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I
warn you this book is going to be something of an agglomeration. I want to
trace my social trajectory (and my uncle's) as the
main line of my story, but as this is my first novel and almost
certainly my last, I want to get in, too, all sorts of things that struck
me, things that amused me and impressions I got—even
although they don't minister directly to my narrative at all.
I want to set out my own queer love experiences too, such as
they are, for they troubled and distressed and swayed me hugely, and they still
seem to me to contain all sorts of irrational and debatable elements
that I shall be the clearer-headed for getting on paper. And possibly I may even
flow into descriptions of people who are really no more than people
seen in transit, just because it amuses me to recall
what they said and did to us, and more particularly how they behaved in the
brief but splendid glare of Tono-Bungay and its still more glaring
offspring. It lit some of them up, I can assure you! Indeed, I want
to get in all sorts of things. My ideas of a novel all
through are comprehensive rather than austere....
Wailing
Souls: Things and Time (Link)
Text:
H.G.
Wells, Tono-Bungay (1909)
I
was his nephew, his
peculiar and intimate nephew. I was hanging on to his coat-tails
all the way through. I made
pills with him in the chemist's shop at Wimblehurst before he began. I
was, you might say, the stick
of his rocket; and after our tremendous soar, after
he had played with millions, a golden rain in the sky, after my bird's-eye view of
the modern world, I fell again, a little
scarred and blistered perhaps, two and
twenty years older, with my youth gone, my manhood
eaten in upon, but greatly edified, into this Thames-side
yard, into these white heats and hammerings, amidst the fine realites of steel—to think it
all over in my leisure and jot down the notes
and inconsecutive observations
that make this book. It was more, you know, than a figurative
soar. The zenith of that career was surely
our flight across the channel in the
Lord Roberts B....
Text: H.G.
Wells, Tono-Bungay (1909)
Note: It's
funny the things you find
in book shops when you're
not looking for them. When I was at boarding school, the chair where I preferred to read in the
library when I wasn't taking notes in a carrell placed my right leg in intimate proximity to
Tono-Bungay. And today on Mercer Street a Journeyman
Library edition of the novel stared me directly
in the face. When I
finally was able to focus (the sun
and heat were unbearable; that's what drove
me into the store), it was by far the
most attractive thing I saw all day waiting for
my appointment. The jungle
animals are dressing strangely these days.
Guns N' Roses: Welcome To The Jungle
(Link)
