Wie geht's?
I've seldom been so happy to finally finish a book. In fact I feel a bit giddy with the feeling (or that could be the two Export Ultra low carb lagers I've just had to celebrate).
Yes, I finally put Roderick Random in the finished pile, ready to take back to a secondhand book shop.
Frankly, it's been a struggle re-reading this after 40 years, but I stuck with it. So much goes on in the novel - he's up at the end, but mostly he's either down, or really down throughout the 468 pages of small print.
I'd also forgotten there was an episode involving Random profiting from being on a ship transporting slaves towards the end of the novel, before he is reunited with his long-lost father.
It's a gulp moment that must have generated a lot of heated discussion back in 1980 at Auckland University's MA common room. Sadly, I don't remember the nitty gritty of that phase of my education too well.
Tobias Smollett's The Adventures Of Roderick Random was first published in 1748, well before the odious practice ended, or even peaked. I'm sure this fact figured in our university tutorials in 1980.
It's a curious part of the adventure because, as well as sharing in some of the profits Random (Smollett) sniffily calls it 'the disagreeable lading (i.e. loading) of Negroes, to whom. indeed, I had been a miserable slave since our leaving the coast of Guinea'. So, Random and Smollett don't redeem themselves at all.
Anyway. On to Anne Tyler and some palate cleansing.
Love and peace - Wozza
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