Jerome, George & Harris

Three Men in a Boat is not, on the surface, a philosophical work. It is a comic novel about three men and a dog taking a boating holiday up the Thames, getting into minor difficulties, and complaining about the weather. And yet it is the founding text of Wayfarist levity, and arguably the reason the fourth pillar exists at all.

The entire trip is a sustained Motion exercise. They are going somewhere specific, with companions, doing concrete things — rowing, camping, cooking badly, getting lost. The structure is pure Wayfarism: movement with direction, difficulty met with persistence, the work talking back constantly. They are not good at any of this. It does not matter. They continue.

What transforms the book from pleasant travelogue to something approaching philosophy is the levity. Every disaster is recorded with the same affectionate irony. The tin of pineapple that cannot be opened. The maze at Hampton Court. Harris singing comic songs. The tone never wavers: this is all absurd, we are all absurd, and it is entirely worth doing anyway.

Jerome himself is the Wayfarer in miniature. He has hypochondria, mild uselessness, genuine warmth, and the capacity to find everything funny without finding it meaningless. His companions are no better — George is pompous, Harris is deluded about his own competence — and the friendship survives because no one expects anyone to be otherwise.

The book teaches, without ever announcing that it is teaching, that seriousness held lightly is more durable than seriousness held grimly. The trip succeeds not despite the disasters but because the disasters are received correctly. This is Wayfarism before the word existed.

"I like work: it fascinates me. I can sit and look at it for hours."