The History Man

by Malcolm Bradbury

Novel - Howard Kirk is the trendiest of radical tutors at a fashionable university campus. A self-appointed revolutionary hero, Howard always comes out on top. And Malcolm Bradbury dissects him in this savagely funny novel that has been universally acclaimed as one of the masterpieces of the decade.

Genres: Fiction, Humor, Novels, Academia, Comedy, Classics, 20th Century

230 pages, Paperback

First published January 1, 1975

About the author

Sir Malcolm Stanley Bradbury CBE was an English author and academic. He is best known to a wider public as a novelist. Although he is often compared with David Lodge, his friend and a contemporary as a British exponent of the campus novel genre, Bradbury's books are consistently darker in mood and less playful both in style and language. His best known novel The History Man, published in 1975, is a dark satire of academic life in the "glass and steel" universities – the then-fashionable newer universities of England that had followed their "redbrick" predecessors – which in 1981 was made into a successful BBC television serial. The protagonist is the hypocritical Howard Kirk, a sociology professor at the fictional University of Watermouth.

He completed his PhD in American studies at the University of Manchester in 1962, moving to the University of East Anglia (his second novel, Stepping Westward, appeared in 1965), where he became Professor of American Studies in 1970 and launched the world-renowned MA in Creative Writing course, which Ian McEwan and Kazuo Ishiguro both attended. He published Possibilities: Essays on the State of the Novel in 1973, The History Man in 1975, Who Do You Think You Are? in 1976, Rates of Exchange in 1983, Cuts: A Very Short Novel in 1987, retiring from academic life in 1995. Malcolm Bradbury became a Commander of the British Empire in 1991 for services to Literature, and was made a Knight Bachelor in the New Year Honours 2000, again for services to Literature.

Bradbury was a productive academic writer as well as a successful teacher; an expert on the modern novel, he published books on Evelyn Waugh, Saul Bellow and E. M. Forster, as well as editions of such modern classics as F. Scott Fitzgerald's The Great Gatsby, and a number of surveys and handbooks of modern fiction, both British and American.

He also wrote extensively for television, including scripting series such as Anything More Would Be Greedy, The Gravy Train, the sequel The Gravy Train Goes East (which explored life in Bradbury's fictional Slaka), and adapting novels such as Tom Sharpe's Blott on the Landscape and Porterhouse Blue, Alison Lurie's Imaginary Friends and Kingsley Amis's The Green Man. His last television script was for Dalziel and Pascoe series 5 Produced by Andy Rowley. The episode 'Foreign Bodies was screened on BBC One on July 15 2000.

Reviews

[Jan-Maat]

The History Man must definitely make your list of the top 100 books written between 1945 and 1997 set on a British university campus, possibly even your top fifty! All of my recent fiction reading seems to have been closely related, Margaret Drabble wrote The Millstone and the introduction to The History Man, while her husband wrote the introduction to A month in the Country, in that novel there are a few Yorkshire Methodists, while in The History Man Dr. Howard Kirk and his wife come from a background of Yorkshire Methodists, Drabble's Miss Rosemary Stacey with her skittishness about sex would be a prime target for Dr.Kirk who seems to see sex as liberation and that the women of the world will be liberated through sex by Dr. Kirk as soon as he gets round to them - he's not quite that predatory but extra-marital sex was revelatory for him and Kirk preaches his truth to every woman that he desires. All three novels have at least a Yorkshire connection, they are possibly the three most English novels that I have read in succession for a while.

I was slow to start reviewing this because comic novels generally seem more serious to me than non-comic ones. For instance Howard Kirk drives a camper van and I as very aware of this because Bradbury goes out of his way to mention the other vehicles - mostly Datsuns and Rovers curiously no Fords, apparently Bradbury's fiction university town is too far from Dagenham like Kirk's Zapata moustache it shows difference, yet as the novel settled in to my head I began to think that the Camper Van still is a four wheeled, petrol powered thing with an internal combustion engine, sure the exterior is completely different, but that's all on the surface. That is a question at the centre of the novel, is Kirk a fashionable poseur or is there a bit more to him?

Although apparently Kirk is the history man, he is in fact a sociologist who moved on from writing about the Christadelphians in Yorkshire to 'The End of Privacy' his popular book, he is the history man in following Marx and Hegel as seeing History as having an end or purpose. The end would appear from his point of view to be about personal liberation, but as above, it remains to be seen if such liberation is more than skin deep or is it just the liberation to drive a camper van rather than a rover or to have a zapata moustache rather than be clean shaven? The thinking behind a comic novel strikes as serious business, and the construction of jokes is not exactly light-hearted either.

