Tono-Bungay

By H. G. Wells

According to Wikipedia: "Tono-Bungay (1909), by H. G. Wells, is a realist semi-autobiographical novel. It is narrated by George Ponderevo, a science student who is drafted in to help with the promotion of Tono-Bungay, a harmful stimulant disguised as a miraculous cure-all, the creation of his ambitious uncle Edward. The quack remedy Tono-Bungay seems to have been based upon the patent medicines Carter's Little Liver Pills and Dr. Williams' Pink Pills for Pale People, marketed by John Morgan Richards. As the tonic prospers, George experiences a swift rise in social status, elevating him to riches and opportunities that he had never imagined, nor indeed desired.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Seltzer Books
• Release date: Mar 1, 2018
• ISBN: 9781455401215

H. G. Wells

H.G. Wells is considered by many to be the father of science fiction. He was the author of numerous classics such as The Invisible Man, The Time Machine, The Island of Dr. Moreau, The War of the Worlds, and many more. 

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Reviews for Tono-Bungay

[bzbooks · Rating: 3 out of 5 stars]

Enjoyable writing style, some interesting (but now dated) philosophical points, no real payoff at the end for me.

[porius_1 · Rating: 5 out of 5 stars]

Henry James accused Wells and his fellow wriers, especially Bennett, and Galsworthy of artless writing: "they squeeze out to the utmost the plump and more or less juicy orange of a parricular aquainted state and let their affirmation of energy, however directed or undirected, constitute for them the treatment of the theme." James named it excessive exclusiveness - or saturation. "The more he knows and knows, or at any rate learns and learns, wrote James, "the greater our impresssion that he shall but turn out his mind and its contents upon us by any free familiar gesture as from a high window for ever open." Sounds like a scene from Monty Python. Wells fired back with this: that Jame's writing was compared to a magnificent but ungainly hippo resolved to at any cost, even the cost of his dignity, upon picking up a pea which it has got in the corner of its den. Wells apologized for his irreverence and referred to his own book in question as a "waste-paper basket."Of course Wells was moving all this while towards a mor modern outlook. The main character in Tono-Bungay in the final section of this novel explains that he is attempting to render the messy totality of his life, and thus that both book and life will necessarily appear as Pastiche: "a succession of samples," something of am agglomeration," a hotch-potch."In the end the critics call out Wells for his lack of style. Mark Shorer's 1948 essay, "Technique as Discovery" offered one of the earliest and most enduring critiques of Wells' stylistic shortcomings. For Shorer Wells "flounders through a series of literary imitations - from an early Dickensian, episode, through a kind of Shavian interlude, through a Conradian episode, to a Jules Verne vision at the end. The significant failure is in that end... As far as one can tell Wells intends no irony... The novel ends in a kind of meditative rhapsody which denies every value that the book has been aiming toward. For all the kinds of social waste which Wells has been describing, this is the most inclusive, the final waste."We forgive Joyce for his use of parody, but not Wells. What, no irony? I've been infrequently disappointed by anything of Wells. Tono-Bungay is funny and about something important at its core.

[baswood · Rating: 5 out of 5 stars]

