Zafarrancho en Cambridge

Porterhouse Blue #1

by Tom Sharpe, Javier Fernández Castro (Translator)

Porterhouse es un “college” de Cambridge. No destaca precisamente por su buen nivel académico pero, desde que un antiguo rector dilapidara todos sus bienes en Montecarlo, tiene graves problemas financieros y económicos. Por ello en Porterhouse se conserva y fomenta una peculiar tradición secular: excelente cocina para administradores y docentes y concesión de plazas sólo para aquellos alumnos cuyas familias estén dispuestas a “contribuir” en las menguadas arcas de la institución. Desde luego a cambio de tales donativos los títulos universitarios se “expenden” con sospechosa facilidad… Hasta que llega un nuevo rector, un ex político ingenuo y con ínfulas reformistas, y decide modernizar tan venerable y sobornable centro educativo: por ejemplo, sustituir la antigua cocina por un self-service (!), admitir la matriculación de mujeres (!!), instalar una máquina expendedora de preservativos (!!!), etc. Pero la cosa no para ahí: el bisoño rector ignora por completo el tráfico de titulaciones y, con sus empeños renovadores, hará peligrar esas prácticas consuetudinarias.

¡ El desastre será inevitable! Las fuerzas vivas de la reacción más retrógrada presentarán batalla. Sin embargo, el peor enemigo del flamante rector resultará un “pequeño gran hombre”. Skullion, el portero de Porterhouse, que durante casi medio siglo ha servido en el “college” y abomina visceralmente del más mínimo cambio en el universo anquilosado que habita.

Intrigas, conspiraciones, equívocos, escenas inesperadas e ironía a raudales conforman esta novela que disecciona con furia iconoclasta una de las instituciones más respetables de Inglaterra: los “collegs”.

Genres: Fiction, Humor, Comedy, British Literature, Satire, Novels, 20th Century

240 pages, Paperback

First published January 1, 1974

About the author

Tom Sharpe was an English satirical author, born in London and educated at Lancing College and at Pembroke College, Cambridge. After National Service with the Royal Marines he moved to South Africa in 1951, doing social work and teaching in Natal, until deported in 1961.

His work in South Africa inspired the novels Riotous Assembly and Indecent Exposure. From 1963 until 1972 he was a History lecturer at the Cambridge College of Arts and Technology, which inspired his "Wilt" series Wilt, The Wilt Alternative, Wilt on High and Wilt in Nowhere.

His novels feature bitter and outrageous satire of the apartheid regime (Riotous Assembly and its sequel Indecent Exposure), dumbed- or watered-down education (the Wilt series), English class snobbery (Ancestral Vices, Porterhouse Blue, Grantchester Grind), the literary world (The Great Pursuit), political extremists of all stripes, political correctness, bureaucracy and stupidity in general. Characters may indulge in bizarre sexual practices, and coarser characters use very graphic and/or profane language in dialogue. Sharpe often parodies the language and style of specific authors commonly associated with the social group held up for ridicule. Sharpe's bestselling books have been translated into many languages.

Reviews

[Mario the lone bookwolf · Rating 4 out of 5]

Welcome to wealthy clown college, the conservative place to stay within the elite without having to worry about really getting headaches from stressful learning.

It´s similar to Sharpe´s novel Ancestral vices, which is more playing with the main economic and political dogmas, while Porterhouse blue is more about conservatives in education and college getting nervous by progressive ideas.

Selling titles and degrees is a problem hard to oversee, as there might hardly be a chance of a whistleblower coming to light, the higher and mightier the institution, the less possible that a scandal shattering both university and very wealthy people might become public.

The conditioning of one of the main characters, who is so indoctrinated to believe in the importance of the rights of birth, wealth, etiquette, and conformity, which culminates in his illogical thoughts, is a warning of what stupid hierarchies make out of people. They defend and adore their oppressors instead of thinking about positive change, instead finding fulfillment in being even more conservative than their bosses, fearing nothing more than change.

