The last of Wells’ works that was on my tbr list for the 1001 books. Wells occasionally delights me, but, on the whole, though I do regard him a genius and a mind a century ahead of his time, his writing doesn’t really grab me too much. Tono-Bungay was just such a novel.

George is lured into working for his uncle who has concocted some potion that he is flogging off as a cure-all. It’s nothing of the sort though; as the business grows exponentially, like most things these days, rather than this demonstrating a superior product, it simply demonstrates superior marketing.

Eventually, the ethical skeletons come out of the closet of morality and give George nightmares he can’t escape from without his whole life imploding. Or can he?

What I did appreciate about this book, coming as it does between those classics of sci-fi The Time Machine and The War of the Worlds, was that it was Wells turning his brilliant mind to something less alien: our everyday capitalist lives. I’m used to him dealing with more esoteric subjects like… well, like time travel or alien invasions. But this novel revealed that he very much understood not only his times but those to come. Quite a few of those who grace the front covers of our magazines might want to read a copy of this.

There’s much more character development in this novel than in any other I’ve read of Wells. I other works, his characters seem to be dominated by the crisis at hand. In this one, it’s very much the impact of crises on a character that is the focus. It’s like Wells suddenly realised you can see through both ends of a telescope.

The weakness in the novel was, for me, the style. However, I’ll put this down, not to any lack on Wells’ part, but to the fact that while he is a writer ahead of his time, I’m a reader very much in or quite possibly behind my own time.

Tono Bungay by HG Wells – author of The History of Mr. Polly – my look at this is at https://realinibarzoi.blogspot.com/20... where I have a few thousand more reviews – five books by HG Wells are on the 1,000 Novels Everyone Must read list, in various sectors

8 out of 10

HG Wells is one of the best known, appreciated novelists, best known for his science fiction, every reader (not those who do not have the habit though) knows of The War of The Worlds https://realini.blogspot.com/2016/03/... and the chaos it has created

When it was aired, directed by another Welles (there is a difference nevertheless, in spelling the tow names) Orson, people were panicked, for they thought that the Martians had really landed, many of them just missed the introduction and thought what they were hearing on the radio was not fiction, but what was happening
Incidentally, the Martians could not come then or now – I was going to say at any time, but then who knows about millennia – because that planet is uninhabitable, never mind the Matt Damon film, or the ideas peddled by the likes of Elon Musk – yes, a good mind for cars and rockets, but an absolute moron outside.

Think of the fact that he supports Trump, how lame and idiotic that is, even if he thinks it will help him with taxes and all that, Orange Jesus is so crazy and unpredictable, he will create havoc if he comes back, businesses will be affected, and what am I saying, with a ‘very stable genius’ (OJ calls himself that) in charge, we are fucked
The Invisible Man https://realini.blogspot.com/2014/07/... is another classic, however, it seems to me that the masterpiece by Ralph Ellison is much better rated – indeed, it makes the top 100 greatest books I gather – with the same title would be worth reading, if less known

What is remarkable in the writings of HG Wells is that the themes are so paramount, Time Machine and travel are so important, attractive, even if the notion appears impossible, for if we were to return, then we would affect the future, which is impossible, at the limit, we could wipe people out of existence, say Hitler, or Orange Jesus…
There are ways around that, Back to The Future is one of the best comedies and science fiction films, in part because it has the hero take care that he does not fall into the impossible trap, for instance, it looks like his mother and father would not form a couple, which means he would not exist, but then his very presence there, in this past is presented as the solution to the problem, he is the one that helps create…himself

The Island of Doctor Moreau https://realini.blogspot.com/2016/10/... is another well known work by HG Wells – by the way, there are five books on the 1,000 Novels Everyone Must Read list, I need to repeat that – and it again deals with a quintessential problem, we face today
Genetically modified foods can help humanity survive – in other words, I am all for it, with the caveat that they need to take care so that it does not escape control – but then they have used some techniques to manipulate genes in people, there was that fellow in China, who was then prosecuted for this…

On the Island of Doctor Moreau, we look at the atrocious scenario where experiments get out of control, and we have species that must not exist, created in the laboratory and then man becomes God, but he does not have the omniscience, the other attributes of the Great Sculptor and Colorist, the name given by Kingsley Amis
Kingsley Amis https://realini.blogspot.com/2023/03/... is part of the holy trinity for me, and he was a savvy, enthusiastic reader of Science Fiction, he looked at what could happen in the future in Britain, in the hypothesis that the Russians occupy it in a cataclysmic future – Margaret Thatcher invited him and scolded him for this idea

I took so long to come to Tono Bungay because I did not find it exulting, it is not the book, it is me, I will again refer to Magister Ludi Kingsley Amis and say that he had a problem with reading Marcel Proust (a favorite of mine, also part of the Holy Trinity), Bellow, Nabokov were on the same list, and then things change
The great master told his son, another acclaimed novelist, Martin Amis, that towards the end of his life, he could only start books that were thrillers, so I probably experience…let us not call it decay (yet), but some lack of interest, never mind passion, enthusiasm, when the work is not the way I want it, cheerful, funny…

There is hope, I have started Sweet and Sour by Timothy Mo, shortlisted for the Booker Prize and placed on that (three times mentioned) 1,000 Novels compilation, and for the five pages I have finished it looks really enticing…the wife waits for the husband with a meal every night, albeit he works in a restaurant and eats there
It appears full of promise, and if I do not lose the penchant, then it will be all right…so for the last few sentences, Tono Bungay, which is in the Humor section of that list, has some appealing passages, the boy is keen on this girl, she is eight, and then he fights with another child, the latter accused the main character of cheating
And then…Things Fall Apart https://realini.blogspot.com/2022/04/... the title of one of the greatest books of all time, and this is what happened between me and Tono Bungay, I lost all ineptest

At the start the narrator, George, makes clear that he is primarily an engineer not a writer, and that he will be a lax, undisciplined storyteller, and he will set out impressions of life as a whole. He is true to his word. The main story concerns the social trajectory of George and his uncle Edward, the manufacturer of Tono-Bungay, a “tonic” with no proven benefit that, nonetheless, makes them a fortune for a few years.

The novel is very wordy and I found, at times, difficult to focus on. The best bits, I thought, concerned his marriage to Marion and his relationship with Beatrice, which struck me as extremely realistic and moving.

Although the book is regarded by some as his best novel, I didn’t find it so.

This was a study in how little has really changed form the early years of the twentieth to the early years of the twenty-first century. The ability to make money and/or influence out of people's susceptibility to a message that chimes with their personal weaknesses and gullibilities seems to be a constant in our society. Never mind; Wells dispenses natural justice on the perpetrators and in places, this takes a technological romp through what at the time, was cutting edge technology. Where there's muck, or anything new it seems, there's brass...