Three Men in a Boat is the funniest book I have ever read. An English teacher read parts of it in class when I was11. My parents bought me this copy for my 12th birthday, for three and sixpence, which is 30 cents in Canadian money. I literally spent the day rolling on the floor laughing. It is the only book I keep two copies of. The original one, for reading, and an illustrated one, which a girlfriend gave me for my 24^th birthday, that I keep for best.

The book is a simple travelogue about three men who row a boat up the Thames and camp along the way, a sort of literary and aquatic version of the classic road trip movie.

 It was first published in 1889.

Can a book originally published 132 years ago still be funny? Let me quote you a sample from when the three men decide they are run down need a vacation:

“I remember going to the British Museum one day to read up the treatment for some slight ailment of which I had a touch. I got down the book, and read all I came to read; and then, in an unthinking moment, I idly turned the leaves, and began to indolently study diseases, generally.  I forget which was the first distemper I plunged into—some fearful, devastating scourge, I know—and, before I had glanced half down the list of “premonitory symptoms,” it was borne in upon me that I had fairly got it.

I sat for awhile, frozen with horror; and then, in the listlessness of despair, I again turned over the pages.  I came to typhoid fever—read the symptoms—discovered that I had typhoid fever, must have had it for months without knowing i;

I get interested in my case, and determined to sift it to the bottom, and so started alphabetically.   Bright’s disease, I was relieved to find, I had only in a modified form, and, so far as that was concerned, I might live for years.  Cholera I had, with severe complications; and diphtheria I seemed to have been born with.  I plodded conscientiously through the twenty-six letters, and the only malady I could conclude I had not got was housemaid’s knee.

I felt rather hurt about this at first; it seemed somehow to be a sort of slight.  Why hadn’t I got housemaid’s knee?  Why this invidious reservation? 

Zymosis I had evidently been suffering with from boyhood.  There were no more diseases after zymosis, so I concluded there was nothing else the matter with me.

Then I wondered how long I had to live.  I tried to examine myself.  I felt my pulse.  I could not at first feel any pulse at all.  Then, all of a sudden, it seemed to start off.  I pulled out my watch and timed it.  I made it a hundred and forty-seven to the minute.  I tried to feel my heart.  I could not feel my heart.  It had stopped beating.

 Clearly, since 1889 the technology has changed and everyone can consult Dr. Google without having to make a trip to the library but people are still hypochondriacs.

In the preface, the author says: “The beauty of this book lies in its simple truthfulness…for hopeless and incurable veracity nothing yet discovered can surpass it. This will make it precious in the eye of the earnest reader.”

The book makes some accurate predictions:

“The “sampler” that the eldest daughter did at school will be spoken of as “tapestry of the Victorian era,” and be almost priceless.  The blue-and-white mugs of the present-day roadside inn will be hunted up, all cracked and chipped, and sold for their weight in gold”

But its main strength is its description of human characteristics which do not seem to have changed over the years. For example:

“Rather an amusing thing happened while dressing that morning.  I was very cold when I got back into the boat, and, in my hurry to get my shirt on, I accidentally jerked it into the water.  It made me awfully wild, especially as George burst out laughing.  I could not see anything to laugh at, and I told George so, and he only laughed the more.  I never saw a man laugh so much.  I quite lost my temper with him at last, and I pointed out to him what a drivelling maniac of an imbecile idiot he was; but he only roared the louder.  And then, just as I was landing the shirt, I noticed that it was not my shirt at all, but George’s, which I had mistaken for mine; whereupon the humour of the thing struck me for the first time, and I began to laugh.  And the more I looked from George’s wet shirt to George, roaring with laughter, the more I was amused, and I laughed so much that I had to let the shirt fall back into the water again.

“Ar’n’t you—you—going to get it out?” said George, between his shrieks.

I could not answer him at all for a while, I was laughing so, but, at last, between my peals I managed to jerk out:

“It isn’t my shirt—it’s yours!”

I never saw a man’s face change from lively to severe so suddenly in all my life before.

“What!” he yelled, springing up.  “You silly cuckoo!  Why can’t you be more careful what you’re doing?  You’re not fit to be in a boat, you’re not.”

I tried to make him see the fun of the thing, but he could not.  George is very dense at seeing a joke sometimes.

This observation, that bad things are only funny when they happen to someone else is, I think, universal and timeless.

If you are looking for some light escapist reading in these difficult times, I strongly recommend Three Men In A Boat.  Fortunately, you can download a copy for free from the Guttenberg Project website, because I am keeping both my copies and I will not be lending them out!