This is a substantial novel by H G Wells, which bulges at the seams with ideas, themes and storylines. Some critics have acclaimed it as his best novel and I can understand why, because at times I felt I was reading a great novel. It is the bulging at the seams feeling that gives me pause for thought: Wells was never going to write the "perfect" novel, he was far too prolific and intent on moving on to his next big idea to be able to steady himself to produce such a masterpiece; it just was not his thing to do. He might have realised that Tono-Bungay contained some of his best writing, because the final chapter is a sort of coda to the rest of the book which imaginatively tries to tie it all together and do you know; he very nearly pulls it off. Let me explain:The story of the life of George Ponderovo is told in the first person and we first meet our hero as a teenager and son of the housekeeper in service at Bladesover; a stately mansion. It reads rather like an episode from Downton Abbey where George disgraces himself by getting too familiar with Lady Beatrice the young daughter and is sent away to relatives. The descriptions of the servants lives "downstairs" is very well brought to life as is the dependence of the local village to Bladesover, there is a feel here of a world that is resisting change and our sympathies are all with George as he is taken by his mother to be an apprentice to a baker in a large town. Georges sojourn with the working class down at heel baker who has no life beyond his struggle to make ends meet is mercifully brief as George runs away. He makes it back to Bladesover, but that world is now closed to him and he is again taken by his mother to an estranged relative; his uncle Edward Ponderevo, who runs a chemist shop. Edward Ponderevo is a small man with big ideas, always scheming and looking for the break that will allow him to make his fortune. He gets on well with George and rehearses with him his ideas of how he can be successful:"the whole trend of modern money making is to foresee something that will presently be needed and to put it out of reach and to haggle yourself wealthy"Uncle Edward was constantly on the lookout for these, which he called "corners" and we soon learn of his big idea: Tono-Bungay, which is a sort of elixir that Edward has concocted and which he believes he can sell as a "cure all" for people who need a "pick-me-up". George decides to educate himself and with an iron self discipline sets himself on a course of study in London and here Wells rewrites his earlier novel [Love and Mr Lewisham]. George wins scholarships, but falls in love with Marion who stimulates his sex drive to such an extent that he will do anything to get her. She proves elusive to his needs and George realises he must marry and to do this he needs an income. He revisits Uncle Edward to find him in the process of setting up a factory to produce bottles of Tono-Bungay. He asks George to run the factory for him at a salary that will allow him to marry Marion. George's marriage soon gets into trouble, they are sexually incompatible and Marion's outlook and world are not compatible to George's. The breakdown of the relationship and the divorce are brilliantly handled by Wells, who poured much of his own life experience into his writing. It certainly struck a chord with me. Well's writing about the impersonal nature of London's inhabitants is also spot on, as is the drive for success, which heralds in changing times another major theme of the book. However bound up with this is the "Mrs Grundyisms" of many of the people; those who are frightened of change and who cling to the world in which they know and were brought up in.Meanwhile Uncle Edward's business ventures are becoming more and more successful, he is expanding; buying up businesses that were his suppliers and venturing further afield. The trick is the relentless advertising and Wells once more you feel pours his own feelings into Georges thoughts on the self made men of the time: "The irrational muddle of the community in which we live gave him that, paid him at that rate for sitting in a room and scheming and telling it lies. For he created nothing, he invented nothing, he economised nothing. I cannot claim that a single one of the great businesses we organised added any real value to human life at all. Several like Tono-Bungay were unmitigated frauds by any honest standards, the giving of nothing coated in advertisements for money" The flags flutter, the crowds cheer, the legislatures meet. Yet it seems to me indeed at times that all this present commercial civilisation is no more than my poor uncle's career writ large, a swelling, thinning bubble of assurances, that its arithmetic is just as unsound, it's dividends as ill-advised, its ultimate aim as vague and forgotten, that it all drifts on perhaps to some tremendous parallel to his individual disaster. Uncle Edward knows only one thing; the drive to succeed, he buys bigger and better houses, he becomes a magnate, an important player in the financial world, he is addicted to acquisitiveness and Wells says of people like him that Acquisitiveness becomes the substance of their lives.George gets more and more alienated from the successful business world and follows his interest in aeronautics. He works with a chosen engineer in an effort to build the first motor powered aircraft. Wells lovingly describes the problems involved and the attempts to fly. George has become very rich working with his uncle and Lady Beatrice the girl from his childhood days once again enters his life. The novel then lurches into an adventure story as George leads a piratical expedition to steal some Quap (yes Quap) from a deserted location off the African coast. Quap is radioactive material that Uncle Edward believes will save his tottering empire. George recognises that Quap is Cancerous, that its radioactivity is like a contagious disease that leads to decay and he compares this to the society that he has just temporarily left behind.Uncle George's empire falls, he is thrown to the wolves and Wells manages to cram in a deathbed scene that somehow hankers back to Victorian romanticism rather than forward to Edwardian commercialism. Tono-Bungay feels like a novel at a crossroads. Published in 1909 it portrays a society in the process of change, but not really a change for the better. In Well's view it is a time of lost opportunity and his coda at the end of the book looks at scientific invention and perhaps truth as a possible way out of the trough as George powers a destroyer down the river Thames reflecting on the London that he passes, which has also been a major player in this novel. Adventure story, a critique of adventure capitalism, some science and some science fiction (the Quap), a love story, the decay of civilisation, a portrait of a city, changing times all compete for the readers attention in this most ambitious of novels. Wells doesn't quite hold it all together, but there is so much that is great in this novel, so much good writing, that it does not deserve the obscurity that it currently enjoys. Enthusiastically recommended and a 4.5 star read.

[prop2gether · Rating: 5 out of 5 stars]

This novel was an unexpected joy to read--I usually find Wells to be plodding in style while inventive in his story. This novel follows its own path and, while I only pulled it because it is on the 1001 Must Read list, I had great fun following George on his life's path.

[bug_girl · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

It's both amazing and alarming how much this book still rings true. It's the story of a huckster. Or, more accurately, a want-to-be chemist who turned into a huckster."This irrational muddle of a community in which we live gave him that, paid him at that rate for sitting in a room and scheming and telling it lies. For he created nothing, he invented nothing, he economized nothing....It was all a monstrous payment for courageous fiction, a gratuity in return for the one reality of human life -- illusion. We gave them a feeling of hope and profit; we sent a tidal wave of water and confidence into their stranded affairs."

