Jack Maggs by Peter Carey
October 5th 2006 01:46
Jack Maggs is a convict who returns to London even under threat of hanging on exposure. He is supposed to meet a certain gentleman but finding that gentleman’s house empty, is recruited into the opposite household as a footman.
The household belongs to a green grocer turned gentleman who is trying his best to be respectable. He throws one dinner party which is attended by one Tobais Oates, a newly sensational author who is also something of a mesmerist. Maggs is forced to act as a footman to the party, a job for which he is most unsuitable. When he has an attack of tic doulouroeux, Tobias steps in and hypnotizes him to calm him down. And now the sensational author has found his new victim.
Tobias is sure that behind Jack lay some sensational story which he can exploit. Tobias has a secret of his own too; he is having an affair with his young sister-in-law. Jack of course has a secret and he wants to keep it to himself and into this cat and mouse game Mercy, the maid and other interesting characters are drawn.
Tobias is an interesting but typical character which pops in and out of Carey’s fiction. A wannabe geographer fighting the unhospitable bush terrain of Australia in Oscar and Lucinda or a literary fake posturing as a genuine artist in Theft, Carey’s fiction is laced with men with strong passions but little genius. Their overwhelming impulse is to be known as scientific men of renown and they are willing to do anything for it. Of all these characters, I think Tobias is the best drawn one.
The novel swims in a wet sensuality of heightened memory and is mildly entertaining. Carey is widely held have been in instrumental in raising an Australian literature and he has done this by capturing those flashes of memory Aussies have of themselves (Kelly gang in True History of Kelly Gang, colonization in Oscar and Lucinda). Jack Maggs deals with the prisoner exports and by having a convict return to London, Carey is examining the birth of a new nation and the desire even of a convict to return to the mother country. As Maggs keeps on saying, “I’m an Englishman”, but is he?
The household belongs to a green grocer turned gentleman who is trying his best to be respectable. He throws one dinner party which is attended by one Tobais Oates, a newly sensational author who is also something of a mesmerist. Maggs is forced to act as a footman to the party, a job for which he is most unsuitable. When he has an attack of tic doulouroeux, Tobias steps in and hypnotizes him to calm him down. And now the sensational author has found his new victim.
Tobias is sure that behind Jack lay some sensational story which he can exploit. Tobias has a secret of his own too; he is having an affair with his young sister-in-law. Jack of course has a secret and he wants to keep it to himself and into this cat and mouse game Mercy, the maid and other interesting characters are drawn.
Jack Maggs by Peter Carey
Tobias is an interesting but typical character which pops in and out of Carey’s fiction. A wannabe geographer fighting the unhospitable bush terrain of Australia in Oscar and Lucinda or a literary fake posturing as a genuine artist in Theft, Carey’s fiction is laced with men with strong passions but little genius. Their overwhelming impulse is to be known as scientific men of renown and they are willing to do anything for it. Of all these characters, I think Tobias is the best drawn one.
The novel swims in a wet sensuality of heightened memory and is mildly entertaining. Carey is widely held have been in instrumental in raising an Australian literature and he has done this by capturing those flashes of memory Aussies have of themselves (Kelly gang in True History of Kelly Gang, colonization in Oscar and Lucinda). Jack Maggs deals with the prisoner exports and by having a convict return to London, Carey is examining the birth of a new nation and the desire even of a convict to return to the mother country. As Maggs keeps on saying, “I’m an Englishman”, but is he?
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