The Unfortunate Traveller—which even sounds like a time-traveling science fiction adventure—is more at home in the literary zeitgeist of the 21st century that it has ever been at any time in history. In fact, the Elizabethan readers for whom Thomas Nashe originally wrote pretty collectively shrugged, tipped the balladeer, knocked back a mug of mead and said “Next!” One can get a feel for just how influential the literary opinions of this age were by looking at the history of The Unfortunate Traveller over the next few ensuing centuries. By the time the Victorian century was over with, it still remained relatively obscure. Somewhat weirdly, the book would have to wait until the second Elizabethan age to finally earn its due. The rise to queenly status of young Princess Elizabeth co-existed along with the rise of postmodernism and the Age of Irony. Both these qualities would become necessary before Nashe’s postmodernist sensibility would be fully appreciated.
To read this picaresque tale by a very unreliable narrator named Jack is not that different in tone and scope from reading a much more famous picaresque novel narrated by an equally unreliable character named Jack: Little Big Man. Jack Crabbe of the Wild West and Jack Wilson of the wild Renaissance have a lot of in common. Their narratives swing wildly back and forth from the outrageous to the sentimental to the cynical. Both live lives that allow them to come briefly into the orbit of actual real-life historical personages of the time. Both lead lives that inevitably and inexorably steer a course toward a reconsideration of the outlook and philosophies which stimulated youthful indiscretions.
The writing styles could not be much more dissimilar, but that is because writing in the age of Shakespeare was a far different animal than writing in the age of the Beatles. Aside from that, however, The Unfortunate Traveller is quite clearly the godfather of Little Big Man. And, for that matter, A Confederacy of Dunces and almost every book written in the 21st century constructed upon an episodic framework of adventures rather than a unified plot or storyline. Their characters trace their lineage back to Jack Wilson and their adoption of pastiche traces its foundation back to Thomas Nashe’s wild literary experiment so far ahead of its time it is almost as if it had to have been written by a time traveler from the future.
