The way of all flesh
I am the enfant terrible of literature and science. If I cannot, and I know I cannot, get the literary and scientific big-wigs to give me a shilling, I can, and I know I can, heave bricks into the middle of them.' With The Way of All Flesh, Samuel Butler threw a subversive brick at the smug face of Victorian domesticity. Published in 1903, a year after Butler's death, the novel is a thinly disguised account of his own childhood and youth 'in the bosom of a Christian family'. With irony, wit and sometimes rancour, he savaged contemporary values and beliefs, turning inside-out the conventional novel of a family's life through several generations.
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2recommend
4mentions
4people
2013–2025years
50% recommend50% neutral
Mentions per year
What Hacker News says
- > Any specific reasons why?
I don't think it reads very smoothly, and Butler adopts a kind of archaic tone (even for the time, I mean—not just that the translation is, itself, now old) that does more harm than good to the text. Not literal enough to justify the clunkiness, not distinctive and skilled and poetically-sublime enough to be a great English work in its own right (see: Pope) despite putting some effort into it[1]—basically, just a rougher read than other options, without much benefit to offset that. It's not terrible, I'm just not sure there's anything to recommend it—I'd say read a different Homer, and if you want to read Butler, read Erewhon or one of his other novels.
[1] For instance, from the link:
"So saying she bound on her glittering golden sandals, imperishable, with which she can fly like the wind over land or sea; she grasped the redoubtable bronze-shod spear, so stout and sturdy and strong, [...]"
He's trying with all that alliteration and the meter, and at times it works quite well for the space of a few words, but the wider a view, if you will, one takes of it, and as one proceeds with the reading, the worse it looks—to my eye, anyway.
[EDIT]
Other Butler, for free.
Erewhon:
https://standardebooks.org/ebooks/samuel-butler/erewhon
The Way of All Flesh:
https://standardebooks.org/ebooks/samuel-butler/the-way-of-a...
If you read and like Erewhon, you'll probably also like the sequel Erewhon Revisited. Didn't see it on Standard Ebooks, but I assume PG has it.
- I read The Way of All Flesh as a kid. I remember liking it but can't recall much more about it.
- Technical followed by non-technical. I read more than these, but these are the highlights.
Mouse, a Language for Microcomputers by Peter Grogono - Mouse is basically an esolang with barely any abstraction facilities, but the book was well-written and the language compelling enough to explore further.
Notes on Distance Dialing (pdf) by AT&T - Described the telephone systems of the USA and Canada in the mid-1950s. The reading is a dry as it gets, but it was a fascinating dive into a vastly complex system solving extremely hard problems. This is a must-read for folks interested in systems-thinking. That said, I am actively looking for recommendations for books about the process of designing and building the unbelievably complex telephony system over the rudiments of the earlier systems. Recommendations welcomed!
The Eye of Osiris by R. Austin Freeman - This is the first book that I’ve read from Freeman and I suspect that I will read many more in the future. The story follows the disappearance of John Bellingham, Egyptologist and the subsequent investigation. As the investigation stalls, the eminent Dr. Thorndyke digs into the case. The story sets up the mystery nicely and indeed provides enough information to the reader to infer how the disappearance occurred and who or what facilitated it. The book is one of the best whodunits that I’ve ever read.
The Mystery of Edwin Drood by Charles Dickens - His final work remains unfinished as he passed away before he could complete it. Further complicating the meta-story is that he also didn’t outline the ending nor even put to paper the “villain” of the story. The meta-mystery of the ending has motivated a mountain of speculation around the ending including dozens of continuations of the story from other authors, all deriving their pet endings from textual hints, accounts from Dickens’ friends, illustration notes, and even in some cases seances supposedly accompanied by the spirit of Dickens himself. What was written by Dickens is spectacular and a compelling mystery and although it would be great to know the resolution, in some ways the “Droodiana” that has cropped up over the past 150+ years is reason enough for it to remain a mystery. The whole lore around Edwin Drood is a worthwhile hobby in itself and well-worth exploring. The Chiltern Library edition of the book contains the story and a good bit of the lore around the writing and the meta-works available at the time of its publication.
