Review: a century later, still quite amusing
Rating: 4 out of 5
Date: 04 21, 2013
Thirty years before Sinclair Lewis publishedBabbittand set the standard for smug, self-important middle-class conformity, there was The Diary of a Nobody and Charles Pooter. Pooter, a senior bank clerk in the City renting a home in a London suburb of Holloway, encapsulates Victorian respectability, snobbery, and pretensions. Pooter nearly invariably gets the short end of the stick in his interactions with his two neighbors, Cummings and Gowings; his spendthrift, reckless son Lupin; and the various tradesmen and servants he attempts to bully. Slavishly devoted to his employer, Mr. Perkupp, Pooter tries without much luck to cut his son into the same mold. Instead, Lupin slacks at work and spends his nights engaged in amateur theatrics or carousing with his chums till all hours. What's a father to do?First serialized in Punch in 1888 and 1889, The Diary of a Nobody was published in book form in 1892 and hasn't been out of print since. If you give this slim volume a chance (available for free in the Kindle format), you'll see why. Despite being a century old, The Diary of a Nobody remains quite amusing and is laugh-out-loud funny in parts -- particularly in sections dealing with tradesmen or with Lupin's impetuous business dealings or love affairs. As long as there are self-satisfied petit bourgeois snobs, The Diary of a Nobody will continue to entertain.