Mr. Pooter & the Fevers of Youth

“We often forgive those who bore us,” wrote La Rochefoucauld, “but never those whom we bore.” Charles Pooter, the Nobody in question of George and Weedon Grossmith’s classic comic novel, Diary of a Nobody, shows all the hallmarks of a bore: often pompous, pedantic, and lacking in self-awareness. “I don’t often make jokes,” he repeats in his entries, usually in advance of the announcement of yet another Victorian Dad Joke he mistakes for the essence of hilarity. Yet, for over a century, readers have not only forgiven Mr. Pooter; they have loved him and his fourteen months of diary entries detailing lower-middle-class suburban London life. As an inveterate Dad Joker and father myself, I find him most sympathetic—none more so than when he is dealing with his rather outrageous young adult son, William, who has decided to rename himself Lupin.