The Struggles of Brown, Jones and Robinson (World's Classics) [Paperback]

With few readers for Anthony Trollope's greatest novels, it doesn't seem worth a lot of trouble to steer a potential customer away from what is surely his slightest book. But I'll take a moment to do so. Trollope is hardly ever uninteresting; he is a master of creating unique and formidable characters and letting them bang into each other and documenting the results. But this book is indeed a struggle. Possibly the satire is too much of its time, though I doubt it. Even if that were the case though, the mostly whiny and boring one-dimensional characers who inhabit this book are almost without any interest. Satire needs to be a bit over the top; this is tame and plodding stuff.

It is often said that lesser novels make better movies. The nuance, the vastness, the gentle description and evocative detail are often lost in the transfer to film. Masterpiece Theater has filmed a couple of Trollope's finer tales. After the long-ago and far-away 27 episode panoply devoted to the Pallisers, they've scrimped in length and offered pallid versions of great books. Maybe this novel, which, despite its flaws has a some vivid scenes and interesting bits, could, with skillful crafting, make a pleasant TV series. It sure didn't make a good read.

Though this novel appeared in serial form in the CORNHILL MAGAZINE shortly after the more celebrated novels Framley Parsonage (World's Classics) and Orley Farm (World's Classics), in truth Trollope had been trying to get it published for several years before. Unfortunately, Trollope was increasingly a victim of his own success in that his pastoral BARSET novels were so popular, than any deviation he attempted to make from his tried-and-true format was met with resistance. Indeed, when this novel finally appeared, it was met with critical and public disdain. However, for those of use 150 years removed, this novel proves to be a hidden gem. I've found Trollope's experimental novels to be among his best (Cousin Henry (Oxford World's Classics), The Fixed Period (The World's Classics)) and this one fares just as well.

Billed as a satire concerning the dishonest advertising and business practices of the day, it tells the tale of an upstart clothing business doomed from the get-go to utter failure. Its senior partner (the elderly Brown, who provides the investment) is far too timid for business. His son-in-law (Jones, who runs the store) is stealing from the till, and the junior partner, Robinson (who writes advertisements for the store) is so obsessed with the idea that advertising alone will drive the business, he uses up every last penny of the capital investment in a series of increasingly ludicrous ad campaigns and publicity stunts.

Thrown into this mix are the two daughters of Brown, who are equally cold and calculating. The elder (married to Jones) is constantly trying to wring money out of the old man, and the younger, Maryanne, spends the entire novel playing off of two potential suitors, Robinson, or Brisket the butcher (one of Trollope's wonderful examples of ironic character naming).

This character of Maryanne is a notable departure for Trollope. The typical Trollopian female is generally a romantic who places love over money when choosing a suitor. Maryanne, however, quite unashamedly confesses she holds no such notions, and will insist to her ultimate demise that she has love for NEITHER of her two suitors, despite their ongoing battle over her hand. It's refreshing to see a Trollope female who isn't a wilting flower before the onslaught of her culture. However, one gets the sense that Trollope is holding up Maryanne as a figure for disdain, and the passage regarding her ultimate ruin, while captured most poignantly by the author, still feels more like "just desserts" rather than the sad commentary on Victorian society that it truly is, when a woman who did not marry well is basically doomed.

This eloquent passage is mirrored by a similar soliloquy as Robinson muses over the missed opportunity that the store's failure represents. Sitting alone on the riverbank, Trollope's inner voice eclipses that of Robinson, elaborating on the sad state of affairs for a man who has sunk his everything into a venture, only to have it fail. Along with the final chapter of Septimus Harding in The Last Chronicle of Barset (The World's Classics), it is Trollope at his melancholic best.

But I do not want to mislead you, for despite these bitter endings, the bulk of the novel is quite humorous. An early passage sets the reader up for the tone of the book that is to follow. Trollope has established that the marriage of Brown to his business-owning wife became one of constant fighting over who would control the small fortune. Then, abruptly, he writes: "After 30 years of contests such as these Mr. Brown found himself victorious, made so not by the power of his arguments... but by the demise of Mrs. Brown."

But it is Trollope's send-ups of advertising ploys common in his day that are the novels most priceless passages - be they the store's ridiculous slogan ("9 times 9 is 81" - a meaningless reference to the store's address as 81 Bishopsgate Street), sending out men dressed in Magenta armor (the store's color), or the elaborate ruse of posting daily notices about the attempt to capture and prosecute a fictional supplier that supposedly cheated the store out of its most demanded item ... Trollope pulls no punches in skewering the asinine attempts businesses go to in order to drum up business. The characters routinely disregard the moral impropriety of advertising products they do not carry, at prices they will not honor, to people they care nothing about other than for their money.

Indeed, this satire gives Trollope an uncharacteristic opportunity to fill his book with people utterly devoid of moral character. Even Robinson himself, after such a failure, refuses to learn his lesson, and by the novel's end has already decided to "go at it again" with a new venture.

While the novel is largely missed by today's reader of classic fiction, it is truly a hidden gem containing some of the author's best passages. I thoroughly enjoyed it and have every intention of re-reading it as soon as I finish my run through the authors other novels.