Sharpe´s style of contrasting extremely different opinions in ridiculous situations and dealing with controversial topics is used to shine a light on contraception, women´s education, decadence, class differences, and the practical uselessness of some humanities. Subjectively I would say it´s his second most hilarious novel, right after Wilt, not as dark and depressing as some of the others, especially the Piemburg South Africa series, and a total must read if one is into this extreme kind of respectless, convention crushing humor.

But just as Tom Robbins, it´s not for everyone because of the unusual explicity that opens one of the strangest questions around self censorship and political correctness going mad. Why there are no new authors for such novels? Because they would run danger of being excrement stormed down by self righteous troll armadas that are unable to differentiate between the art of satire using extreme pictures and language and real, dangerous. racist, sexist, and extremist works.

I am not even mentioning the bigots who have problems with good old procreation and violence, although it are primarily the sexy times that make them crazy, because there is close to no extreme violence in these novels, which is of course much worse than rivers of blood of the people who deserve it.

Tropes show how literature is conceptualized and created and which mixture of elements makes works and genres unique:
https://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.ph...

[Petra X · Rating 5 out of 5]

This is disgustingly funny. It is up there with Anonymous Lawyer and What We Did On Our Holidays as another book where you can't keep your clothes clean what for sniggering, snorking and spilling as you give up all attempts to read any of those books quietly and with decorum.

The book was supposedly based on Sharpe's alma mater Pembroke College, or the much older Peterhouse both very rich colleges as is the fictional Porterhouse. One hopes that even if those colleges concentrated on gourmand professors eating gourmet food, with plenty of wine and money, that they do a lot better than the academically-undistinguished fictional one. And that the porters are a great deal warmer than the monster that is Skullion.

Five star humour of a very British kind.

Highly recommended for airplane travel where you are sat next to some objectionable person and wish to be distracted from noise, smell or overflowing body flesh.

[Leo . · Rating 4 out of 5]

Another great comedy by Tom Sharpe. His prose is so captivating it is like one is actually there. The TV film adaption with David Jason drunk on the Dean's whiskey and chasing inflated comdoms around the university lawn...Timeless! 👍🐯

[Nick Matavka · Rating 4 out of 5]

The big joke about this book is that it isn't a joke at all. Some of the previous reviewers mention Oxford. Porterhouse Blue doesn't take place in that so-called university, but its younger and better sibling, Cambridge. The fact is that where Porterhouse Blue takes place should be blindingly obvious to anyone who has been at a specific College. Names have been changed to protect the guilty, of course, but I'll give you a hint: there is only one College at Cambridge that was founded in 1284, and whose name begins with 'P' and ends in 'House'. Just like the book, real-world Porterhouse was, and continues to be, almost comically tiny, extremely conservative, ancient (1284, remember), appallingly wealthy, and with gourmet food every day. Before 1985, it was also as bent as an engineer's penny: it was second-last to admit women (this after much uproar and protest), and jokes about the fellows' personal liaisons abound even today, though the dubious traditions of professorial perversion are not compulsory these days.

Just like the book, real-world Porterhouse "props up the Tompkins table"; it accepts people, rather than freaks, and so you're more likely to come upon a student drinking himself into a stupor than seated upon the chairs in the library with his nose touching the page; also just like the book, real-world Porterhouse throws a formal dinner every night for almost literally pennies, being the only College in Cambridge that does so. The hilarity of Porterhouse Blue, then, is magnified for those that spot the similarity to real-world Porterhouse and its quirks, especially in the '70s. For those that say real-world Porterhouse may have once been like its looking-glass counterpart, but is no longer, let me say this: much has changed, true enough (most of Sir Godber's policies are here to stay), but even more has stayed the same.

[Algernon (Darth Anyan) · Rating 4 out of 5]

[7/10]

‘Educating people above their station has been one of the great mistakes of this century. What this country requires is an educated elite. What it’s had in fact, for the past three hundred years.’

The Dean of Porterhouse College in Cambridge is a traditionalist, a firm believer in the conservative values that have endured for five hundred years of mediocre, substandard studies reserved for the sons of nobility who couldn’t get into a better college on their merits.
One of these Porterhouse traditions is for the leaders of the university to enjoy the renowned haute cuisine offered by their kitchen until they literally burst into what became known as a Porterhouse Blue :

‘it’s an apoplectic fit brought on by overindulgence.’