Kirk's revelation arose from the dynamics of his early marriage when the couple move from having a collaborative relationship to a conflictual one, the marriage is open, which in context seems to mean grimly inescapable, with no opportunity of closure and moving on. In affect this means that when Mr Kirk is up, Mrs Kirk is down and the other way round of course unfortunately for the wider world Kirk applies the same approach universally. For him to feel good, things have to go badly for others and if they go well for others, it's bad for him. Perhaps you can imagine how this dynamic drives the novel which deals with the first couple of weeks of the autumn term and then skips on to cover briefly the last weeks of term. A beautiful example of Howard Kirk's mode of operation is given by his daughter ( the pear doesn't fall far from the Apple tree after all) who complains at breakfast that she had to stand outside class because she said the word "penis", her father is ready to keep to her defence not knowing that the daughter neglected to mention that the context was that she had called her class teacher a 'stinky old penis'!

The Term is bookended by parties at the Kirk's house like the camper van this is a statement of his or their personality in the TV series that was later made it was revealed that Kirk will vote for Thatcher in 1979, and Bradbury is happy to confirm that in the afterword, along with for Blair in 1997, my guess is that he'd have voted for Brexit, primarily to annoy those who voted to remain and because he reminds me of other former British communists who have since the would transitioned to and up currently on the far right. The significance of Thatcher is that Kirk prefigures 1980s consumption - your personality is the sum of your consumption choices, you are what you buy which is what you tell Ludwig Feuerbach when you want to make him cry ( but not that much because it is still materialism ) but also because there is no alternative, the past is available only as grotesque parody; in a pub where the barmaid has to wear a Victorian dress and the drinkers are offered a choice of glasses or Tankards .

The opening third of the book is the preparation for the first party and that event as it unfolds, perhaps that is a homage to Mrs Dalloway. Flora Beniform will by Nice Work become Robyn Penrose, in both cases an abundant nature goddess - though here she offers psychological insight too - and the tragedy of the book - & I probably do believe that comedy is tragic - is that Howard Kirk has insight, he knows what he is about - but he continues to do it anyway.

Reading this 1975 novel now, it seems more contemporary than it might have if in some scary alternative universe I had read it as a student. The manufactured outrage, the cancel culture (but I repeat myself) , and the presidental levels of Projection because in Kirk's view you need a bit of Marx and a bit of Freud to understand what's going on are of the moment. It is droll and dangerously funny, it made me laugh anyway.

[Antonomasia · Rating 5 out of 5]

[4.5] For 25 years I'd mistakenly conflated Malcolm Bradbury with old Catholic tut-tutter Malcolm Muggeridge (arguably the male Mary Whitehouse) and as a result I'd missed out on some awesome fun in this book. I'd always been a little bemused as to why Bradbury was mentioned alongside more famous writers in The Divine Comedy's The Booklovers, a song which helped define my idea of the literary canon when I was in my teens. I can now understand why Bradbury was there, perhaps as a personal favourite of the lyricist. I'm belatedly very grateful for the recommendation, as I otherwise probably would never have got round to reading The History Man. (Perhaps Hannon wasn't sure himself about including Bradbury, or perhaps someone questioned it, given the way the declaimed "Malcolm Bradbury" is followed by the quieter "stroke John Steinbeck, stroke J.D. Salinger".) Nevertheless, 15 years ago, via a now-defunct forum, I discovered David Lodge's campus trilogy, which covers a fair amount of the same ground with similar wit, though more symbolism and trickery.

Anyway, 2019 is a better time than 1994 (or most years in between except for the last two or three) to read The History Man, this comedy of early 1970s radical academics. The Kirks' 1960s trajectory from straight-laced upper-working class Northern grammar school kids into cutting edge free-love postgrad radicals was utterly believable to me, as a mashup of my parents origins, my own experiences in my twenties of trying to find, and finding, where the interesting stuff was happening, of late 2010s left-wing social media, and of friends who are in poly relationships. I'm still amazed how similar a lot of contemporary left-wing discourse and alignments are to those in The History Man: as a dabbler, there are ideas that seemed newish to me in the last few years, but they evidently aren't new under the sun; they've merely come back round into the mainstream again. The novel is artfully written: there are scenes and opinions which now seem normal if you are on the left, and which read as such, but some of these must have originally been intended as satire. (However, there are still clear moments of exaggeration and hilarity.) The afterword - an article by Bradbury from 1999 - indicates the author had a sincere appreciation for sociology as a subject, as I had suspected from the novel itself. (He sounds a good deal less conservative than BBC newsreader James Naughtie does in the introduction to the recent UK edition.) It is a testament to Bradbury's skill that there are so many things in the novel which could work for readers over much of the mainstream political spectrum: for the conservative it must read like a wider indictment of the excesses of the far left, and it works too if you are Sanders/Corbyn-ish left but think some activists, especially but not only online, take things too far to gain personal kudos.

