#THE CLOCKMAKER THOMAS CHANDLER HALIBURTON SERIAL#
The serial publication of The Clockmaker in 1835-36 launched Canadian judge Thomas Chandler Haliburton to literary fame. The two sides of the question involved are as little a matter of concern to the general reader as the opposing factions of York and Lancaster. One does not need to be deeply concerned in Nova Scotia prosperity, nor versed in the turnings of petty politics, to take a lively pleasure in the sharp thrusts which the author, under shield of the Clockmaker's wit, gives at stupidity and narrowness. The keen peddler comes sharply forward from a background of Provincial shiftlessness and dullness, and it is a mark of the geniality of the book that, although it seems to have had its origin in a desire on the part of its author to goad the Provinces into energy and alertness, the local questions and politics discussed give a flavour to the narrative without limiting the reader's interest. In no other work of literature is there preserved so large a collection of idiomatic phrases, words, and similes,-whole stories in themselves and pictures of society at the time, which grow more interesting, the more historic they become. However true or false the impression it created, the qualities which rendered it popular a generation ago remain, in a shrewdness of observation, a fund of anecdote and racy adventure, a quaintness of expression, and keen mother wit. It is now revived, under the impression that the reading public will have an interest in seeing a work which, more probably than any other one book, served to fix the prevailing idea of the Yankee character. An excerpt: The name "Sam Slick" has passed into popular use as standing for a somewhat conventional Yankee, in whom sharpness and verdancy are combined in curious proportions but the book which gave rise to the name has long been out of print.
0 kommentar(er)