Another tradition is for the Master of Porterhouse to name his successor on his deathbed, one sadly interrupted by the latest Master who succumbed to this food induced trauma.
The ministry of education uses this occasion to get rid of one of the useless and annoying members of Parliament by sending him to a quiet sinecure. Sir Godber is egged on by his militant wife to make some changes around the place, to bring the college into the modern era.
He ponders a list of innovations, knowing the other members of the Council will oppose him and that he will need to use the tried and tested method of blackmail that got his through his years in Westminster.

Candidates to be chosen by academic achievement only. The kitchen endowment to be cut by three-quarters and the funds reallocated to scholarships. Women undergraduates to be admitted as members. Gate hours abolished. College playing fields open to children from the town.

One additional item on the list, a condom-vending machine in the bathrooms for undergraduates, turns this duel of wills between modernism and tradition into open warfare, with the scandalized conservative members of the Council united in their efforts to stop the new Master by any means necessary.

>>><<<>>><<<

This is my first incursion into the Tom Sharpe satirical universe and I liked it well enough in the beginning, with the description of an opulent meal and the introduction of some slightly grotesque cast of characters:

Like something out of Happy Families, he thought. Mrs. Biggs the Bedder. Skullion the Head Porter. The Dean. The Senior Tutor. Relics of some ancient childish game. Everything about Porterhouse was like that. Masters and Servants.

Events develop at a lively pace in the first half of the novel, helped along mostly by the presence of the only young member of the cast, the single undergraduate in Porterhouse, a young man named Zipser who works on a study called: “ The influence of Pumpernickel on the Politics of 16th-Century Osnabruck .
Zipser is struggling mostly with a highly embarrassing sexual obsession for the ultra-plus size Mrs. Biggs, his bedder. A visit to the deaf Chaplain of the College is counterproductive, since Zipser has to shout out his problems into a megaphone, to the delight of the audience quickly gathered in the college quadrant.
An epic quest around local Cambridge pubs in search of for condoms by the inept and soon inebriated Zipser promises some comic relief to the bitter struggle unfolding between Sir Godber and the Council, but this plot line is brought to a halt in a rather abrupt manner Zipser and his muse die in the explosion of the condoms filled with gas that he stuffed up the chimney in the college tower

The second part of the novel is increasingly bitter and ugly as the lowest servant in the college, Skullion the gate keeper, becomes the main antagonist of the plans for modernization and the champion of the conservative cause.
Tom Sharpe writes some excellent scenes and knows how to use words as barbed arrows, but I struggled to find the funny parts in the events described. His brand of humour is a little too cruel and too ugly to contemplate amiably. If the author’s intention was to unmask the less appealing practices in higher education in the 1970s’, the novel is a brilliant success. As an alternative to the escapist, rose-coloured romances of P G Wodehouse, this is another kettle of fish.
I find it hard to actually laugh at sudden death, self-serving and venal administrators and right-wing nuts who believe they need to bring back the good old days when women where forbidden to get out of the kitchen and higher education was reserved for the elites.

I did have a plot line that I followed with more interest in the second half of the novel, and that is the entry into the equation of an investigative journalist, Cornelius Carrington. He is a former graduate from Porterhouse who sees in the current troubles a chance to make a ‘killing’ with a documentary that will air all the dirty laundry the Porterhouse Council members try to hide.
It was kind of funny to see Sir Godber and the rest of the cast preen in front of the camera, only to become incensed watching how Carrington uses their words out of context and misrepresents their opinions in order to feed fabricated anger to his captive audience.
The scene in uncomfortably similar to current television hosts who editorialize the news to fit their particular agenda, mostly right wing, but also from the left side of the political spectrum.

The resolution of the conflict between modern and traditional values is handled by Tom Sharpe with the same cruel and bitter irony that permeates the rest of the novel. I will not describe it here, my only remark about the final scene is that there is actually a sequel to the story: ‘Grandchester Grind’

There were no just rewards in life, only insane inversions of the scheme of things in which he had trusted. It seemed for a moment that he was going mad.

