To Understand the World: The Novels of Anthony Trollope by Orlando Bartro
Anthony Trollope’s novels purport to be realistic.
They are full of authenticating details drawn from life. They are set in the residences of dukes, in the conference rooms of parliaments, in the offices of lawyers, in the stables of hunters, in the smoking room of social clubs. They contain nothing supernatural, mysterious, or dreamlike. They are sober, clear accounts. The writing style is workmanlike, exact, and concrete, with a metaphor or simile only once or twice intruding in a span of eight hundred pages.
But for me, the wonder of Trollope’s novels is not their realism—but the fact that Trollope believes he is describing the world when he isn’t.
Trollope (like most people when they reach a certain age) believes he mostly understands how the world works.
But one’s impression of reality isn’t the same as reality.
To me, Trollope’s understanding of “the real world” is charming and alien. I’m confident that he believes that the reality he knows is the reality that is—but it isn’t reality, not at all, not at all.
For example, in Phineas Redux, there is a trial that any lawyer will tell you is only the way a member of the public might imagine a trial actually to be. The “reality picture” in Trollope’s mind is actually an elaborately fantastical vision. I’m a fan because I’ve always been a fan of the fantastical.
* Orlando Bartro is the author of Toward Two Words, a comical & surreal novel about a man who finds yet another woman he never knew, usually available at Amazon for $4.91.