Willie died from diphtheria. My maternal grandparents lost a baby boy to diphtheria, who was said to have been such a cute child that he won a baby contest in Shanghai in the 1930s, sponsored by an American (or British) baby formula. One day I mentioned tuberculosis (TB) in the classroom and my students thought I was talking about ancient history, but my father had TB in the 1950s. We can feel that medical science has come a long way when we read literature from yesteryear, or when we have family stories passed down.
Biffen dressed up in a new outfit is the only hopeful note in this chapter. No wonder George Orwell called the novel disheartening.
The chapter title is “Reardon Becomes Practical”—there is a bit of irony in that: a dead man, inevitably, cannot go on being impractical. It reminds me of that grimly famous saying in Graham Greene’s The Quiet American: “The only quiet American is a dead American.”
Join us on December 13 for a virtual discussion of New Grub Street with Yiyun Li.
Great chapter title indeed. During my Peace Corps days in Sri Lanka I went to a “convalescent home” for Typhoid (which my grandmother had when she was young) and I surely felt unstuck in time.
I felt Reardon would have been offed in the first reel of a modern movie with all his whining. But I admit to having a naive hope for a miracle recovery if he was coming around to some more positive attitude. And for those of us readers who are giving ourselves or someone too much harsh criticism, we can do better than a deathbed TB revelation. Did everyone else know he had to die, even with that chapter title?
The word practical was used in an earlier chapter title, "A Practical Friend" — which I think referred to Biffen, or Jasper talking down Reardon's wild imagination — whereas here the characterization of "practical" seems to now transfer to Reardon, who has come down to Earth (both metaphorically and literally, I suppose). He realizes his dreams of Greece are just dreams, and he also realizes he still has Amy, so there's a moment of grace. The chapter title seems to offer a glimpse of hope that he died in peace. Although, I was preparing, in a sense, for it, there's no consolation for Willie, and his innocence lies heavy on my heart — I will surely remember him for a while.