[John · Rating 4 out of 5]

This satirical novel looks at Cambridge University at Porterhouse college and the conflict between Sir Godber the new master with existing staff of the Dean, Senior Tutor, Bursar and the hard of hearing Chaplain trying to maintain tradition against the new liberal Masters proposed reforms.

The story is a tongue-in-check satire with the Porter of 45 years Skullion unhappy with the proposed changes. The fictional college book title of Poterhouse Blues is from how most of the old students and staff die from a stroke induced by the college's legendary excess in food and drink.

Having once attended a dinner at an Oxford University College and sat at high table I can vouch for the food and the port afterwards. However, it was not a gluttonous feast and the senior staff were very nice.

A sub plot of the poor under graduate Zipser fixated about his bedder/cleaner the overweight Mrs Briggs culminates in a hilarious explosive scene thanks to a couple of hundred gas inflated condoms.

The mad Lord, investigative journalist and the Master’s wife who has him under her thumb all add to the hilarity. The story is very funny and was made into a tv series with David Jason as Skullion in 1987.

[James Tingle · Rating 4 out of 5]

I'd early on been aware of Tom Sharpe and I remember being young and going to a friend's house in the countryside, wandering around upstairs having a nosy about, and seeing a big oak bookcase, filled with book after book of Tom Sharpe titles (among other authors). I had a look at a few and liked the old Pan Publishing cartoon-style covers, with their often risque illusions and general depictions of debauched scenarios and they seemed to stick in my mind. Years later, I was in a second hand book shop (Oxfam) and saw this title and immediately recognised the cover and knew it was one of his most famous works and so bought it and finally read it a year or two ago...
I was quite surprised initially as I'd assumed, probably because of the raunchy/vivid front covers, that the book would be quite fruity and full of lewd humour and farce, but found it more old fashioned than I was expecting. The blurb on the front drew comparisons to Waugh and Wodehouse and the writing style is a little similar in a way to those two, very roughly, with the old style humour and finesse, but here you have content that includes a few condoms flying about and the odd horny student on the hunt for women, which the aforementioned couple of past masters tended not to write about. Still, this was written in the 1970's but feels earlier in some ways and has that cosy old comfort feel of a Wodehouse novel, in the general feel and atmosphere created and I particularly liked the Porter and his snug little cottage in which he lived, within the college grounds, and the general light and farcical tone that pervades the whole book...
If you are after a well written, University style comedic romp that's never belly-laugh funny, but leads to a few smiles and has a nice gentle pace and an enjoyable zany plot to it, then this could be your next easy going read.

[Alan · Rating 2 out of 5]

Rec. by: Petra
Rec. for: Upperclassmen, with appropriate spacing

The airborne porkers on the cover of this edition are a subtle yet major hint about what's inside Tom Sharpe's comic novel Porterhouse Blue. Sir Godber Evans, a career politician and reformer (and—worse—an ineffectual one), has been put out to pasture as the new Master of his old alma mater: Porterhouse College, the smallest and most hidebound of the Cambridge colleges. His desire for "social justice" (a phrase that makes its first appearance on p.2) unaltered by his change in circumstances, Sir Godber plans to overturn centuries of gluttonous snobbery—more or less literally biting the hand that fed him so lavishly when he was an undergraduate.

Porterhouse, of course, will resist any such change with every well-fed fiber in its considerable being.

A "Porterhouse blue," by the way, is a stroke, you see, the preferred (or at least the most likely) demise for the fellows of Porterhouse. We find out this fact early on, but it becomes much more important later.

*

The novel's initial scenes are set in winter, which made them well-timed, anyway—but I'm afraid that most of Sharpe's jokes did not land for me. All of the characters are thoroughly despicable, in one way or another—there isn't anyone to root for, really, on either side of the conflict between Sir Evans and the Porterhouse establishment. Most of the fun comes from schadenfreude—our mean-spirited enjoyment at another's downfall.

There is, at least, plenty of that.

*

Perhaps the best and most effective depiction of the novel comes from its own pages—I believe that these quotes, taken together, will help you determine whether this is a book you'd like to read, much more than anything I could say about the book.

