Trollope

In 1875 Anthony Trollope published his masterpiece, "The Way We Live Now", a novel of 800-plus pages, each page a model of circumspect storytelling so skilled it's possible to believe that Tolstoy himself learned something from it.

Why haven't I read this before? I ask myself as I read Trollope, binge reading the book, carrying it around with me from room to room during the evening hours when I read. There are characters here who fit right into present time, men and women prominent in our culture, socially and politically, whose names and faces we know from reading the daily newspaper, watching tv, searching the Internet: an unscrupulous businessman with a gargantuan lust for power; a woman writer who will go to unimaginable lengths to be published; a group of idle rich young people, stupid and aimless, lazy prisoners of inherited wealth, just to pull a few from Trollope's great book.

Those of you who said that I need not read Trollope, that he was a ponderous artist, a writer only for his own age, you know who you are, and I curse you.

Brooks RoddanComment