In her biography of Joseph Conrad, Jocelyn Baines notes that “two men more different in outlook and temperament could scarcely be conceived” than Joseph Conrad and H.G. Wells. For Conrad, artistic considerations were paramount in his writing, while Wells always considered himself a journalist, and favoured science above the arts. Conrad told Wells that the difference between them was fundamental:“You don’t care for humanity but think they are to be improved. I love humanity but know they are not.” However Conrad was to dedicate The Secret Agent to Wells, and Wells included Conrad in Tono-Bungay as the Ukrainian Captain of the Maud Mary during the strangely Conradian ‘quap’ expedition. Each of these novels deals significantly with science and technology, sharing a particular concern with man’s use and abuse of them. Wells and Conrad may have had differing views on the importance of art as compared with science, however in this review I will argue that the conclusions drawn by The Secret Agent and Tono-Bungay with regard to science and technology are remarkably similar.tThroughout The Secret Agent, science and technology are used with terrible consequences. The novel is full of science – Conrad even uses a scientific analogy for the development of the idea for The Secret Agent:“…then ensued in my mind what a student of chemistry would best understand from the analogy of the addition of the tiniest little drop of the right kind, precipitating the process of crystallization in a test tube containing some colourless solution.” The novel was conceived scientifically, and considerations of science are inherent within the society with which it presents us. Science is popular above everything else, even replacing religion and royalty in the public consciousness, as Vladimir, of the (we suppose) Russian Embassy, tells us:“The fetish of today is neither royalty nor religion. Therefore the palace and the church should be left alone…The sacrosanct fetish of today is science” Only an attack on science, then, will truly shock people. Even the anarchists, who claim to reject society and all its values, share the middle class science fetish, so that Ossipon cannot but categorise the bomb attempt on the Greenwich Observatory as “nothing short of criminal” .tSo it is that, with the figure of Vladimir looming behind him, Verloc forms the plan to blow up astronomy in the shape of the Greenwich Observatory. He will use technology to destroy science. The difference between these two essentially human constructions is an important one, for as Haynes points out:“The combination of both procedures in a fruitful partnership is peculiar to modern societies.” Whereas science can be seen as man’s attempt to understand the workings of the universe, technology is his attempt to exert greater control over it. Scientific discovery often leads to greater technological potential, which in turn enables further discovery. In The Secret Agent, this process is disrupted. Corrupt man has misused his scientific discoveries to create deadly technologies, which in turn bring the destruction of man. This impression could not be stronger than in the descriptions of Stevie when he has been blown to pieces. A man made technology has obliterated a man. Stevie is reduced from an individual with an identity at one moment, to a grotesque mess of inert, lifeless material the next.tScience has been misused by man, with appalling consequences. The Secret Agent demonstrates that a misinterpretation of science can lead to equally destructive consequences. Comrade Ossipon, also known as the Doctor, is a scientific materialist with a medical background. However he does not use this background to heal a society which is clearly sick. He only brings destruction. He regards Stevie not as an individual, but as an interesting example - a sort of medical case study. His belief in dubious phrenological theories enables him to justify his treatment of Winnie in his own mind. To him she is “...the sister of a degenerate, a degenerate herself – of a murdering type.” This misunderstanding of science drives Ossipon to abandon Winnie on the train, and to her subsequent suicide. Science has enabled Ossipon to detach himself from the personal, and to treat individuals with a kind of objectivity. This objectivity, when it is based on a scientific misunderstanding, becomes fatal.tThe most deadly abuser of science and technology in the novel, however, must be the creator of the bomb himself – the Professor. The Professor “is the embodiment of all that is anti-social and destructive” . He exerts his power constantly by making himself deadly, through the India rubber ball that is always in his grasp. His aim is to invent the perfect detonator – both literally and metaphorically. As well as