Liberals are evil. Radical women bring babies to work. People want to protest about a geneticist because of fears about eugenics, and it's irrelevant that he was himself a refugee from the Nazis. Imperialist is as common a pejorative as fascist. All par for the course. The one point on which there has been a 180-degree turn is the sexual politics: Howard Kirk's "seductions" and affairs with students are everything #MeToo would brand toxic masculinity. It's pretty clear the narrative doesn't approve of this (at the same time as understanding its appeal for the man himself, and the magnetism that attracts others to him). Criticism of Howard's sleaziness in the novel is left to characters coded as stuffy Tories, which this chimes with the 2010s, post Jimmy Savile scandal, reinterrogation of the 1960s and 70s permissive society, and the thesis that the pendulum swung too far one way. And now that it has been highlighted that there have been plenty of men on the left who were or are sexist sleazebags trampling over others on their way to the top, Howard Kirk looks like a perfect example of such. (There's even a hint, when he's taken on a tour of his new campus town, that he might be a bit racist.)

I suspect that the elegantly stubborn English Lit lecturer Miss Callendar will be the favourite character of a lot of contemporary readers for much of the novel. [VAGUE SPOILER] One may be disappointed in the trajectory Bradbury gives her in chapter XII, and the message that sends - but I can tell you from personal experience that exactly the same kind of fatalism and ambiguous boundary slippage was alive and well in the 90s and 00s. The narrative doesn't include her inner thoughts, but I know scenarios like this from the inside and I could read them in, also realising that some younger readers wouldn't see it the same way and might not know the implicit sort-of-agency and decision-making that's there. [/END]

In the first half of the novel I also found the Kirks and their allies to be quite, er, close to the bone. They love to consider all aspects of life in their contemporary social and political context, and to analyse almost everything politically, psychologically and sociologically - traits that (unlike several GR reviewers) I could identify with. For years I have had an idea of a hypothetical/parallel universe self of mine who had no health issues and who went straight from university into the civil service fast stream, making policy that would affect disadvantaged people whilst having negligible first hand idea about what their lives were really like. The Kirks and their circle initially struck me as another, academia-based iteration of that: what they lack is heart, and despite all their self-awareness, enough empathy.

But in the second half it becomes clear that Howard is something altogether nastier and more sinister, and that his philosophy that everyone is exploiting each other isn't just clear-eyed cynicism. His schemes to make people into puppets for his amusement, and to fulfil his notions of their personal development, reminded me a great deal of a guy I knew years ago who openly described himself as a sociopath. The assertive social psychologist Flora Beniform plays Merteuil to Howard Kirk's Valmont.

The trajectory of Felicity Phee, the student who sleeps with Howard during the novel, was interestingly of its time. Her lack of boundaries, unashamedly strong attachment to Howard and imperviousness to discouragement are worrying. [VAGUE SPOILERS] If you are familiar with later works about male tutors and female students like David Mamet's Oleanna (play 1992, film 1994) or James Lasdun's Give Me Everything You Have: On Being Stalked, you may expect her to become the plot's agent of karmic revenge on Howard for his own repeated breaking of others' boundaries. Instead, she turns out to be more of a self-interested hippie with a penchant for strong but fleeting obsessions, who is in her own way, in the Kirks' mould of exploit-and/or-be-exploited. This idea, prevalent in the novel but especially obvious in this character, of getting what you can out of the counterculture - rather than working for wider social change - seems to look forward to the idea that hippies became yuppies and that the same energy that fuelled radical protest later fuelled 80s neoliberalism. [/END]

There are a few minor female characters who are unarguably reductive caricatures of a sort that contemporary leftwing readers will criticise. One could just about say that "braless girl and her friend "the fat girl" are how Howard sees these two students, but they never get other names. And the Taiwanese secretary named Minnehaha Ho… that's just ridiculous, even if her name might also be a reference to a song by The Sweet, a hit in September 1972, when the main action of the novel begins. (The History Man is full of nostalgic cultural details, nearly all of them more acceptable than this one.)

