Apparently, some of the characters in the BBC radio programme, Ed Reardon's Week are based on characters from this book. I used to think that programme was quite funny. Well, well, well, I may have to put this on the reading list.
George Gissing himself seems to have led a shortish but interesting life.
I bought a copy at the Oxfam shop and it's on my reading list.
I've recently started listening to it. I fear I may be hearing a taste of my personal future in it...
"I should only believe in a God that would know how to dance. And when I saw my devil, I found him serious, thorough, profound, solemn: he was the spirit of gravity- through him all things fall. Not by wrath, but by laughter, do we slay. Come, let us slay the spirit of gravity!" - Nietzsche
Ed Reardon's Week, not New Grub Street I assume. That would be a bleak future. Keep off the booze and I am sure you have at least two episodes of whatever the current equivalent of Tenko is in you.
I have to say Ed Reardon of Ed Reardon's Week is not really very much like Edwin Reardon of New Grub Street. Edwin Reardon is a sensitive artist. Ed Reardon is more like Alfred Yule, a literary hack with a short temper. Jaz Millvain of Ed Reardon's Week is maybe more similar to Jasper Millvain of New Grub Street. Maybe Jaz Millvain is what young Jasper would become after a couple of decades' undeserved success.
I noticed that the credits of Frasier mentioned Grub Street (Grub Street Productions actually), but I suppose that was a reference to Samuel Johnson.
According to Aldous Huxley, D.H. Lawrence once said that Balzac was 'a gigantic dwarf', and in a sense the same is true of Dickens.
Charles Dickens, by George Orwell
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