APS TOGETHER
Day 34
New Grub Street by George GissingChapter 34
December 9, 2023 by Yiyun Li
“He was not strong enough to reply with a plain ‘Yes,’ and so have done with his perplexities.”
This moment doesn’t make Milvain a better person, but it does make him a humane character: however calculating, he cannot make himself entirely ruthless.
“The success of Chit-Chat keeps him in good spirits.”
Gissing might not have meant to be funny, but I laughed out loud here. Really one of the most comic lines in this heavy novel.
“Whether I marry Marian or Miss Rupert, I sacrifice my strongest feelings—in the one case to a sense of duty, in the other to worldly advantage.”
Yes, yes, a perpetual dilemma faced by a certain subset of young men!
