Review: Diary of a Pilgrimage

Diary of a Pilgrimage by Jerome K. Jerome
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

Jerome's follow-up to Three Men in a Boat , the book that made his name and fortune, was another travel story, this fictionalized account of a trip to see the Oberammergau passion play - presumably in 1890, since it's performed in years ending in 0 and the book was published in 1891. It offers an Englishman's view of Germany, nearly a decade and a half before the First World War (which event, I would imagine, reduced the demand for this book and Three Men on the Bummel , the story of a cycling trip to Germany with his former companions from the boating trip). As well as the travelogue itself, it's scattered with obviously exaggerated comic incidents in which everyone, certainly including Jerome himself, looks like idiots. It's the same "dealing with frustrating but not really dangerous obstacles" comic genre that the later American writer Patrick F. McManus does so well.

For my taste, most of the comic and landscape-related set-pieces would have been improved if they were cut by ten to fifteen percent, and the occasional philosophical ones if they were cut by fifty to a hundred percent. But that's me. I did like the description of the play itself, even if it ran a little long; in an era when British law still prevented any member of the Trinity from being represented on the stage, Jerome's musings on how seeing the life of Jesus portrayed by actors touched him in ways that a book or a sermon could not were subversive as well as devout.

The narrator of this audiobook edition is excellent, and really adds to the experience. It's not just a reading of the book; it's a performance, with asides delivered in an undertone, and strong accent work for the various characters encountered on the journey.

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