The Way We Live Now

The Way We Live Now, Anthony Trollope

HOW I GOT IT: Over the holidays, I read a NY Times book review that referenced not only a great Victorian, but named this novel as one of his finest. (Out of 47 novels, that says a lot.) What really sent me to Barnes and Noble to devote some of my gifted plastic to it was that it was similar in topic to something I was working on at the time. Therefore it was also that all-powerful writerly conviction, which gets me every time.

A quick note, I will link to the exact edition of the book I am reading, when available. A discrepancy will be otherwise noted. Yes, I purchased a B&N paperback edition. This line of classics is well edited and enriched with useful scholarship. Are you kidding me? These are the guys who released Leaves of Grass with First Edition and Death-bed Edition together between two covers in case a curious reader, like myself, is interested in the zeitgeist of 1855, but might also wish to read "O Captain! My Captain!" in the same sitting. This kind of consideration from a category killer??

I've crossed the halfway mark and hope to complete by the weekend.

HOW IT WAS: Clairvoyant in theme, turgid in plot. Compared to the much earlier and concise The Warden (the only other Trollope I've read), characters are multitudinous, yet calcitrant. Waiting to see what big decisions each person makes, they never startle with cleverness or cunning. They simply continue to be themselves. And yet this malaise is the novel's intended achievement, for better or worse. It is a tragedy wherein every delusional character is knocked down a peg or two, toward less delusion and a thinner wallet. The few exceptions to this formula are, once emancipated, never seen to their end, even in these reams of paper devoted to their murky situations. How do we know if a particular heroine thrives in the New World or gets cut down by train robbers on her way out there? Again, that's really not the point.

Not to say that wit and comical circumstances are missing from the Trollope prose. Observations abound, many as if stolen from today's headlines. The high society of London is enraptured by the empty promises of America's railroad bubble, in the form of the South Central Pacific and Mexican railway - and by its primary shareholder, Augustus Melmotte, a man of dubious origin, means and intentions. He is a Gatsby of sorts, having entirely invented himself from rags. And though few of the city's big players buy his story, they can't help but join him in society and commerce.

In the way that Melmotte is heavily shrouded, so is near the remainder of the dramitis personae. Each attempts to elevate one's facade beyond their intrinsic structure in the name of opportunism. "Men (and the ladies, too) reconcile themselves to swindling." To Trollope, each character is "a swimmer...conscious of his skill and confident in his strength [until] he begins to feel that the shore is receding from him...that there is peril where before he had contemplated no danger." Essentially, they all bite off more than they can chew.

In Trollope's England we are also treated to that prototypical, bias-laden press that today's blogs get constantly compared to. When the Trumpian Melmotte asserts political aspirations, he is laid under the microscope of conservative and progressive papers alike. Calling it a "sign of the times," Melmotte exclaims: "They'll want before long to know where I have my clothes made, and who measure me for my boots." (They were actually speculating about his religious affiliations.)

I look forward to reading Trollope's two major cycles, Barsetshire and Palliser. With so many great books I've read, and for the achievement of The Warden, the first of his Barsetshire novels, I have to say that the time put in just barely outweighs the entertainment gained. But there are some really great LOLs.