wanting to be able to blow himself up in “all conditions of action” , he wants to detonate and destroy society. He wants to go further than using technology to destroy science. He wants violently to destroy society altogether. Like Michaelis and Wells, he wants to organise society on scientific grounds, however his almost Nietzschean view of the future is a terrible one. His world view is based on extreme biological fascism, in which the weak are wiped out entirely, while the strong live on. He is bitter at a society that has let him down. He has failed as a scientist, and now he will use science to destroy the society that has destroyed him. This is the figure that walks into the future as the sole survivor of The Secret Agent. tIn Tono-Bungay, Wells also highlights the dangers of corrupted science and technology. Wells hated the idea of waste. He wanted a society run with the utmost efficiency on scientific grounds. As a student of T.H Huxley at the Normal School of Science, South Kensington, Wells developed a strong interest in evolutionary theory, which became central to his notion that man has been formed by his environment, and must in turn form his environment by the effective use of science. In Tono-Bungay, waste is everywhere:“waste and inefficiency in domestic arrangements, the waste of natural resources, the wasted potential of men and women unable to make their full contribution to society…or those who…pervert their talents to ill effect; waste in personal relationships and in international relations, culminating in the immense waste of every kind involved in a world war.” Those who pervert their talents to ill effect are responsible for the waste in Tono-Bungay. Edward and George Ponderevo do not use their scientific knowledge for the overall good of society, but for their own selfish motives. The events of the novel are based around a financial empire built upon a patent medicine that is actually harmful, and Tono-Bungay sells because society is ripe for it. Bodily sickness means that people feel the need for such patent medicines, while mental sickness means that society is easily persuaded by emotive adverts to buy what it does not need. According to James:“Tono-Bungay is a false compensation for bodily deficiency, called into existence not by a need but by a desire, the unfulfillable desire for unattainable perfect health. Patent medicine is the perfect model for modern consumption: advertising creates the illusion of an internal lack, a deficit, that only the product can fill.” For George Ponderevo science is inextricably linked with truth , yet the novel highlights the reason that science can and should never be regarded as a synonym for truth – the human factor. Science is a human construction – it is the human attempt to discover the laws of nature and the workings of the universe – there must therefore be human interpretation in any scientific analysis. The subjective human mind subverts science, which is supposedly objective. At best this leads to misunderstanding, misinterpretation and error. At worst, as in Tono-Bungay, it leads to corruption, waste and destruction. In Tono-Bungay the human is at its worst. Even when George believes that he is being creative in his use of science for technological pursuits he is being destructive: he nearly kills himself, and then Beatrice Normandy, during his flying experiments, and it is during his blimp flight with his uncle (this in itself an attempt to use science to help a criminal to escape justice) that Edward catches the pneumonia that kills him. It may seem that George’s experimentations in powered flight offer some vision of hope in to notion that science can be used creatively; however it is hard to think of a development in the last century that has been responsible for more destruction than that of powered flight - the Blitz, the fire-bombing of Dresden, Hiroshima, Nagasaki and September 11th immediately spring to mind. tAs in The Secret Agent, the scientist does not come well out of Tono-Bungay. He comes across as the sort of man who, like George Ponderevo, will murder in cold blood to protect the plundering of a radioactive, cancerous substance in an attempt to save a fraudulent and corrupt financial empire. The final note of warning regarding man’s abuse of science is the vision of George Ponderevo, his uncle’s empire having collapsed, cruising out to sea on X2 (also an ingredient used by the Professor in the bomb that blows up Stevie), the destroyer that he has designed and will sell to the highest bidder. Given that Tono-Bungay was published in 1909, this cannot but bring to mind the naval race that helped to precipitate the First World War. As Wagar puts it:“…if the path into the future is furrowed by a weapon of war, may not the end