Perhaps the narrative goes on a little too much about the modern architecture on the campus, a 1960s plate-glass university designed, right down to the canteen cutlery, by fictional Finnish architect Kaakinen. Some of the descriptions, especially of the artificial lake, reminded me of my 6th form visit to the University of York. (Although the geographical location of Watermouth sounds like Brighton, site of Sussex University.) That day, I found York University an awful place aesthetically and existentially as I've found few others ever, and felt that if I had to live there I could have ended up killing myself. (Needless to say, York didn't go on my UCAS form.) If all this architecture ranting in The History Man was Bradbury letting off steam about the soulless surroundings at UEA, where he was based, I could certainly sympathise and forgive. (He was one of the founders of the Creative Writing course at UEA, the British status-equivalent of the Iowa Writers Workshop... This novel may not be quite as literary as what some of my friends would read, but, if it were possible (he died in 2000), would I welcome creative writing instruction from this author? Hell yeah.)

Overall, the novel, from a 2019 perspective, has aged remarkably well (more so than it would have a few years ago when the contemporary radical left was less visible and less influential). And it perhaps seems stronger now, to someone like me who's just a bit too young to remember the Kirks' world first hand, than it would have to the 1970s leftist. The buzzwords then aren't the buzzwords now (though there is a 'problematic') and this makes the novel seem more creative to me, now, than would a book full of contemporary clichés. I'm only sorry it isn't part of a series, like David Lodge's trilogy - though there is an early 80s TV adaptation of The History Man to check out if I ever find the time.

[Nigeyb · Rating 5 out of 5]

I'd wanted to read The History Man for decades having been enthralled by the 1981 BBC adaptation as a teenager. Whilst my memories of it are hazy, I know I really enjoyed it. I am also fascinated by the late 1960s and early 1970s, and so tend to enjoy books which credibly evoke that era.

The History Man is set in 1972, as the enthusiasm for the late 1960s revolution was fading. Many on the radical left were keen to keep the momentum going. Howard Kirk, the book's central character, is among them. He is a sociology lecturer at the fictional University of Watermouth. The History Man evokes this era wonderfully and, through 2018 eyes, it's an extraordinary world, almost unbelievable, especially when compared with 21st century universities.

Malcolm Bradbury knew this world intimately, having taught at the University of East Anglia from 1966 and into the 1970s. It was one of several new universities during the era which were then seen as fashionable, innovative and exciting places, receptive to the influence of the new counterculture. The lecturers were frequently radical and the students open to their ideological teachings.

Howard Kirk and his wife Barbara Kirk have an open marriage which leaves Howard free to seduce his way through the campus. This now seems reprehensible enough, however he also neglects his family, and hangs his best friend out to dry. Through modern eyes, and post-Me Too, Howard Kirk is a monstrous character, who not only seduces his students, he also exploits his position to indoctrinate them.

Such was its popularity during the 1970s and early 1980s, The History Man is also often cited as the novel which killed Sociology as a credible academic subject, and helped usher in Thatcherism.

Despite the dark content The History Man is a compelling and brilliant read, also very accessible, clever and amusing. It must surely rank as the definitive portrait of the radical and revolutionary world of the early 1970s, and it's a wonderful campus novel.

Malcolm Bradbury was a huge admirer of Evelyn Waugh, and The History Man is on a par with Waugh at his bleakly dark and satirical best. I have only touched on the plot, however it is a fascinating narrative, expertly written, which lays bare the emptiness present in many modern lives, and the inherent dangers in radicalism of any stripe.

The back cover of the Picador Classic edition states that The History Man is Malcolm Bradbury's masterpiece. It's hard to imagine he can have written a better book.

An exhilarating, dark, energetic and compelling satire that still feels relevant, and brilliantly evokes the era and milieu of English university life in the early 1970s.

5/5

[Vesna · Rating 5 out of 5]

I’ve never read the novel that made me laugh so much and then left me with dark thoughts. - how terrifying when someone succeeds in gaining the monopoly on truth.

4.5

[F.R. · Rating 4 out of 5]

We are in the Seventies, a time where the sexual revolution is fully embedded and every ‘advanced’ marriage condones affairs and swinging. (After all, it adds to the spice and happiness of the union, and all right-minded people understand that monogamy is heavy.) The setting is a red brick English University, one that is freshly designed by the finest Finnish architect and is packed full with buildings named after eminent philosophers. Our protagonist is Howard Kirk, a Zapata moustachioed, right-on, radical Sociology lecturer – who no longer has any bourgeois sexual hang-ups and is constantly railing against the liberal reactionary forces. ‘Fascist’ is another commonly thrown insult from his arsenal. Except that Dr Kirk might not be as cool as he – and his cronies – would like to believe. In fact it becomes clear that he is deeply selfish, truly intolerant of the opinions of others and motivated solely by his own desires. Fortunately, the loose mores of the world he inhabits means that he can get away with that, whilst still looking like a right-on and with it, all round good guy.

