Through the generosity of the late Professor Benedict Anderson and Ajarn Charnvit Kasetsiri, the Thammasat University Library has newly acquired some important books of interest for students of Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN) studies, political science, sociology, and related fields.
They are part of a special bequest of over 2800 books from the personal scholarly library of Professor Benedict Anderson at Cornell University, in addition to the previous donation of books from the library of Professor Anderson at his home in Bangkok. These newly available items will be on the TU Library shelves for the benefit of our students and ajarns. They are shelved in the Charnvit Kasetsiri Room of the Pridi Banomyong Library, Tha Prachan campus.
Among them is a newly acquired book that should be useful to TU students who are interested in literature, cultural studies, English history, sociology, architecture, gender studies, and related subjects.
The Diary of a Nobody is an English comic novel written by the brothers George and Weedon Grossmith, with illustrations by the latter.
It first appeared in book form in 1892.
The Diary records the daily events in the lives of a London clerk, Charles Pooter, his wife Carrie, his son William Lupin, and friends and acquaintances.
The TU Library collection includes several books about different aspects of English humor.
To understand a foreign culture, it can help to understand what makes people laugh.
British humour carries a strong element of satire aimed at the absurdity of everyday life. Common themes include sarcasm, insults, taboo subjects, puns, and the British class system. Jokes are told about everything and almost no subject is off-limits, although recently, some people in the United Kingdom have become more sensitive to the feelings of others.
Most of the humor in The Diary of a Nobody derives from Charles Pooter’s unconscious and unwarranted sense of his own importance, and the frequency with which this delusion is punctured by minor social humiliations.
In an era of rising expectations within the lower-middle classes, the daily routines and modest ambitions described in the Diary were recognized by its contemporary readers, and provided later generations with a glimpse of the past.
The diary begins on 3 April of an unstated year, and runs for approximately 15 months. In a short prologue, readers are informed that Charles Pooter and his wife Caroline (Carrie) have just moved to a new home at Brickfield Terrace, Holloway.
Mr Pooter is a City of London clerk with Perkupp’s, possibly an accountancy or private banking firm.
The couple’s 20-year-old son William works as a bank clerk in Oldham.
The first entries describe the Pooters’ daily lives and introduce their friends, such as their neighbor Gowing and the enthusiastic bicyclist Cummings..
From the beginning, a pattern is set with the small problems of the Pooters’ daily lives recounted, many of them due to Pooter’s unconscious self-importance and pomposity.
Trouble with servants, tradesmen, and office juniors occur regularly, along with minor social embarrassments and humiliations.
By 1910, Diary of a Nobody was esteemed in London’s literary and political circles. In his essay “On People in Books”, published earlier that year, the writer and humorist Hilaire Belloc hailed it as “one of the half-dozen immortal achievements of our time … a glory for us all”.
The essayist Augustine Birrell wrote that he ranked Charles Pooter alongside Don Quixote as a comic literary figure.
The novelist Evelyn Waugh wrote in his 1930 essay “One Way to Immortality” that the Diary was “the funniest book in the world”. He added: “Nobody wants to read other people’s reflections on life and religion and politics, but the routine of their day, properly recorded, is always interesting, and will become more so as conditions change with the years”.
In his 1945 novel Brideshead Revisited, Waugh has Lady Marchmain comforting her family by reading aloud from the Diary “with her beautiful voice and great humour of expression”.
Another writer, J. B. Priestley, commented: “Poor Mr Pooter, with his simplicity, his timidity, his goodness of heart, is not simply a figure of fun but one of those innocent, lovable fools who are dear to the heart”.
In a 1943 essay, George Orwell considered the book an accurate account of English life in the 1880s.
In describing Pooter, he used the Don Quixote analogy but saw this English equivalent as a sentimentalized version of the original, one who “constantly suffers disasters brought upon him by his own folly”.
The English cartoonist Osbert Lancaster deemed it “a great work of art”.
The book begins with an introduction that establishes the slightly resentful, humorless, and stuffy tone of the narrator:
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INTRODUCTION BY MR. POOTER
Why should I not publish my diary? I have often seen reminiscences of people I have never even heard of, and I fail to see—because I do not happen to be a ‘Somebody’—why my diary should not be interesting. My only regret is that I did not commence it when I was a youth.
Charles Pooter.
The Laurels,
Brickfield Terrace,
Holloway.
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Mr. Pooter introduces the dull routine of his home life with great pride:
My dear wife Carrie and I have just been a week in our new house, “The Laurels,” Brickfield Terrace, Holloway—a nice six-roomed residence, not counting basement, with a front breakfast-parlour. We have a little front garden; and there is a flight of ten steps up to the front door, which, by-the-by, we keep locked with the chain up. Cummings, Gowing, and our other intimate friends always come to the little side entrance, which saves the servant the trouble of going up to the front door, thereby taking her from her work. We have a nice little back garden which runs down to the railway. We were rather afraid of the noise of the trains at first, but the landlord said we should not notice them after a bit, and took £2 off the rent. He was certainly right; and beyond the cracking of the garden wall at the bottom, we have suffered no inconvenience.
After my work in the City, I like to be at home. What’s the good of a home, if you are never in it? “Home, Sweet Home,” that’s my motto. I am always in of an evening. Our old friend Gowing may drop in without ceremony; so may Cummings, who lives opposite. My dear wife Caroline and I are pleased to see them, if they like to drop in on us. But Carrie and I can manage to pass our evenings together without friends. There is always something to be done: a tin-tack here, a Venetian blind to put straight, a fan to nail up, or part of a carpet to nail down—all of which I can do with my pipe in my mouth; while Carrie is not above putting a button on a shirt, mending a pillow-case, or practising the “Sylvia Gavotte” on our new cottage piano […] It is also a great comfort to us to know that our boy Willie is getting on so well in the Bank at Oldham. We should like to see more of him. Now for my diary:—
(All images courtesy of Wikimedia Commons)