result be catastrophe?” tThe societies with which we are presented by Tono-Bungay and The Secret Agent, then, are societies in which science is fetishised. It has replaced royalty and religion in terms of public interest, and so has pushed them out of society. We are therefore left with a world in which morality has broken down. There is no moral law giver because value is no longer put on religion. These are societies in which “God is dead” in the Nietzschean sense.tAs I have mentioned, Wells believed that man can and must start to form his environment, having so far been formed by it. His belief that this was possible meant that in practice Wells had to reject the deterministic world view which in theory he could not. He believed that morally it is necessary to assert man’s free will, because only then will we take responsibility for our actions and start to form our environment. The Englands presented by The Secret Agent and Tono-Bungay frustrate this belief. Morality has broken down, and we must accept the reality – that in a Godless world all human actions are determined. We are the products of millions and millions of years of evolution, and we will continue to be subject to this process. Every human body and mind, and therefore every action and characteristic, is a direct result of this process. Life itself has only come about because it is the most efficient way for replication (of genes, not of living beings) to occur, and genes are selfish . In a society in which God is dead, morality is a purely human construction, itself a result of the evolutionary process. In this sense it is only relevant in the human imagination, and seen in any wider context has an immense arbitrariness. If all our behaviour is determined, we lose our status as free moral agents and (at least in the Kantian sense), all moral rights.tIn this context the notion of abusing science or technology becomes meaningless, as there is no objective and external law which says that science and technology should be used one way rather than another. Men like the Professor therefore become morally blameless. Frederick R. Karl identifies the Professor as Nietzsche’s Übermensch. He has made himself powerful, and believes that the weak must be destroyed. This sort of biological fascism, or social Darwinism, is in fact remarkably similar to Wells’s view that the individual is only valuable in so far as he contributes to the good of society:“…in his scheme, the individual can attain to a kind of immortality by subordinating himself to the race.” This kind of talk can lead to ideas of biological rights and wrongs, and, as the events of the twentieth century have shown, can become incredibly dangerous. tIn fact Nietzsche would probably have been disgusted by the anti-social, bitter, physically pathetic figure of the Professor. Nietzsche wanted his morality (often mistakenly regarded as amorality) to be life affirming, however the Professor affirms nothing but destruction. Nevertheless, in the society in which he operates, the Professor can be held up for neither praise nor blame, as there is no moral law. He is not the Übermensch, but no one is or can be – we are all just menschen.tWells believed, then, that humanity was to be improved, and that science and technology used in the right way could achieve this. Tono-Bungay and The Secret Agent suggest to me the more Conradian notion that man will not be improved. Bertrand Russell said of Conrad:“...he thought of civilized and morally tolerable human life as a dangerous walk on a thin crust of barely cooled lava which at any moment might break and let the unwary sink into the fiery depths.” Evolution is not a voluntary process – we can’t opt out and begin to form our own environment – and the human condition that it has brought about does not show any sign of improving. The elements of corruption and hypocrisy that are prominent throughout these novels really do exist in man, and will exist as long as man does. In a society in which the moral law has broken down, or in which it never meaningfully existed, human beings can only be judged by how well they perform what is ultimately their function – replication and the passing on of genes. In Tono-Bungay man even fails on this front:“What hope is there for a people whose women become fruitless?” What we are left with, then, at the end of each novel, is a vision of despair: George Ponderevo cruising out to sea in his destroyer, and the Professor striding out into “the odious multitude of mankind…like a pest in the street full of men.” Each of these men has misused science and technology in ways which bring about mass destruction, and there is no hope in either novel that men will not continue to do exactly this. BibliographyBaines, Jocelyn – Joseph Conrad: A