The Shadow People by Margaret St. Clair - Sadly out of print and difficult to find, but I’ve had it on my shelves for decades and finally got around to reading it. The book came onto my radar in the 1980s when I learned about it in the appendix-n of the 1st edition Advanced D&D Dungeon Masters Guide. I enjoyed many of the books at the time and have slowly swung around to re-reading them over the past few years. Sadly, most on the list do not stand the test of time for me, but St. Clair’s mixture of 60s counter-cultural leanings in a fantasy/sf world still works. The cultural touch-points in the book feel quite dated, but despite the occasional awkwardness, the story is unique even today.
Lolly Willowes by Sylvia Townsend Warner - The book started as a passable novel of manners focused on a turn of the century British middle-class family. The titular character was mostly background decoration for the first third of the novel and AFAIR was talked about only in the third-person. It’s only when she made the choice to move out on her own to the country in her middle age does she gain a central role in the narrative and her inner thoughts revealed. This is where things really pick up because I was shocked to learn that this unassuming woman’s inner thoughts had a delicious darkness to them. I don’t want to give away too much, but I’ll just say that you will not expect how the story ends.
Patience by Daniel Clowes - A profound graphic novel using time-travel to explore the idea of enduring love with a story that proceed through time, following Jack as he tries to alter the past and save the woman he loves. This well-known science fiction motif is elevated by Clowes’ signature psychological complexity.
Narcissus and Goldmund by Herman Hesse - I’ve read most of the books by Hermann Hesse but this one escaped my attention until this year. The story follows the parallel lives of a monk Narcissus and his passionate friend Goldmund as they respectively search for meaning in life through spiritual means and through pleasures of the flesh.
We Who Are About To… by Joanna Russ - A small group of astronauts crash land on a hostile alien world and quickly realize that rescue is unlikely to come. Many SF stories have started this way and so the expectation is that this is a colonization story… but Russ thrives on subverting reader expectations.
Fifty Forgotten Records by R.B. Russell - Another lovely entry in Russell’s series (one can hope) of autobiographical explorations of art, so far covering literature and now music. This book describes 50 records of varying popularity and Russell’s personal connections to each. While I certainly enjoyed finding a dozen or so new albums to explore, the true triumph of the book lies in the vulnerable, reflective memoir threaded throughout.
The Way of All Flesh by Samuel Butler A novel that follows 4-generations of the Ponitifex family, with a particular bildungsroman-esque thread around Ernest, a young man who’s naivete leads to his downfall and how his life unfolds thereafter.
I wrote about these (and more) at https://blog.fogus.me/2025/12/23/the-best-things-and-stuff-o...
- Orwell's The Road to Wigan Pier goes into this, among other things, in the context of 1930s England. I don't know how much the situation in China is similar:
http://www.george-orwell.org/The_Road_to_Wigan_Pier/6.html
The time was when I used to lament over quite imaginary pictures of lads of fourteen dragged protesting from their lessons and set to work at dismal jobs. It seemed to me dreadful that the doom of a 'job' should descend upon anyone at fourteen. Of course I know now that there is not one working-class boy in a thousand who does not pine for the day when he will leave school. He wants to be doing real work, not wasting his time on ridiculous rubbish like history and geography. To the working class, the notion of staying at school till you are nearly grown-up seems merely contemptible and unmanly. The idea of a great big boy of eighteen, who ought to be bringing a pound a week home to his parents, going to school in a ridiculous uniform and even being caned for not doing his lessons! Just fancy a working-class boy of eighteen allowing himself to be caned! He is a man when the other is still a baby. Ernest Pontifex, in Samuel Butler's Way of All Flesh, after he had had a few glimpses of real life, looked back on his public school and university education and found it a 'sickly, debilitating debauch'. There is much in middle-class life that looks sickly and debilitating when you see it from a working-class angle.