"And as far as the College Council is concerned I think the best policy will be one of... er... amiable inertia," the Praelector suggested. "That has always been one of our strong points."
"There's nothing like prevarication," the Dean agreed. "I have yet to meet a liberal who can withstand the attrition of prolonged discussion of the inessentials."
—p.11

There's hardly a single progressive cause that Sharpe does not feel bound to at least try to skewer. Take this early example:

The speaker, a woman doctor with the United Nations Infant Prevention Unit in Madras, who seemed to regard infant mortality as a positive blessing, had disparaged the coil as useless, the pill as expensive, female sterilization as complicated, had described vasectomy so seductively that Zipser had found himself crossing and recrossing his legs and wishing to hell he hadn't come.
—p.15

Poor Zipser! What happens to him—and to his "bedder" (a chambermaid, basically) Mrs. Biggs, is both absurd and dramatic, despite Sharpe's less than charitable description of her:

Mrs. Biggs was all right. He was fond of her. There was something almost human about her in spite of her size.
—p.17

*

The Dean recalled their athleticism and youthful indiscretions, the shopgirls they had compromised, the tailors they had bilked, the exams they had failed, and from his window he could look down on to the fountain where they had ducked so many homosexuals. It had all been so healthy and naturally violent, so different from the effete aestheticism of today. They hadn't fasted for the good of the coolies in India or protested because an anarchist was imprisoned in Brazil or stormed the Garden House Hotel because they disapproved of the government in Greece. They'd acted in high spirits. Wholesomely.
—p.33

"As I was saying," Sir Cathcart continued, settling once more into his chair, "we've forgotten the natural advantages of idiocy. Puts the other fellow off, you see. Can't take you seriously. Good thing. Then when he's off guard you give it to him in the goolies. Never fails. Out like a light. Want to do the same with this Godber fellow."
—p.124

My Goodreads friend Petra recommended this one, describing it as "disgustingly funny." Both words pretty much hit the mark.

I don't think I'll be seeking out more of the late Sharpe's work... but I'm not altogether sorry I read this one.

[Kinga · Rating 3 out of 5]

This was very funny - in an English sort of way. However, it would have been funnier if it hadn't be so true.
When you constantly meet people like the characters of this book they somehow quickly go from funny to annoying.
All in all - a bitter-sweet experience, however the condom suicide was excellent!

[James Hartley · Rating 4 out of 5]

My first Tom Sharpe - always meant to read one and picked this up in a second hand bookshop in the south of Spain. It won't be my last.
Firstly, I didn't roll about laughing at this book, although I don't think there are too many books that have made me do that (intentionally at least). I did chortle a bit and read it with a smile in my mind, if that's possible. I think most of all I was pleasantly surprised by the style, wit and intelligence of Sharpe's writing, if that doesn't sound too pretentious and condescending. I don't know what I was expecting, but this is erudite, tight and full of clever use of words.
As to the story itself, I'm not a Cambridge student but I could well imagine this world: I am English and did go to university but that's where the similarity between my world and the world of the book ends. The novel interested and entertained me anyway, the characters were well-drawn, and there are points which the book brings up and satirises which are still relevant in this Bullingdon-Rees Mogg era we're living in/suffering.
A final note - Sharpe is an avowedly anti-PC personality and writer and readers should be ready for some bruisingly backwards views which could cause offence.

[Manny · Rating 1 out of 5]

This book is probably funnier if you haven't actually attended a Cambridge college.

I remember a similar reaction to the blonde go-go-dancing secretary in Mel Brooks's The Producers, a movie I otherwise love. The first time round, she came on and I was momentarily bemused by her slutty clothes and bizarre accent. What on earth was she supposed to be? After about 30 seconds, the penny dropped - aha, she's Swedish! I watched it in a Stockholm movie theatre, and clearly other people were having the same experience. There was a short silence, then a collective groan as we all got it more or less simultaneously.

[Rebecca Redman · Rating 4 out of 5]

It took me a while to get into
This book. There are a lot of SAT words that made it challenging. But the vocab got less intense and the humor had me cracking up!