Critical Biography (Weidenfeld and Nicolson, 1960)Berthoud, Jacques – Joseph Conrad: The Major Phase (Cambridge University Press, 1978)Bradbrook, M.C. – Joseph Conrad: Poland’s English Genius (Cambridge University Press, 1941)Conrad, Joseph – The Secret Agent (Penguin Popular Classics, 1994)Dawkins, Richard – The Selfish Gene (Oxford University Press, 1989)Hallam, Julia and Nickianne Moody (Eds.) – Consuming for Pleasure – Selected Essays on Popular Fiction (Media Critical and Creative Arts, Liverpool, 2000)Haynes, Roslynn D. – H.G. Wells: Discoverer of the Future, the Influence of Science on his Thought (New York University Press, New York and London, 1980)Karl, Frederick R – Joseph Conrad: The Three Lives, a Biography (Faber and Faber, London, 1979)Kemp, Peter – H.G. Wells and the Culminating Ape: Biological Imperatives and Imaginative Obsessions (Macmillan Press Ltd. 1996)Leavis, F.R – The Great Tradition (Chatto and Windus Ltd., London, 1955)Nietzsche, Friedrich – The Gay Science (Random House Inc., New York, 1974)Sherry, Norman (Ed.) – Conrad: The Critical Heritage (Routledge and Kegan Paul Ltd., London, 1973)Wagar, W. Warren – H.G. Wells: Traversing Time (Wesleyan University Press, Connecticut, 2004)Wells, H.G. – Tono-Bungay (Oxford World’s Classics, 1997)Wells, H.G. – Tono-Bungay (Penguin Classics, 2005)
I read Tono-Bungay for a class in college in 2001, and apparently liked it enough at the time to keep my copy of it, but when I started re-reading it, I didn’t really remember anything about it. As John Hammond says in his introduction to the book, it's the story of “a pragmatic narrator divided against himself whose theme is the slow decline and fragmentation of England.” The book is divided into four parts, centered around the narrator (George Ponderevo) and the Tono-Bungay of the title, which is a patent medicine that his uncle invents. So we get George’s life in “The Days before Tono-Bungay was Invented,” during “The Rise of Tono-Bungay" and "The Great Days of Tono-Bungay,” and in “The Aftermath of Tono-Bungay”: the fact that there’s a rise and an aftermath should tell you something about the arc of this story. The short version: George grows up as the son of a housekeeper at a big country house, but is sent away at age fourteen after he fights with a guest of the house who’s about his age. After a time with his mother’s poor and religious cousin, he ends up living with his aunt and uncle—this uncle is his father’s brother, who’s a pharmacist. His uncle goes bankrupt after some ill-advised stock speculations, but then invents Tono-Bungay (which he hires George to help him with) and quickly makes a lot of money and rises socially, and everything’s great until the business goes bad, at which point everything falls apart. I don’t remember what I liked about Tono-Bungay when I first read it, but my main feeling this time around was basically, “wow, I think I like my books to be a lot less idea-driven.” That theme mentioned in the introduction, “the slow decline and fragmentation of England”? There’s a lot of that. There’s a lot about the world of the English country house and its surrounding land and dependent village, and how that’s all going away. There’s a lot about shifts related to class and place, how London buildings built as single-family homes are badly converted and rented out, despite their lack of basic amenities like real kitchens. There’s a lot about the relations between men and women, what they’re like for the narrator and what he thinks they should be like. There’s a a bit about socialism, and capitalism, and a whole lot about the rise of an advertising-driven consumer culture.But the parts of the book that struck me most were the concrete descriptive bits, like when the narrator talks about going to live in London and being struck by its beauty by day:It shone, pale amber, blue-grey and tenderly spacious and fine under clear autumnal skies, a London of hugely handsome buildings and vistas and distances, a London of gardens and labyrinthine tall museums, of old trees and remote palaces and artificial waters. (91)or by night:And after the ordinary overcast day, after dull mornings, came twilight, and London lit up and became a thing of white and yellow and red jewels of light and wonderful floods of golden illumination and stupendous and unfathomable shadows — and there were no longer any mean or shabby people — but a great mysterious movement of unaccountable beings.... (92)I’m glad to have re-read this if only for the lovely set-piece just before the end of the book, in which George is going down the Thames for a test run in a warship he’s built, and describing the sight of London streaming past: St. Paul’s, the Tower, Greenwich, all the ships and activity of the port, and then the sea.
