Reading again, after many years in the wilderness of cultural studies bitterness, that home for frustrated and hateful spoilt brats all over the rich world. Undergraduates are taught to sneer at this book (of course, on the basis of a two or three page extract), in the beginning of their indoctrination into despising of the literary. There is, it is true, much to object to, but the light irony of its writing is delight and powerful of itslf: the issues it deals with frighteningly familiar themes of today.
I imagine even hardened sneerers will get their usual angry pleasure from reading it in the way that 'pleasure' is consumed in those former polytechnic domes that let in no sweetness and light.