George & Weedon Grossmith - The Diary of a Nobody

Reading The Diary of a Nobody (published in 1892) is a strange experience. I had a sense of deja vu  at almost all the scenes and characters. 

I suspect it's because the self-deprecatory diary format has become so commonplace in the intervening 130 years. Growing up, I remember reading The Diary of Adrian Mole and Bridget Jones' Diary, complete with, respectively, notes on girls and obsessive fag and calorie counts. Then there's the1930s Diary of a Provincial Lady which I read this year. All are wonderful.

The fictitious Charles Pooter, a completely ordinary middle-aged clerk residing in a little house in a London suburb, starts keeping a diary in response to two great diarists of his day: Samuel Pepys (perhaps the greatest diarist of all time) and James Boswell (he of Life of Samuel Johnson). If these guys can be famous for their diaries, then why shouldn't he?

I fail to see - because I do not happen to be a 'Somebody' - why my diary should not be interesting.

Pooter and his circle are intentionally pathetic - Pooter more so than his friends, Cummings and Gowing, who are always having a laugh at his expense. Example of their sense of humour:

I said: 'A very extraordinary thing has struck me.' 'Something funny, as usual,' said Cummings. 'Yes,' I replied; 'I think even you will say so this time. It's concerning you both; for doesn't it seem odd that Gowing's always coming and Cummings always going? Carrie, who had evidently quite forgotten about the bath, went into fits of laughter, and as for myself, I fairly doubled up in my chair, till it cracked beneath me.

The Pooters' idyllic existence (decorating the house and "having words" with the help) is shattered when their grown son, Lupin (nee William, or Willie), loses his job and moves in. Lupin hangs out with these crazy raconteurs, my favourite being the avant garde comedian, Mr Burwin-Fosselton, who later writes Pooter a letter:

Our lives run in different grooves. I live for MY ART - THE STAGE. Your life is devoted to commercial pursuits - 'A life among Ledgers'. My books are of different metal. Your life in the City is honourable, I admit. But how different! Cannot even you see the ocean between us? A channel that prevents the meeting of our brains in harmonious accord. Ah! But chacun à son goût.

Lupin is rude, disreputable, a gambler, and altogether a failure of a son... until Pooter meets the outspoken, abrasive, contrarian American writer, Hardfur Huttle, who shares the very same views as Lupin. Huttle is admired by Pooter's social betters, so eventually the senior Pooters grow to accept their son's unorthodoxy.

Apparently Evelyn Waugh - who might have identified with Lupin - was a huge fan.