The Unfortunate Traveller And Other Works (1972) - Plot & Excerpts
Thomas Nashe wrote no masterpieces. In the big leagues of English literature, he's a utility player among steroidal superstars. As a scrounging Elizabethan journalist, he turned out a few pamphlets, some pornographic verse, a novel and a play, before dying, in obscure circumstances, at thirty-four or so. Although he continues to hover around the fringes of the canon, almost nobody reads him but the odd scholar, and that's as it should be, I think. And yet, sentence for sentence, Nashe is one of the most outrageous stylists in the language. The editor of the Penguin miscellany compares him to the later, logomaniacal Joyce. Like Joyce, Nashe was an incorrigible show-off, clapping together Latinate nonce-words and mixing academic flimflam with the billingsgate of fishwives. For whole paragraphs at a time, he goes off on verbal spending sprees, seemingly intent on burning through the riches of the English language, while his ostensible subject, poor thing, sits at home darning socks. What saves him (sometimes) from empty virtuosity is his comic flair. He speaks of a certain kind of ‘small beer, that would make a man, with a carouse of a spoonful, run through an alphabet of faces’. Libeling an over-prolific rival, he invents a rumor that ‘an incubus in the likeness of an ink-bottle had carnal copulation with his mother when he was begotten.’ He imagines ravenous mice falling upon a cod-piece, ‘well-dunged and manured with grease, which my pinch-fart penny-father had retained from his bachelorship' (don't ask). Instead of saying that a bunch of old skinflints lived to regret their stinginess, he writes: ‘Those greybeard huddle-duddles and crusty cum-twangs were struck with such stinging remorse of their miserable euclionism and snudgery…’He's not always this much fun, however. His longer writings are shamelessly padded with second-hand narratives and medieval pseudo-scholarship. There are many passages of exuberant unintelligibility, duly footnoted with an editorial shrug. When Nashe is really humming, though, his combination of hilarious invective and pedantic tomfoolery is unlike anything else I've read.
I found this a bit rambling and difficult to get into but enjoyed it in the end and glad I persevered. It is what is known in the literary genre as a picaresque novel, which has the characteristics of being autobiographical, with the protagonist being a low character who skirts on the edge of criminality, a description of a series of loosely connected events, told humorously and often with satire, which reflect the nature of society at the time. Little wonder I found it rambling! The book is the story of Jack Wilton who travels to Europe fromEngland in the time of Henry VIII and describes his adventures in bawdy houses, with criminals and murtherers (yes that's the old English correct spelling). There are some graphic descriptions of torture, rape and murder and a scene where Jack is sold off to a doctor to be an anatomy specimen. Interestingly the picaresque style has had ongoing influence in literature, Mark Twain's Adventures of Huckleberry Finn being an example. Sergio Leone also notes his spaghetti westerns, in particular the good, the bad and the ugly as picaresque. This is book number 9 or 993, depending on where you start, in the 1001 books you must read before you die.
What do You think about The Unfortunate Traveller And Other Works (1972)?
It doesn't start off too badly. Jack Wilton is a con man, and he's surrounded by naive idiots. He runs into Erasmus and Thomas More.He ends up in Italy, starts hanging out with an Earl, ends up in jail where he seduces a rich lady, and then... Well, things get weird and offensive. There's rape, there's torture, there are executions. At some point, I lost track of who was who and just tried to finish the story.Certain parts of this book feel like they were cobbled together, and other parts were carefully crafted. Nashe has some clever lines: "Wept all my urine upward." That one is pretty good, right? I read this book as part of a little "history of the novel in English" project that I'm working on. The Unfortunate Traveller is one of the earliest novel-like-things in the English language. It is impressive to think of how far we have come.
—Lauren
It took me awhile to read as it was part of a collection of works and I read the entire book. I really enjoyed it and I'm glad that I joined the 1001 Books challenge as otherwise, I wouldn't have discovered this author. I enjoyed reading him - he was great at characterisation and you can see where Dickens was influenced. The Unfortunate Traveller itself is full of violence, but it is very much removed from our contemporary life so it doesn't jar too much. There are a lot of laugh out loud moments in his works - especially in Lenten Stuff. I really enjoyed his use of language although his circumlocutions annoyed me somewhat. He was very much a show-off but in a winning, artless way. His combat with Harvey is also very amusing. Overall, a fun author.
—Yrinsyde
The Unfortunate Traveller Thomas Nash������Said to be the first English novel this was written during the reign of Elizabeth the first and set in the reign of her father Henry VIII. Our narrator is a soldier in Henry's army Jack Wilton, while the title suggest misfortune befalls him from my point of view he went out and caused much of his own misfortune by his thoughtless, careless and misadvised actions.This would have been an interesting look into life in the reign of Henry VIII however I got too bogged down in the archaic language and the supposedly humourous episodes that failed to raise a smile and lost interest I struggled to the end of the book gaining little understanding or insight, this book would probably improve with a reread however I just dont care enough to put the time in and do it.
—Book Wormy
