stoutfellow (![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
stoutfellow) wrote2007-09-02 06:53 pm
stoutfellow) wrote2007-09-02 06:53 pm
H. G. Wells
During ![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
mbernardi's visit last month, we stopped in at Piece of Mind, a little bookstore about half a mile from my home, which I had never before been to. Among the books I picked up there was a copy of H. G. Wells' The Invisible Man. I finished reading it a day or two ago, and that prompts me to put down a few thoughts about Wells.
I really haven't read all that much of Wells' work. I know that, when I was in my teens, I read The War of the Worlds, but I don't remember much - only that I was not sure of the meaning of the word "curate". (I assumed it meant something like "curator", and didn't bother looking it up.) Almost everything I know about the book now, I picked up from articles about it.
I also read The Time Machine then, and carried away from it one image: the Traveler, stranded on a desolate beach, with the monstrous red sun hanging on the horizon and the silhouette of a sort of jellyfish on the water the only other sign of life. (I reread it much later, when it appeared in The Science Fiction Hall of Fame 2B.)
Beyond those, I know I read some of his shorter works, but I remember nothing about them except that "The Food of the Gods" was one of them.
So, I had little in the way of expectations when I began reading The Invisible Man. Two things in particular struck me. First, in the early part of the book there's a fair amount of sly humor. For instance, a certain Mr. Gould is suspicious of the strange visitor:
Second, there is a lengthy passage midbook in which the Invisible Man describes his adventures to a Mr. Kemp, whom he believes to be sympathetic. The reader is cued in early on to the falsity of this belief, but Kemp, who is playing a waiting game, listens without any visible reaction to the litany of crimes. The villain describes his theft of money from his father (a theft which led directly to the old man's suicide), his deliberately setting fire to his (rented) apartment to avoid discovery, and a variety of other crimes of property. Kemp does not react openly until his visitor mentions knocking down and tying up one of his victims, who had been too alert for comfort. Then, and only then, does he show any sign of revulsion. That this - and not theft from one's father, and not arson - should be enough to break Kemp's intention of keeping his visitor calm and stationary until the police could arrive troubles me. (Wells was, of course, a socialist, and so I can understand his rating crimes of property well below crimes of violence, but it's still jarring to me.)
The final section of the book, during which the villain goes berserk and is finally brought to book, is a decent enough bit of horror; the hunt for the Invisible Man is well-enough designed, though Kemp fails to think of some obvious ways of making the Invisible Man visible (cf. Mina's capture of Mr. Griffin in The League of Extraordinary Gentlemen). The chapter in which Kemp is besieged within his own house and then harried across town is pretty well executed, in particular.
The Invisible Man isn't, I think, a great work, but it has its moments, and I think I'm going to look around for some of Wells' other lesser-known stories. Maybe I'll remember them this time...
mbernardi's visit last month, we stopped in at Piece of Mind, a little bookstore about half a mile from my home, which I had never before been to. Among the books I picked up there was a copy of H. G. Wells' The Invisible Man. I finished reading it a day or two ago, and that prompts me to put down a few thoughts about Wells.I really haven't read all that much of Wells' work. I know that, when I was in my teens, I read The War of the Worlds, but I don't remember much - only that I was not sure of the meaning of the word "curate". (I assumed it meant something like "curator", and didn't bother looking it up.) Almost everything I know about the book now, I picked up from articles about it.
I also read The Time Machine then, and carried away from it one image: the Traveler, stranded on a desolate beach, with the monstrous red sun hanging on the horizon and the silhouette of a sort of jellyfish on the water the only other sign of life. (I reread it much later, when it appeared in The Science Fiction Hall of Fame 2B.)
Beyond those, I know I read some of his shorter works, but I remember nothing about them except that "The Food of the Gods" was one of them.
So, I had little in the way of expectations when I began reading The Invisible Man. Two things in particular struck me. First, in the early part of the book there's a fair amount of sly humor. For instance, a certain Mr. Gould is suspicious of the strange visitor:
[H]e resolved to undertake such detective operations as his time permitted. These consisted for the most part of looking very hard at the stranger whenever they met, or in asking people who had never seen the stranger, leading questions about him. But he detected nothing.Other local opinions are discussed, ending with:
Yet another view explained the entire matter by regarding the stranger as a harmless lunatic. That had the advantage of accounting for everything straight away.There is also a fair bit of slapstick in the description of attempts to capture the Invisible Man.
Second, there is a lengthy passage midbook in which the Invisible Man describes his adventures to a Mr. Kemp, whom he believes to be sympathetic. The reader is cued in early on to the falsity of this belief, but Kemp, who is playing a waiting game, listens without any visible reaction to the litany of crimes. The villain describes his theft of money from his father (a theft which led directly to the old man's suicide), his deliberately setting fire to his (rented) apartment to avoid discovery, and a variety of other crimes of property. Kemp does not react openly until his visitor mentions knocking down and tying up one of his victims, who had been too alert for comfort. Then, and only then, does he show any sign of revulsion. That this - and not theft from one's father, and not arson - should be enough to break Kemp's intention of keeping his visitor calm and stationary until the police could arrive troubles me. (Wells was, of course, a socialist, and so I can understand his rating crimes of property well below crimes of violence, but it's still jarring to me.)
The final section of the book, during which the villain goes berserk and is finally brought to book, is a decent enough bit of horror; the hunt for the Invisible Man is well-enough designed, though Kemp fails to think of some obvious ways of making the Invisible Man visible (cf. Mina's capture of Mr. Griffin in The League of Extraordinary Gentlemen). The chapter in which Kemp is besieged within his own house and then harried across town is pretty well executed, in particular.
The Invisible Man isn't, I think, a great work, but it has its moments, and I think I'm going to look around for some of Wells' other lesser-known stories. Maybe I'll remember them this time...