Three Men in a Boat by Jerome K. Jerome
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

Jerome K. Jerome wrote books the same way Victor Borge played the piano. Both could show great beauty and depth when they wanted to, but they usually preferred just to make us laugh.

I thoroughly enjoyed this book. It recounts a two-week-long boat trip up the Thames River by three friends, none of whom belongs in the outdoors. Their ineptness with handling boats (and with cooking, and with setting up a tent, and with almost everything else they try to do), their (lack of a) work ethic, their spats with each other, and their frequent misadventures in the towns they pass through are hilarious. Along the way, we get bits of British history, descriptions of quaint riverside towns, anecdotes of the odd exploits of their fox terrier, occasional meditations on what it means to be human, and lots of other tidbits that meander like the river itself. All in all, this is a great book. I hope to get to it again.

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We tend to vastly underestimate the importance of our bodies, but they are part of our being. We're not mere spirits who inhabit bodies. We are embodied, incarnated beings who tend not to be driven by our thoughts, but by something more basic — our affections, or even, as James K. A. Smith puts it in Desiring the Kingdom, our gut. I was reminded of this fact as I came across this passage last night in Jerome Jerome's Three Men in a Boat:

How good one feels when one is full — how satisfied with ourselves and with the world! People who have tried it, tell me that a clear conscience makes you very happy and contented; but a full stomach does the business quite as well, and is cheaper, and more easily obtained. One feels so forgiving and generous after a substantial and well-digested meal — so noble-minded, so kindly-hearted.  

It is very strange, this domination of our intellect by our digestive organs. We cannot work, we cannot think, unless our stomach wills so. It dictates to us our emotions, our passions. After eggs and bacon, it says, "Work!" After beefsteak and porter, it says, "Sleep!" After a cup of tea (two spoonsful for each cup, and don't let it stand more than three minutes), it says to the brain, "Now, rise, and show your strength. Be eloquent, and deep, and tender; see, with a clear eye, into Nature and into life; spread your white wings of quivering thought, and soar, a god- like spirit, over the whirling world beneath you, up through long lanes of flaming stars to the gates of eternity!" 

After hot muffins, it says, "Be dull and soulless, like a beast of the field — a brainless animal, with listless eye, unlit by any ray of fancy, or of hope, or fear, or love, or life." And after brandy, taken in sufficient quantity, it says, "Now, come, fool, grin and tumble, that your fellow-men may laugh — drivel in folly, and splutter in senseless sounds, and show what a helpless ninny is poor man whose wit and will are drowned, like kittens, side by side, in half an inch of alcohol." 

We are but the veriest, sorriest slaves of our stomach. Reach not after morality and righteousness, my friends; watch vigilantly your stomach, and diet it with care and judgment. Then virtue and contentment will come and reign within your heart, unsought by any effort of your own; and you will be a good citizen, a loving husband, and a tender father — a noble, pious man.