Although it’s only thirty-six years old, reading this book is like entering a time warp. The characters, situations, moral judgements and values are all as far removed from us now in 2011 as the worlds of Austen and Dickens. My own experience of British universities might be a tad dated, but it wasn’t like that then and I doubt it’s reverted now we’re in the Twenty-First century. That being said, it’s a wonderfully conjured world that really gives you a sense of time and place. It is also an incredibly witty read, with many great lines and comic situations. However, at points 'The History Man' is a hard novel to get through. The author is obviously out to eviscerate Kirk and his ilk, and the book does that admirably, but it’s still a long time to spend with a deeply unpleasant, self-satisfied character – even if we are supposed to come away hating him.

If you have a desire for fine witty writing, lava lamps and an expose of how the sexual revolution could be exploited, this is definitely a recommended read.

[Deanne · Rating 2 out of 5]

A group of characters that I struggled to identify with, none of them seem like people you would want to spend time with.

[Mervyn Whyte · Rating 4 out of 5]

Okay, the style is pretty old fashioned. But it is nearly 50 years old. And so there's a great deal of telling and not much showing. I struggled at first, but soon got into it. And what surprised me is that much that's in it - like cancel culture - is still relevant today. I guess one shouldn't be too surprised. Human nature hasn't changed a great deal since 1975. Especially in universities, which have become more corporate and more radical at the same time. There aren't that many sympathetic characters in the book. But it did make me laugh out loud on a few occasions. I particularly enjoyed the staff meeting.

[Bill FromPA · Rating 5 out of 5]

Howard Kirk is a professor of Sociology at the University of Watermouth. He is “the history man” because he believes in the dialectic of history. (A repeated question in the book’s first half, asked and overheard, is “Who is Hegel?”). He also believes himself history’s catalyst who can speed the historical process to its goal by maximizing conflict wherever he can, on campus, among his acquaintances, or in his marriage.

Kirk is a Richard III-type figure: an appalling human being who nevertheless fascinates the reader with his energy, audacity, and apparently flawless instinct for self-advancement. His energy also informs the novel’s prose, which moves at a non-stop present tense pace in long paragraphs that combine description, action, and dialogue in an stream uninterrupted by line breaks. Reading the first few chapters I felt manic and exhausted until I adjusted my reading gears to match the novel’s pace.

I was bothered by William Stoner’s apparent failure to see any relationship between his academic subject of Literature and his life outside the classroom and seminar. This is certainly not an issue with Bradbury’s academics, who bring their professional expertise to bear in understanding and conducting their lives.

There are people who ask the question 'How's the family?' and, receiving the answer 'Fine' are perfectly satisfied; there are other people, the real professionals, who expect the answer in a very different realm. Families are Flora's business; all over the world there are families, nuclear and extended, patriarchal and matriarchal, families cooked and families raw, which pause, rigid, in their work of raising children, bartering daughters, tabooing incest, practising wife-exchange, performing rites of circumcision, potlatching, as Flora enters their clearing or their longhouse or their living-room and asks, notebook in hand, 'How's the family?' It is a serious and searching question about the universe; and, Flora is seeking a universal answer. For Flora is famous for questions. When she is not in her service flat in the leafy suburb, or out in the world on fieldwork, she is to be found at meetings and congresses, in small halls in London or Zurich; here she habitually sits in a left-hand aisle seat near the front and, the paper over, rises first, a pencil held high for attention, to ask the initial and most devastating question ('I'd hoped to bring evidence to show the entire inadequacy of this approach. Happily the speaker has, presumably unconsciously, performed the task for me in the paper itself. As for my question…)

Kirk’s specialty of Sociology also informs the novel’s narrative: details of décor, dress, and speech signify the characters’ places on the class and political spectra.

Bradbury writes brilliantly here. As indicated, he has that rare talent for matching form to content. The dialogue is marvelously crafted – as in Gaddis’ JR, the different voices of the many characters come across with distinctive phrasing and rhythm; in the party scenes he is able to write dialogue that indicates the specific level of intoxication of each of the speakers. The novel takes place over approximately 10 days in early October 1972, with a sort of epilogue set in December of that year. After an introductory chapter establishing 1972 as "the present", Bradbury gives us two chapters of back-story on Kirk and his wife Barbara. For me these served mainly to delay the novel's launch into its primary plot and seemed the one misjudgment in the author's otherwise masterful sense of structure.