[Lewis Attrib · Rating 5 out of 5]

Long before I'd ever set foot in Cambridge I worked in London and always read paperbacks commuting on the Underground. London Transport is a place where you want escapism, I read a lot of science fiction and also comedy, so a parody of the Ivory Towers of Academe looked like it might distract me from the rush-hour Tube. Well almost all the books I read then I've forgotten, but Porterhouse Blue sticks in the memory because of the acute embarrassment it caused me. You try not to make an exhibition and a fool of yourself in public don't you, you try not to choke and turn red in the face, accidentally guffaw spit on the person opposite, fall off your seat, poke your neighbor in the ribs, suffice it to say I did not keep my cool, this book is uncontrollably laugh-out-loud FUNNY. Read it, read it, read it, but for God's sake read it locked in a room on your own.

(Like a lot of humourists Sharpe is not kind to his subject, so I was pleased when I later did get to know Cambridge that's it's really nothing like the dystopian farce depicted here. It's actually much more like Terry Pratchett's Unseen University.)

[Apu Borealis · Rating 4 out of 5]

Super entertaining if you love satire. Everyone has an agenda of his own, and they all seem to fulfill their destiny of clashing insanely with everyone else's.

Personally, I think the episode of Zipser's uninvited lust for the overweight woman and subsequent events is one of the funniest episodes in literature, just sublimely funny.

I had to stop reading to laugh during the chapter on his dilemmas of buying and disposal of rubbers, which got progressively funnier and went on to an explosive climax. These are mental pictures that will stay with you forever.
4 stars for the original humor..you can never tell what the events are leading to, and you keep turning the pages to find more unanticipated and funny sequels.

When you've read something like this, you know you have read something very unique and you understand it's classic status.

[Nancy · Rating 4 out of 5]

Porterhouse College is in Cambridge, England, and, as the cover says, is famous for rowing and low academic standards. What Porterhouse needs is money so they will take any wealthy student whether or not that student knows how to put his shoes on the right feet.
Now, the all-male Porterhouse College has fallen on harder times and is considering admitting (gasp) women. There are other changes proposed by the new headmaster, which is shaking the foundations of this hidebound institution with its heart in the Middle Ages.
This is a fun romp through academia, and would be appreciated by those who like P.G. Wodehouse.

[Peter · Rating 4 out of 5]

"His had been an intellectual decision founded on his conviction that if a little knowledge was a dangerous thing, a lot was lethal."

Set in the late 1950's Cambridge. Porterhouse University admits male students based on the size of their families' wealth rather than on whether or not they have passed an entrance exam. It has become renowned for its sporting prowess rather than academic achievement. It has been run on similar grounds for hundreds of years and refuses to conform with modern day norms.

When an ex-politician is appointed the Master of this university, he proposes to admit students, including women, based upon academic ability rather than family wealth, financed by replacing gourmet faculty meals with a self-serve cafeteria.

The new Master is soon at war with the entire staff of the college, who want it to remain as it has been for 500 years, a place for rich young men to drink and cavort while the faculty do no work and eat like lords. His most dangerous opponent is the "Head Porter" who supervises all non-teaching activities at the college.

This is such a lovely satire of British University life with an amusing sub-plot of a researcher named Zipster. I have read other books by Sharpe in the past and although I must admit that this did not make me laugh out loud as often as with others there are elements of extreme farce that did tickle me somewhat. A lovely well crafted and very amusing book.

[Wayne · Rating 4 out of 5]

This is the FIRST Tom Sharpe book I've ever read.
A good friend told me about it while driving me to the airport last Sunday and we were both killing ourselves laughing.
So while in Brisbane I found the ONLY Tom Sharpe book in a well-known secondhand bookshop and it was the exact book we were talking about.
Up to page 54 and so far so good.
But feel I might have enjoyed it more years ago.
We'll see, as the Zen Master said!!!

An enjoyable read.
Institutional corruption.
Resistance to change when the new boss arrives on the scene.
Usually that is just change for change's sake. Here it is vital as Porterhouse College is rotten to the core.
But no one in this book is likeable nor do you need to 'identify ' with any character. It's black and nobody is spared. All the usuals are trotted out ...sex, death, corruption...but all with rollicking good humour.
And that which few British books are free of - their class/caste system.
So...VERY British. VERY familiar.
But Tom Sharpe is an original, so you will be well taken care of.
An excellent writer - intelligent, witty, experienced.

