Thursday, July 22, 2010

The good life

I want to be Mrs. Tinckham when I grow up! A cheap shop full of old books, where secrets are made and kept and cats guard the perimeter.

Actually, there was a broad appeal to me of the bohemian life Jake and the other characters seemed to lead, bumping about from one situation and odd job to the next, so unlike our culture and the requisite ladder. It's also a really useful setting for a romantic comedy that one can be on one adventure to the next when there's no job to report to. I can't imagine the comfort of living that way, though. Was that just a different time and a place? Did it affect Jake's philosophy at all? Did being an orderly change that for him?
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2 comments:

kc said...

Speaking of cats, I liked the scene at the end with the kittens! It felt like the first truly relaxed moment in the narrative.

Jake seemed to take right away to being an orderly, to having regular, tangible, quantifiable work to accomplish. I really liked his character for that — for not looking down on physical labor and for taking pride in his work.

He floated through life in a kind of enviable, footloose way, but his reaction to the job showed a longing for structure, too. His notion of working a physical job part-time and spending the rest of his time in intellectual pursuits reflected a Marxist ideal that was probably quite appealing to Murdoch and her peers (I read on Wikipedia that she was a Communist at one point).

Actually, for being off the conventional employment grid, all of the characters had a work ethic of one kind or another. And several of them didn't need any more money, but were apparently just working for some human need to have something to do and something to be good at.

When I was reading this, I had to keep reminding myself that it was published in the 1950s, because it seemed more modern.

2:27 PM, July 22, 2010
Erin said...

A bohemian lifestyle doesn't appeal to me at all. I tend to crave a little more structure than that, not that I don't enjoy some sittin' around time now and then.

It was kind of cute how much he enjoyed working in the hospital, mopping floors and washing dishes. Not the kind of thing I would have imagined him doing at the beginning of the book. Good point, kc, about it being a kind of Marxist ideal.

2:35 PM, July 26, 2010

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