On Sheppard Lee

Absolutely scathing satire about social class in Jacksonian America. Bird’s writing style probably fits somewhere between Voltaire in Candide and Mark Twain. My favorite bits were in the first part, as Sheppard Lee has such a hilarious disposition that I could not stop laughing at exchanges like:

Lee: “Who do you support, the Administration or the Opposition?” Higginson: “The Administration, of course.” Lee: “You damned scoundrel!”

I can relate with his idleness on a visceral level, and his character’s way of carrying himself is just something that I connect to. The book slows down a bit as Lee’s spirit works his way up the social ladder with new bodies, but it picks up again when he takes on the body of a philanthropic Quaker, an enslaved man in Virginia, and a lazy slaveholder.

At this point, Shepard Lee is probably my favorite nineteenth-century American novel, and is likely one of my favorite novels of all time.