[Thomas Stroemquist · Rating 4 out of 5]

Suggested to me by my manager as I happened to mention how much I’ve been enjoying a couple of books set in Cambridge lately. I’ve a vague idea I read one of the “Wilt’s” in the distant part and I had a pretty good idea what I was getting into just by familiarity with the author name. So, no huge surprises through chapters 1 and 2, the bit bigger surprise was following those, when I realised how much I started to enjoy this dry English satire (not to mention the lift that was the laugh out loud comedy that runs through the middle third (concerning young male unwished for lust, alcohol, prophylactics and a long string of hilariously poor decisions).

The story revolves around a bit less prestigious colleges in Cambridge, the new Master’s drive to modernise it and the old leadership’s much stronger wish to do nothing of the sort. Brilliant narrative and a good cast of characters.

[Aurélien Thomas · Rating 2 out of 5]

Tom Sharpe embarks us here through an adventure where class struggles takes beyond-the-absurd proportions (e.g. how to demolish the entire façade of a building, armed only with condoms...).

I am not quite sure of what I have read. It's quite funny (not as much as the other ones in the series, though) but here's a social satire so vitriolic its over-the-top caricatural aspects kind of eluded me... I found it 'too much', and it felt like the author was trying too hard. I like Tom Sharpe, but it's definitely not one of his best.

[Leslie · Rating 5 out of 5]

Hilarious satire of the power struggle between "keeping up-to-date" and tradition in 1970s Cambridge University college. The subplot about the research fellow & his bedder made me laugh out loud several times!

[Laura · Rating 4 out of 5]

Reading Porterhouse Blue in 2018

For many university lecturers, late February and early March in 2018 in the UK have been defined by a strike in defence of pension rights. However, beyond this there is also a rebellion of sorts against the current marketization and the managerialism of Higher Education. Most academics want intellectual life to be placed back at the core of how universities are run. However, it is useful to remind ourselves that anti-intellectualism in the world of Higher Education is not something new.
It is easy to feel demotivated at the moment, and reading a campus novel can be a good distraction. One could go for the fun of Starter for Ten (David Nicholls) or the sweet melancholy of Jill (Philip Larkin), but it may be best not to turn to the despair of Jude the Obscure (Thomas Hardy). The satire of Small World (David Lodge) or Porterhouse Blue (Tom Sharpe) seems in principle like a safer choice, but even escapism can turn sour, leading some readers to anger or scepticism, particularly if they lose their sense of humour.
Porterhouse Blue was first published in 1974, but it feels depressingly contemporary. Things in the UK do not appear to have changed very much. Porterhouse is a fictional college in Cambridge University populated by what nowadays would be called “change-resistant academics”, although the nature of the changes they fear is different. The strength of Porterhouse is not intellectual, but culinary. It has been a very long time since one of their students achieved a First Class degree. The new Master is intent on changing a situation that, however, for some, has already changed too much. For example, for the Head Porter, Skullion, the students have altered beyond recognition: “The young gentlemen weren´t the same. The spirit had gone out of them since the war. They got grants now. They worked. Who had ever heard of a Porterhouse man working in the old days? They were too busy drinking and racing” (Sharpe, 2002, Chapter 1). The Master soon finds out the root of the problem. Porterhouse is a poor college, which forces them to accept unqualified pupils from public schools in exchange of a college endowment subscription from their families. Here, “austerity” is claimed as a reason to thwart change. As the Master comments, it is actually the rich who tend to use “the plea of poverty” more often (Sharpe, 2002, Chapter 7).
Nowadays, such students could have made use of the online marketplaces for essays. We call them essay mills, but in the world of Porterhouse Blue it is the Head Porter who is quite happy to make some additional income acting as an intermediary between penniless postgraduates and the relevant undergraduates. Such a breach of academic conduct is abhorrent to us, but the fellows of Porterhouse turned a blind eye. In fact, for them, anti-intellectualism is to be praised and encouraged: “Together, though never in unison, they had steered Porterhouse away from the academic temptations to which all other Cambridge colleges had succumbed and had preserved that integrity of ignorance which gave Porterhouse men the confidence to cope with life´s complexities which men with more educated sensibilities so obviously lacked” (Sharpe, 2002, Chapter 18). Their conclusion is that “if a little knowledge was a dangerous thing, a lot was lethal” (Sharpe, 2002, Chapter 18). All this is essential for creating an incurious elite “imbued with a corporate complacency and an intellectual scepticism that desiccated change. They were the guardians of political inertia (…)” (Sharpe, 2002, Chapter 19). As it is well known, many members of the elite are still educated at public schools and Oxbridge colleges.
In many respects, it is uncanny how familiar the universe of Porterhouse Blue can feel to readers in the twenty-first century. At some point, for instance, the Dean exclaims: “I have never placed much faith in expert opinion” (Sharpe, 2002, Chapter 21). Ideas akin to “post-truth” can be glimpsed in a “disassociation from reality” typical of Cambridge in which “everyone in the College sought to parody himself, as if a parody of a parody could become itself a new reality” (Sharpe, 2002, Chapter 5). Interestingly, perennial mistrust of the EU in the UK materialises here already, as mistrust of the Common Market: “He told two amusing stories about the Prime Minister´s secretary and finally, when the Senior Tutor ventured the opinion that he thought such goings-on were due to the entry into the Common Market, launched into a detailed account of an interview he had once had with de Gaulle” (Sharpe, 2002, Chapter 15).
For tourists worldwide, the spires, turrets and gates of the colleges of Cambridge and Oxford are imbued with romanticism. In spite of the difficult situation that universities and their staff face in the UK, it seems fitting and somewhat uplifting that Higher Education can still be connected to forms of idealism.