The novel is also funny as hell, the Sociology departmental meeting in Chapter 9 is worthy to stand with some of the comic scenes from Catch-22.

Trading on success, the student representatives propose that membership of the department meeting be further expanded, to include representatives from the tea-ladies. The motion is put and passed. Benita Pream, the administrative assistant, intervenes here, whispering first in Marvin's ear, then addressing the meeting; she states that under regulations the tea-ladies are not entitled to membership of department meetings. The meeting passes a recommendation urging Senate to change regulations in order to permit tea-ladies to serve on department meetings. The resolution and the preceding one are both ruled out of order from the chair, on the ground that neither refers to any item on the agenda of the meeting. A resolution that items not on the agenda of the meeting be allowed is proposed, but is ruled out of order on the grounds that it is not on the agenda of the meeting. A resolution that the chair be held out of order because it has allowed two motions to come to the vote which are not, according to standing orders, on the agenda of the meeting is refused from the chair, on the grounds that the chair cannot allow motions to come to the vote which are not, according to standing orders, on the agenda of the meeting.

Also like Heller’s novel, The History Man has au fond too dark an outlook to be unequivocally classified as a “comic novel”.

David Lodge in The Guardian

[Mandy · Rating 3 out of 5]

Perhaps one of the most definitive campus novels of all time, Bradbury’s The History Man is very much a product of a specific place and era and as such has dated somewhat. The Swinging Sixties in retrospect we now know had a dark side and it’s here embodied in the figure of Howard Kirk, one of literature’s most unpleasant characters. Unredeemably obnoxious he leaves chaos and heartbreak in his wake all in the name of freedom and liberalism. An effective satire, and with moments of humour, I found the book ultimately tedious. There’s a lot of dialogue but little examination of motive or character, so all feels rather superficial. Howard is the focus of the book and all the others seem to fade away in his shadow making for a one-sided view of university and personal life. Nevertheless, it’s still worth reading as a memento of a changing society and the new permissive outlook on life which flowered at the time.

[Ben Keisler · Rating 4 out of 5]

This was my second book of the month about 1970's England, after Margaret Drabble's The Ice Age. This one was less about economic culture and malaise (that infamous Jimmy Carter word, honest and accurate but dooming in that era in America) and more about the spiritual culture of the era, glorifying rebellion and disruption while beneath the surface simply creating a different power structures and maintaining the old kinds of oppressions.

Bradbury created a classic and memorable character, Howard Kirk, who, in rising to power as a revolutionary Sociology professor in a new University is free to play power games with his wife, his students, his au pair and fellow professors. He is a man of his times, a man of history, riding the waves that bring him fame in his sphere and an endless supply of admiring girls and women while playing his role as an enemy of the establishment. He and his female counterpart, the social psychologist and wonderfully named amazon Flora Beniform, who likes going to bed with men who have troubled marriages in order to advance her research, have great dialogues in bed before during and after sex. Flora has the upper hand in these sessions, but Howard never leaves unsatisfied.

I enjoyed the setting and the dialogue and the positioning of the characters, who seemed very real to me as types, if not as fully realised individuals. I was dissatisfied with the failure of Howard to get his deserved comeuppance but in a world where #45 may become #47 it's simply realism. I was more dissatisfied with the progression of Miss Callendar, whose earlier scenes were a second formidable counterpoint to Howard but who seemed to dissolve into another bit of Felicity. Was this a limitation of the novel, a reflection of the early 70's, or part of Howard's destiny as the man of history, while Miss Callendar was more a woman of the previous century? Or was Bradbury simply a man writing about men and women (a less satisfying answer)?

In any case, a very enjoyable read, a great picture of this moment in culture, good satire and a welcome discovery.

[Frank McGirk · Rating 2 out of 5]

I should probably rate this lower, as I've given up on it.

My book mark fell out and I didn't have the heart to flip through and find where I left off.

The writing is actually pretty good, but I really wasn't into a mockery of 1970's academics. Halfway through and I cared nothing for the characters, nor was there anything insightful or actually funny in Bradbury's lampoon.

Don't like quitting books generally, but I liked quitting this one.