[john257hopper · Rating: 2 out of 5 stars]

Gave up on this one two thirds of the way through. It is considerably longer than other Wells novels, and the central plot of the quack invention was too peripheral to sustain my interest among the meanderings of the narrator's life and loves. Disappointing.

[jvioland_1 · Rating: 3 out of 5 stars]

How marketing a product can lead to riches and then to bankruptcy. Insightful and pertinent to today's consumer.

[chewdigest · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

This isn't the H.G. Wells you think you know and it is a genius commentary of advertising and the boom/bust that it brings into our lives even today. Take what is basically water, call it Tono-Bungay and market the heck out of it as the medicine that will cure practically anything. You have a hit, a fad, the next big thing, but slowly that empire that you build on nothing starts to crumble. You start buying your own advertising slogans, everything you touch turns to gold and getting full of yourself. The bottom falls out and what is left?

[lisahistory · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

The one where the protaganist works in his uncle's chemist shop, helping create a market a cough syrup that makes his uncle rich. Then he loses everything.

[brakketh-1 · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

Startlingly frank in places for an Edwardian novel. Enjoyable fictional biography about the business and personal life of George Pondevero.

[jwhenderson_1 · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

This is Wells as Dickens in a mode of novel-writing that aims at the nineteenth century version of social justice (even though it was published at the end of the first decade of the twentieth century). It is narrated by a young man, George Ponderevo, who, while not as appealing as the best of Dickens' heroes, has a certain charm. His rise along with that of his Uncle Teddy is chronicled with wit and an ear for the details of turn of the century commerce that make the book rewarding to the interested reader. Wells was able to write deeper and had a greater pallette than those who may have only read his early science-romances might imagine.

[ganeshaka · Rating: 5 out of 5 stars]

Tono-Bungay. WTF? I mean, like, if you were browsing through Barnes and Noble, would you pick up a novel with a title that sounds like the Cherokee tribal name for Richard Simmons? And a novel by H.G. Wells? Didn't he write science fiction a long LONG time ago. He was steampunk before anyone knew what steampunk was? Well there you go, that explains why this masterpiece of a novel sleeps in oblivion. But do put aside your preconceptions, and do pick it up. Tono is, in many ways, very relevent, and satirizes societal and economic flaws that remain problematic. At its best moments, Tono-Bungay is another The Great Gatsby - a different author, a slightly different perspective, and a slightly earlier era -but every bit as poignant and lyrical a summation of the broken promises of "progress" and "success".The title, though it has a Malaysian flavor, and a whiff of H. Rider Haggard, actually refers to a bottled elixir much like Coca-Cola. The central story concerns a flim-flam, super hyped empire founded on that elixir, and the subsequent skyrocketing and plummeting fortunes of the chemist, Edward Ponderevo, who invents it. The epic is narrated by his nephew and assistant, George, who is the real protagonist of the novel. In parts, the novel contains semi-autobigraphical sketches by Wells, who, by the way, was much much more than just a science fiction writer (curiously, many of the best observers of the late Victorian and Edwardian eras are remembered only for their lighter work. Jack London, for White Fang, R.L.Stevenson for Treasure Island, H.G.Wells for the Time Machine, etc.)The novel is a melange of styles, starting out a bit like David Copperfield, containing a Conradian episode toward the end, and finishing with a flourish like F.Scott Fitzgerald. But the writing is clear throughout, and the narrative never waivers. Wells alternates between exploring the complexities of romance - as they are experienced by the nephew - and dissecting the absurdities of the business world - as it is exploited by his uncle. Along the way, we get a backwards look at the crumbling class structure of Victorian England - fading, for better or for worse. Ultimately, the sentiment conveyed by the nephew, lingers like complex perfume. Pessimism, romance, science, humor, nostalgia combine into a scent that evokes the glory, tragedy, and absurdity of human enterprise. A scent that lingers unto this century - as we, no wiser, use technological marvels like iPads to watch undersea robots struggle to plug a monstrous hole, a mile beneath a once blue, and fertile, sea.

[amerynth · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

I picked up H.G Wells' "Tono-Bungay" mainly because I grew up on a lake with a name similar to the title so I knew absolutely nothing about the story or plot. I was pleasantly surprised by this story, which was really engrossing and interesting.The novel tells the story of George Ponderevo, who becomes wrapped up in his uncle's scheme to sell some sort of cure-all tonic that, of course, they both know is all bunk. The story is more expansive than that description, basically following the events of Ponderevo's life (and little touching on his business activities.) There is a ton of social commentary ranging from religion to socialism to the English class system along the way.On the whole I really enjoyed the book... there were some parts that dragged a little. I found the sections about Tono-Bungay (the miracle tonic) itself to be the most interesting, but Wells wanders away from that topic frequently. Overall, this was a fun book.