References:
Sharpe, T (2002) Porterhouse Blue [ebook reader], London, Arrow Books

[James Austin-Marks · Rating 4 out of 5]

The first book I've read that made me genuinely laugh out loud.

Porterhouse Blue is a disarming satire on elitism and the upper class.

Complete with a cast of characters that parody everything we come to expect from a group of sheltered privileged council members of a Cambridge college stuck in the past.

Tom Sharpe masterfully blends humour with acidity.

A thoroughly enjoyable read.

[Jeremy · Rating 3 out of 5]

Much of this was pathetically smutty and infantile - and not even that funny. However, I'm glad I stuck with it, as there were moments that made me laugh out loud - but there was a lot to endure in the process. I'm not motivated to read anymore in this series, that's for sure.

[Alice]

I saw this book on someone's worst of 2017 video and it sounds fucked up. I'm here for this.

[pablotipo · Rating 3 out of 5]

No te meas de la risa tanto como con Reunión tumultuosa o ¡Ánimo, Wilt!, pero es difícil que te aburra una novela de Sharpe. He echado de menos un final más apoteósico, como suele ser costumbre en sus libros. El personaje de Skullion una maravilla.

[M. Jose · Rating 4 out of 5]

Recuerdo que me gustó mucho

[Archie Campbell · Rating 4 out of 5]

Classic Sharpe - some very funny scenes and a perfect ending but lacks the consistency of Wilt

[Andrew · Rating 5 out of 5]

A witty tale of a contest between the swan-eating Fellows of Porterhouse College and the newly elected Master. Master Godber Evans is a "progressive" and comes to blows with the traditions of the College by seeking to trim the kitchen's budget and open the doors to women scholars, amongst other radical ideas. The ensuing hilarity and absurdity make this book an absolute joy to read.

Yet, the book goes beyond heightened comedy and offers a complex look at the debate about traditions and progress. The proponents for each side in this book are riddled with contradictions and shortcomings which makes most of the characters quite complex (with flaws and all!).

[Jeroen Van de Crommenacker · Rating 4 out of 5]

In places this book is absolutely hilarious. It is certainly a fun and easy read and well written. But after 200-odd pages I had enough of it and happy to move on to another book.

[Annerlee · Rating 2 out of 5]

Dated and set in a very privileged environment.
I saw it through to the end.
Didn't enjoy it.
Wish I hadn't bothered.
New year's resolution: remember, it's sometimes wiser to drop a book and choose something else.