is to write a book that's entertaining enough that people don't skip around in it.

Tom Jones cont'd

Yesterday, I said I couldn't see what the misanthrope (the man on the Hill) did for the story, but maybe I would if I read further. So... I've read further, and I see that he's supposed to be a contrast to Tom, who likes people and enjoys keeping company with all sorts of people. But, for all that, the 5 chapters of the misanthrope's story don't really work for me.

Other than the fact that Tom disagrees with him, we don't really see him as wrong. He's not funny the way the other foils for Tom are. (Like Blifil, Thwackum, and Square). His story isn't particularly entertaining. So it still doesn't seem to me that the book would be the worse for his absence.

More Girl Genius, Tom Jones

I finished books 1-4 of Girl Genius. Nothing much to say about, except that it's very funny. Also, on a rapid read-through like this, you start to see how much foreshadowing he's put into the book, which can be hard when the individual issues are months apart.

I'm in book 8 of Tom Jones, where Jones meets an old misanthrope (so the text calls him), who gives a long story about his past life of running away from home, becoming a criminal, and reforming. My edition suggests that this section is important, being placed almost at the center of the novel, but I don't really see how--it seems to me one of the weakest sections of the book, and I wish Fielding had left it out. Maybe it'll be clearer to me as I read more.

Tom Jones, Girl Genius, Iliad

Today, I got through l. 180 of bk 13 of the Iliad, but I don't have much to say about it.

I also read part of Book 2 of Girl Genius, by Phil Foglio. He has this wonderful ability to capture expressions through very simple linework that I really enjoy. In that way, he's a lot like Jeff Smith, where you can have whole pages carried solely by the characters' changing expressions, no need for dialog.

I'm also plugging away at Fielding's Tom Jones -- into Book 7 now. It's a very funny book, which I wasn't particularly expecting (I started reading it because I've heard it's a big influence on Tristram Shandy, which I love; but I didn't know anything else about it). It's also making me a bit curious about the history of marrying for romantic love. Sophia Western, Tom's main love interest, is blocked from marrying her because her father and aunt consider him too far beneath their family. Normally, we can assume that every position they take is diametrically opposed to Fielding's own position.

But Tom's foster father (Squire Allworthy) also feels that the Westerns are too far above Tom, and just about every one of his opinions is correct (as his none-too-subtly points out). His one big fault is that he's too trusting of Blifil, his nephew, and that in general he's more inclined to give the benefit of the doubt. But this doesn't really fall into this category.

Of course, Fielding dodges the issue altogether, because it's pretty clear that Tom is actually of high birth, which is kind of a cheap way out.