Talk:Tourmalin's Time Cheques
Add topic| Information about this edition | |
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| Edition: | New York: D. Appleton and company, 1891. |
Review
[edit]The Nation, July 23, 1891: From the fact of the navigator's gaining time in sailing with the sun around the globe, and the aphorism "Time is money," the author of 'Vice Versâ' evolves an Anglo-Australian Joint Stock Time Bank, Limited, for the deposit of one's spare time at compound interest, drawable in sums not smaller than fifteen minutes, and cashed on presentation by any clock in motion. He applies this conceit to Peter Tourmalin on the voyage in the Boomerang from Sydney to Plymouth, England, with results as ludicrous as they are incalculable, and with a verisimilitude which Mr. Frank Stockton might envy. Mr. Anstey's ingenuity is equal to every demand of his absurd hypothesis, and is tested to the utmost by his contriving that the cashing of the minimum checks by which Peter is transported from London at will back to the deck of the Boomerang, shall be arbitrary on the part of the Bank so far as relates to the order of time. Hence Peter's successive experiences are not consecutive, the sequel often precedes the antecedent, and a series of fascinating complexities and misunderstandings and false situations arises, ending in a truly terrible climax. Mr. Anstey has done nothing more original or fantastic with more success, and it is to be said that the reader, however tempted to hurry on to the dénouement, can also without loss draw his chapters, as Peter did his cheques, with a decent interval. The American edition[1] of this story shows, by its mean and slovenly typography, that it was the hurried last of the piracies in which we have heretofore indulged ourselves. We congratulate the author that his admirable and individual humor will hereafter have a right to be paid for by Americans who enjoy it—and may their name be legion.
- ↑ Chicago: Charles H. Sergei & Co.