On a whim, I had bought several Penguin Classics editions of Anthony Trollope’s novels, but several years ago when I picked one randomly, I had chanced upon ‘He knew he was right’, and I confess that at roughly 800+ pages, it seemed kind of slow-moving.

As you probably know, I (am proud to) have ADHD, so it’s really not easy to do anything– let alone read. But as those who know how ADHD really functions already realize, once we’re certain our energy is not wasted, we pour it all in–what is called hyperfocus in certain circles.

I was unable to finish HKHWR, for several reasons. One, at the time, I wasn’t a sophisticated reader–that is,
as a human being, I hadn’t suffered enough to become deeply introspective and aggressively observant enough. I used to live in a bubble of sorts, protected from the worst human beings who hadn’t yet come into my life. My bubble was a happy one because I also hadn’t experienced genuine and long-lasting grief. But 2019 was the beginning of the end of my so-called bubble.

Having suffered a great deal, and overcoming most if not all of it, I ended up becoming a very different person; I was so totally deprogrammed that even my fear of dogs had been automatically eliminated. Not only I don’t fear dogs, I even have one! Intellectually, the 2019-2022 period is a total blank. I was clinically depressed, and I didn’t do anything. But slowly, as I was struggling, I began to live again in late 2022 (which corresponds to my Quora activity if you study it).

That’s when I realized I had become a totally different person. I put up this blog around then, to record this new me. I also wanted to write my reviews of the books I was reading, to see how I was changing in my views, and in the ways I was expressing those views.

Anyway, to return, I was browsing through my library when I noticed Trollope’s books. HKHWR was there, making me feel guilty I hadn’t finished it, but I wanted to do something fresh, as the former book was sort of depressing (or I was depressed when I was reading it). So I picked The Eustace Diamonds, totally randomly.

And what a book it turned out to be!

After all the difficulties I had experienced, after realizing that human beings around me mostly only looked human, certain observations Trollope was repeatedly making began to click, as if we had both undergone similar experiences.

But it was also a lot of fun. Imagine “Downtown Abbey” on steroids. While serious in places, it was also hilariously sarcastic, and I laughed out loudly in several places. I had read Dickens but didn’t like his works or personality. He seems to me a mere hack compared to Trollope. I also didn’t like Thackeray. He seems to complain too much. Even when he is not whinging, he appears to be. Eliot was equally meh at best, and Radcliffe, while better than all these three, seemed somewhat shallow. Even Wilkie Collins seemed somewhat boring after reading Trollope, mainly because Collins focuses on the sensation generated by actions, whereas Trollope focuses on the outcomes that are due to personality and Banduran Social Learning. The focus on personality as the generator of interesting action is certainly more realistic, but also useful.

It’s useful because like Gogol, Trollope seems to be mocking specific archetypes. Even when he is not focusing on a complete archetype, his opinions on smaller details is both artistic but also extremely useful: in Eustace Diamonds, he describes Lizzie’s eyes as dangerous, something like “The eyes were special but not in a good way: there was danger written all over them” (this my paraphrase based on my memory. His own style is much more concise). As I was reading this, someone was introduced to me (a potential business client) whose eyes reminded me of the description of Lizzie’s eyes. Otherwise everything was fine–at least initially–but I didn’t like his eyes–how his eyes sort of devoured every image, or more precisely, seemed hungry, with a hint of distance (he was looking at people as if they were much farther than they actually were) that made them appear cold and psychopathic. (Of course I declined to work with that client, and in doing so, probably saved myself a lot of headache.)

The other thing that distinguishes Trollope is his writing style. It’s fluid, and varied, and interesting. It seems as if he is taking extra delight in showing off his command of the language. But more than that, the language is uniquely Trollopian, so that after I finally finished the 800 pages of The Eustace Diamonds, I went back to HKHWR, to see if I could give it another try.

And indeed, now, as a different reader, I saw a lot of stylistic and artistic elements from the Diamond book decorating HKHWR. The first five chapters or so always seem a tad slow in Trollope’s books, but once you’re past that, all hell breaks loose and you will not put it down till you find out exactly what happened next. And as a bonus, you’ll have also learned a lot of the hard lessons from the school of hard knocks, vicariously of course, since Trollope is not a mere writer– he is a psychologist and a street-smart artist who knows how to combine the art with the medicine, in order to both entertain and educate.