[Banu Yıldıran Genç · Rating 4 out of 5]

sosyal medyası olmasa keşke dediğim (özellikle pandemi sonrası) üç meslek grubu var: akademisyenler, hekimler, yazarlar (genelde yaşı biraz geçkince olanları). yani o kadar çok tvitte ah keşke sussanız filan demişimdir ki içinden bu meslek gruplarına.
şimdi akademisyen kafasını yıllar evvel çözmüş, o ilim irfan yuvası sandığımız kampüslerde neler döndüğünü bilen malcolm bradbury açıkçası meslektaşlarını itin dötüne sokmayı göze alarak bu romanı yazmış.
kendini yalaka öğrencilerinin ünlediği gibi “tarih adam” sanan sosyolog howard kirk ve karısı barbara kirk’in verdiği bir partiyle başlıyor roman. sene 70’ler, açık evlilik, özgür seks, doğum kontrol yöntemleri, komünizm her masada konuşuluyor. protestolar, graffitiler gırla. özgürlükleri ve değişikliğe ayak uydurmaları sayesinde 12 yıldır evli kalabilmiş kirk’ler öğrencilerin, kasabalıların, sıkıcı meslektaşlarının gözünden birer ilah.
oysa howard tüm cazibesini öğrenciler ve meslektaşlarıyla birlikte olmak için kullanan ahlak yoksunu bir adam. bunu sadece cinsel açıdan söylemiyorum. daha romanın başında genetikçi mangel’in üni’ye davet edildiği mesajını gizlice yayarak roman boyunca büyüyen bu dedikodunun kaynağı olduğunu öyle bir saklıyor ki. genetikçi olduğu için faşist denilen mangel meselesi pek çok akademisyenin gerçek yüzünü gösteriyor sonunda.
bir de yine faşist bulduğu, düşük not verdiği, sıkıcı ve sağcı öğrencisi carmody’e yaptıkları var. carmody’i şantaj yapmaya götürecek kadar sıkıştıran, aşağılayan kendisi oysa. bu olayda carmody’nin danışmanı bayan callender’ın tarafındaydım ki o da hiç beklemediğim bir biçimde howard’a dayanamadı ve olanlar oldu.
sonuç olarak son derece hin, sinsi ve manipülatif bir sosyoloji hocasını çok iyi tanıyoruz ama kadınlar için aynı şeyi söyleyemeyeceğim. ne howard’dan daha zeki olan barbara, ne zayıf karakterli myra, ne de hocasıyla yatıp kalkarak bir yerlere geleceğini sanan felicity tam olarak derinleşmiş. amerika’dan gelen melissa todoroff karakteri ise karikatür olarak kalmış. yani üzgünüm malcolm bradbury romanınız akademik dünya açısından tam puan alırken, son derece eril bakış açısıyla sınıfta kaldı. ama 70’ler olduğu için affedildiniz.
gerçekten iyi roman, özellikle 1975’te yazıldığını düşünürseniz. akademik dünyadan gelen birinin o hayal kırıklığını anlatabilmek adına yaşananları faş etmesi oldukça cesur bence. çevirisi de oldukça iyi.
yine de mehmet h. doğan çevirilerinde hep hata bulurum, huyum kurusun. burada “seks ayrımcılığı” gözden kaçmış. sex’i cinsiyet değil de seks diye çevirmek komik olmuş ve editör de görmemiş. bir de howard flora’yla seviştikten sonra altına önce eşofman, sonra blue jean giyiyor, orada bir karışıklık var ama orijinaline bakmak lazım.

[Hester · Rating 5 out of 5]

Perfect satire and as relevant now as when it first burst onto the scene in the mid seventies .

A scathing portrait of how a naive fundamentalism , promising Eden as an inevitable end, allows for the unchecked emergence of vile people who are able to exploit the good nature of less nimble or vulnerable individuals .

Howard Kirk is a singularly brilliant creation and is unswerving in his dedication to himself and his agenda , in this case a radicalism borne out of post war idealism and faith in his discipline of sociology .The clue is in his name . He has his own church , the university campus , where he conducts missionary work (and often employs the missionary position in conversions ). His drug of choice is power , his means is via the revolutionary left wing politics of the day where the new campus universities of the nineteen sixties expansion provide an endless substrate of academic justification , like minded colleagues, naive students and lots of women to liberate themselves and sleep with him .

These days his predatory behaviour would be called early into question but , back then , sexual freedom for all top trumped the unrecognised asymmetry of power and abuse in the patriarchy. Most people , but mainly women, simply need "some action " to solve their problems . Everyone can be liberated if they only choose to make the Right Choice ie. Howard's .

