The Adventures of Roderick Random [Anglais] [Broché]

If you ever saw Sheridan's play "The Rivals," you might have heard this book mentioned. It's the book the daughter doesn't want her mother to know she is reading.

It pre-dates Jane Eyre, but it has that poor-lonely-orphan-wronged-by-the-world quality to it. Picture Jane Eyre as a young, red-headed Scotsman with a thin-skin, bad temper and active libido. Roderick's going to London reminded me of D'Artagnan arrival in Paris in "The Three Musketeers". His mere presence is often a cause of confict. There are insults, fights, brawls, battles, sea clashes, duels, and some more insults. Roderick is the world's punching bag and his own pride and scheming won't let him say, "I've had enough." All the while his hot blood is leading him into haylofts, bedrooms and yet more trouble.

Will this 18th-century punk ever wise up? Read for yourself. I suggest the Oxford World's Classics version. I didn't expect the footnotes, but they were a great boon. The language is archaic in places, so keep a dictionary handy.

This book is a great deal of fun to read. It is lively, witty and amusing, as well as strikingly modern in displaying the vicissitudes of fortune in the character Roderick. These vagaries of fortune, from penury, to wealth, from imprisonment, to landed gent are also reflected in the vagaries in the moods virtues (or lack thereof) in our title character, thus lending Roderick, for most of the book, a three-dimensional aspect and not simply another cardboard cutout for an 18th century picaresque.-But the book does have its faults, particularly as we draw to what we foresee will be the inevitable end. It's just too pat for many modern readers to swallow. Or at least it is for this one. The Oxford edition's notes, while helpful in places, especially with nautical turns of phrase, and for those with a scholarly interest in the location of certain streets in the London in Smollet's day etc tend to become rather annoying at times, almost to the point of insulting the well-read reader's intelligence. Many times I found myself saying, "As if I could not have figured that out on my own from the context!" The book, not surprisingly, is at its best when it is at its most autobiographical and descriptive, particularly the passages of Roderick's first sea voyage. One of my favourite passages that illustrates the lively vitality and humour of both the character and the work comes when Roderick, feared to be dying of typhoid fever, is visited by a priest to make a last confession:

""Without doubt, you have been guilty of numberless transgressions, to which youth is subject, as swearing, drunkenness, whoredom, and adultery; tell me therefore, without reserve, the particulars of each, especially the last, that I may be acquainted with the true state of your conscience...."

Roderick, a thoroughgoing, Scottish Ant-Papist will have none of it and soon recovers.

I am reminded of Joseph Conrad's short story "Youth" which I recommend to all who enjoy this book. - But, in the end, Conrad's story is the philosophically deeper and more true-to-life narrative than this one.-Again, the ending, for this reader, was just too pat and soppy. I am not trying to be a "spoiler" here and ruin the reading of the book and imperiling this review, by telling you potential readers what it is. You don't need me for that. You will have figured it out about a hundred pages before the end. And, for the record, I believe that this misguided idea of not being able to include the reviewer's analysis of a book's ending seriously handicaps the reviewer as well as insults the reader's intelligence. ---But, I have to abide by the rules in order that this review be posted. So be it.

Anyway, a delightful 18th century romp, until the predictable winding down.

Curiously, Tobias Smollett published "The Adventures of Roderick Random" just a year before Henry Fielding published "The History of Tom Jones, a Foundling", so it is fair to wonder whom stole the plot devices from whom: an unwanted child, a heroine apparently beyond the reach of the hero, picaresque journeys in which both heroes redeem themselves despite many lapses for which they never feel culpable.

Unlike Tom Jones who is left very much to his own devices, Roderick Random does have loyal helpers, like his school friend, Hugh Strap, and his uncle, Lieutenant Tom Bowling of the Royal Navy. It becomes increasingly irksome each time Random excels, only to be exploited or denied the fruits of his labour. He is the most gifted of all the classical scholars in his village school, as well as the most deprived and the most abused. He qualifies as a doctor purely through his own abilities and application, but he is unable to get a certificate to be a surgeon in the navy because of corruption and the shortsightedness of the examining board. He gains employment as a pharmacist with an incompetent, grasping, alcoholic apothecary; but he is dismissed despite his prodigious aptitude for chemistry and filling prescriptions because of the machinations of the lustful wife and daughter of the apothecary. Ironically, he is impressed into the navy, not as a surgeon but as an ordinary seaman. But the irony does not end here-for his medical aptitude is soon recognised by the ship's surgeon, one of the few positive characters in the book. Of course, such a character is shipped off almost as soon as he approves Random's surgeon's mate certificate, and he suffers at the hands of a mean-spirited, envious surgeon, and an equally unpleasant captain who is replaced by a foolish fop with unnatural inclinations.

Eventually, Random escapes the ship when it is wrecked. Among the crew he is the only one to survive because of his innately noble character, his courage and resourcefulness. He finds refuge as a footman in a house of blue-stocking women who are shamed by his learning when they come to know Random. Yet the younger of them, the too aptly named Narcissa, eventually makes Random happy, but not until after he finds his father, who, as it happens, has take up residence in South America and become terribly wealthy.

All in all, the book is a long joke that would have been happily ended several hundred pages earlier. The protagonist's apparently inability to be self-critical, to always present himself in the light of an heroic victim, comes to grate quite soon. One could argue that Smollett's belief that his reader's attention has been "agreeably diverted with all the variety of invention; and the vicissitudes of life" of his flawed hero. Smollett can be thanked for devising a hero of humble origins as the mainstay of his novel. Unfortunately, the cycles within his novel are all too similar to engage the reader fully through the entire work.

The Adventures of Roderick Random (Oxford World's Classics)