What do You think about Tono-Bungay (2005)?
only halfway through this one, but am loving it. once again a white male british protagonist (must read more women writers soon!), but the protagonist/author is incredible with writing descriptive detail. a great social commentary on class systems, industrialization in london, exploitation of the masses through marketing/advertising, etc. and an incredible vocabulary builder. SO many words i didn't know, but so well used i can discern their meaning contextually.update: as with most satire, i "got the point" and started to get bored with it. but that was well into the novel. i may lack patience.
—Scarlett
I could not get into this story. I thought the narrator was very detached from the whole purpose of the novel, which is supposed to be a satire, or at least a commentary on the British businessman. I don't think there are really any profound statements that occurred and it made me think that Wells was attempting to write literature in the style of his contemporaries and didn't quite measure up.I thought the romantic relationships were misplaced. They didn't seem to fit into plot well, almost like an afterthought to show the true nature of the narrator. The beginning was long, cumbersome, and didn't add much. Tono-Bungay would have worked well as a short story. It just seemed to keep going on and on and on. I wasn't impressed. I don't think it was like Dickens at all; these characters aren't particularly memorable, in fact it reminded me of the cumbersome "The Way of All Flesh" by Butler, but far less poetically written. I don't think it is a particularly great commentary, although the ending is depressing. Tono-Bungay has a hint of science fiction, but it seemed as if Wells was attempting to write something that he had a half-hearted interest in, which is reflected in George, whose emotional reflection is rather narrow. Simply compare this book to all the other British literature of the same time period and ask yourself, does it really measure up? After recently reading the Forsyte Saga, published not long after this, Tono-Bungay is exceedingly dull.
—Casey
Started last night. This is another rescued book from the town transfer station. Published by Duffield & Company, New York in 1923.Pretty entertaining so far. I'd never heard of this until recently. I guess it's not one of his better known books.- The Beatrice story seems a borrowing from "Great Expectations" and the overall tone is similar to "David Copperfield".- Wells seems to be a progressive - that RED!Sill moving along in this Copperfield-like story. It's very wordy and breezy. The description of the demise of George's first marriage is very nicely done. Very perceptive about young marriages...- eupeptic?!?! makes me wonder if HGW was trying to use George's word choices as a way of highlighting his sort of supercilious-serous demeanor.- Uncle Ponderevo goes Martha Stewart - in more ways than one!Finished up last night on a high note. Nothing boring about the endgame: Mordet Island, shipwreck, intense romance, crazy flight to France and the look back at England and the author/narrator's own life. This book is supposed to very pretty autobiographical and that seems accurate. HGW... no fan of capitalism, that's for sure!- George pursues Beatrice... he's dope! She loves him anyway but her "secret(s)" come out finally. - The trip to Mordet sounds a bit like Conrad.- What does the narrator mean by "destroyer" anyway? Seems like a low-profile, smallish experimental warship. Has to be low to go under all those bridges on the Thames doesn't it?- This seems to be HGW's "big statement" book.- Beatrice = another part for Keira Knightly!- The quap adventure - shades of Treasure Island...- 3.75* rounds up to 4*. My biggest quibble was with the writing style.I'm slowly getting near then end as the sag has dragged a bit for me. The aviation stuff and Beatrice come in to save the day but the main problem is that George just isn't a very interesting person. Kind of a stiff in fact... The language is off-putting as well. Sort of ponderous and stiff at times. If Jane Austen writing a hundred years earlier can be so readable why can't H. G.?- a bit of a realistic connection: Ben Gay was first known to me as Balm Bengue'. Also a sort of home-remedy and with a similar name.- Hah! A character named Scrymgeour. Same(almost as in Harry Potter). A tribute?- As the story goes on the "big" issues come up. Money-chasing for its own sake versus doing something more exalted and helpful to mankind. VERY timely these days...- George is beginning to resemble Howard Hughes - the aviator!
—Chris Gager
