Barry Lyndon [with Biographical Introduction] (Oxford World's Classics) [Kindle Edition]

Having seen the movie "Barry Lyndon" by Stanley Kubrick years ago, I was taken aback by this book which is so markedly different than the 1975 film. In the book, Lord Bullingdon is actually the hero, where Kubrick presented him merely as a cowardly cad. Redmond Barry (later as Barry Lyndon)deserves all the evils that befall him and his first person narrative is quite humorous especially when blaming everyone for his own shortcomings. Unfortunately, the ending leaves one a bit unsatisfied, quite like the dismal end of Mr. Lyndon himself. This novel is not on the level of Thackeray's "Vanity Fair", but fun to read nonetheless.

Here, in this relatively obscure work, Thackeray is at his ironic and satiric best. Modern critics lightly dismiss the book as a piece of journalistic hack work, but it is much more than that. Redmond Barry, later Barry Lyndon, chronicles in a fairly sophistocated and always lighthearted manner his rise from a poor Irish country boy to the astral heights of polite English society from 1750-1820. Mr. Barry is always Machievellian in his way, and is quick and efficient with his sword. He is Odysseus, Holden Caulfield, Don Juan, and Nabokov's Humbert Humbert merged. In a word, he is very, very entertaining and very, very good. The book's only glaring flaw is it's belabored and uninspired ending. But it is much worth reading to watch Redmond Barry when young

This story, like many others published in the 19th century, has many parallels today. The environment in which its characters were embedded in was certainly different, but their aspirations and pettiness has its analog in contemporary society. The moment when one decides to cloak oneself in the doctrine of respectability is when one has morphed into a Barry Lyndon. Thackeray's novel is in this sense a testament to conservatism: how traditions and beliefs, no matter how sterile they are, are dragged from one generation to the next. Young generations, of which Redmond Barry is an example, are fitted with the shackles of these beliefs, with only some managing to release themselves. The others are content to proceed along the path of a Barry Lyndon: to find some kind of contentment or belonging in societal norms, the latter of course never to be questioned.

Some readers may consider Barry the epitome of wisdom and cleverness. After all, he attained enormous wealth and respectability, and this is sometimes taken to be an acid test for intelligence and courage. And in this regard it must be remembered that Barry was at first no deadbeat: he was always good on his gambling debts. But apparently this was not "respectable" enough to buy his election to the House near the end of the story. Others plotted his defeat here, either motivated by envy or some other equally decadent emotion. Barry condemns the people (the Tiptoffs) that did this to him, as if he alone should be granted a divine right to swindle.

The historical tidbits in the novel are not to be missed: references to the American Revolution and its support by Edmund Burke, the hero of modern conservative thought; the mentioning of the "old scamp and swindler" Gustavus Adolphus; the Thirty Years War with its deplorable confrontation between Catholics and Protestants; and of course the Seven Year's War in which the story has as its backdrop.

But less Barry be condemned as being the most reprehensible of characters, one need only be reminded of Lord Bullingdon and his insistence on lineage as being the origin of true virtue. Or maybe Captain John Quin who demanded respect for his being an Englishman, and a "man of property." And then there is Barry's family, who scolded him for "robbing them of 1500l a year." These characters may induce a strong perturbation in some readers, enough perhaps to wish these characters' faces be decorated with a thick coat of saliva.

What could a reader say about the supposed "moral of the story", namely that worldly success is not always the consequence of virtue? There is a plethora of contemporary evidence for this: one need only step into a university to observe an abundance of milksops. But when one asks what the nature of good fortune really is, the issue becomes complex. One must then be able to differentiate luck from the results of carefully made plans, or even to dispense completely with the concept of luck. The Irish leprechaun is not to be depended upon in the story and "accomplishments" of Barry Lyndon, the untimely death of Sir Charles Lyndon not withstanding. Barry's misfortunes and eventual demise were mainly the result of his comfort at being an ornament of English society, with his self-painting using the varnishes of unearned wealth, with his dogmatic belief that only rogues succeed in life, with his selling of his personal liberty to the Establishment, the latter of which he pledged steadfast obedience and homage. In the latter Barry shows kinship to the contemporary conservative, who asks us to respect institutions and hierarchies, but this going hand in hand with the perhaps unintended consequence of showing "hearty scorn and abhorrence of all other forms of belief".

But Barry's sojourn in the logosphere of pretentious English society did not last throughout his life, he eventually passing on in debtors prison. This is a fitting tribute to one who thought mammon to be the most stable and controlling entity in his existence. Barry was thrown in prison for not paying his debts, and like these he never paid the debt to himself: the self that he extinguished as soon as he made the decision to embed himself in the established practices of his day, however sterile, unproductive, and supercilious they were.