Programming note: On Friday, we shall have another brand new edition of The Mark Steyn Show, and some breaking news on the Mann vs Steyn front.
~Tales for Our Time is a unique feature of The Mark Steyn Club - and, I'm pleased to say, one of our most popular: our nightly audio serialisations of classic literature from Orwell's Nineteen Eighty-Four to Jane Austen's Northanger Abbey, via some neglected but highly pertinent gems such as Conan Doyle's tale of proto-jihadists preying on foolish westerners, The Tragedy of the Korosko.
Our current caper is Three Men on the Bummel, a comic travelogue of 1900 by Jerome K Jerome. Thank you for all your perceptive comments about this caper. In tonight's episode our narrator turns his attention to German alcohol intake. If all you know of that is "The Drinking Song" from The Student Prince, well, it's not quite as beguiling in reality:
All German students do not get drunk; in fact, the majority are sober, if not industrious. But the minority, whose claim to be representative is freely admitted, are only saved from perpetual inebriety by ability, acquired at some cost, to swill half the day and all the night, while retaining to some extent their five senses. It does not affect all alike, but it is common in any University town to see a young man not yet twenty with the figure of a Falstaff and the complexion of a Rubens Bacchus. That the German maiden can be fascinated with a face, cut and gashed till it suggests having been made out of odd materials that never could have fitted, is a proved fact. But surely there can be no attraction about a blotched and bloated skin and a "bay window" thrown out to an extent threatening to overbalance the whole structure. Yet what else can be expected, when the youngster starts his beer-drinking with a "Fruhschoppen" at 10 a.m., and closes it with a "Kneipe" at four in the morning?
Members of The Mark Steyn Club can hear me read Part Twenty-One of our tale simply by clicking here and logging-in. Earlier episodes can be found here.
I'll be right back here tomorrow with Part Twenty-Two of Three Men on the Bummel. If you're minded to join us in The Mark Steyn Club as we start our ninth season, you're more than welcome. You can find more information here. And, if you have a chum you think might enjoy Tales for Our Time (so far, we've covered H G Wells, Jane Austen, Dickens, Conrad, Kipling, Kafka, Gogol, Baroness Orczy, Victor Hugo, Louisa May Alcott, O Henry, John Buchan, Scott Fitzgerald and more), we have a special Gift Membership that makes a perfect birthday present.