It's a bleak message and it's a very funny novel which is it's genius. The chapter exploring a departmental meeting and it's convoluted machinations is worth the entry fee alone .

BTW the BBC made a credible adaptation which is worth watching . Anthony Sher , as Howard , doesn't put a foot wrong .

Genius .

[Becky · Rating 2 out of 5]

While I really wanted to like this, and although I did enjoy the obvious descriptions of UEA, I found the whole thing rather difficult to finish. I didn't find the writing funny enough to count as a comedy, but was aware that this was the aim of the piece. In the end I just found it all rather uncomfortable to read, and felt that it was just trying too hard.

[Brian E Reynolds · Rating 3 out of 5]

This is a 1975 satirical British satirical campus novel by Malcolm Bradbury that satirizes the professional set at a central England University, one of the many concrete and glass universities built in Great Britain and the U. S. during the 1960s. One such university was built in my current hometown of Springfield Illinois that, like the one in the novel, was known as a haven for radical thinking professors using teaching approaches at variance with the classical style. That start still impacts the university’s culture today.

The story focuses on one professor in particular, Howard Kirk, accurately described on the back cover as a “product of the Swinging Sixties, radical University lecturer and one half of a modern marriage." We follow the exploits of the extremely self-assured Howard, along with his wife, as they carry on as social mavens of campus society, hosting parties, having affairs, and for Howard, through his relationships with his students, fellow professors and administrators. Howard’s free-wheeling and self-centered approach to relations and teaching does result in some dramatic situations, including one that does build to a fairly interesting end of book climax.

Bradbury’s storytelling and characterization were done well but I didn’t find that much humor or insight in them. My fairly negative attitude toward the time-period’s adults who acted in such a free-wheeling manner may explain why the book didn’t work that well for me. I just don’t seem to like to read books or watch movies about the type of people operating in this setting.

As a fairly free-wheeling student from 1971 to 1975, and one who enjoyed his life during this era, I should find it fascinating to read about that time period. I think my negative attitude is because it was better to be a student than a young adult during that period. The excessive self-centeredness that often accompanies the strive for freedom is something more excusable in a 20-year-old than in a 30- or 40-year-old.

As I’m a fan of almost all campus novels, like those of David Lodge, I think my reaction to the book may partially reflect my guilt from my encouraging such self-centered behavior when I lived in that time period. I would have found Howard Kirk to be “real cool” if I had him as a professor at the time.
Trying to be objective, I rate this as 3 stars as it did develop to an effective and dramatic conclusion.

[Lars Williams · Rating 4 out of 5]

Nothing seems more distant than the recent past, and the orange-curtained, brown-sofa'd, Afghan-coated 70s that forms the setting for this book appears impossibly alien today. It starts off as a gentle satire of 60s and 70s radicalism, the right-on Marxist/Freudian/Reichian posturing of the Kirks an easy target, particularly so from the perspective of today (almost 50 years later). But things soon get a lot darker, with the realisation that right-on, liberal Howard is actually a monster, a charming sociopath whose single-minded pursuit of his own gratification leaves a strew of damaged characters in its wake. It's also a biting satire of conformity, as the staff and students espousing personal freedom and societal revolution are shown to have done nothing more than cast off one oppressive ideology in favour of another. Great style of writing too - the disengaged, emotionally blank prose mirroring Howard's emotional detachment.

[Brett · Rating 4 out of 5]

A book that I ended up liking more than I thought I would at first blush. It's characters are more grounded and realistic than what the description on the back cover would lead you to believe.

When I graduated with an undergraduate English degree, the Department had a little celebration for new graduates where people stood around for an hour and ate crackers and cheese. The Department's professors had laid out books on a table from their own collections and invited students to take one as a memento, I guess. I grabbed this one, which I had never heard of before.

It is from the 1970s and British, and concerned with campus culture, a topic which continues to generate headlines among the conservative commentariat. It is I think fair to describe the History Man as a book with a generally conservative outlook, though from a time when conservatism still had something akin to an intellectual tradition it could draw on.

It is clear that Bradbury doesn't like his protagonist, sociology professor Howard Kirk (the titular History Man) or his wife, Barbara Kirk. Nonetheless, they are written with a degree of honesty and clarity that makes the satire more earned. These characters espouse a revolutionary lifestyle but somehow all their choices seem to leave others to do the sacrificing or hard work. The book's humor is pretty subdued and British, but can be cutting. But Howard and Barbara have a lot of self-knowledge about their own imperfections, and a high degree of consciousness about their own motivations and justifications; they aren't the straw men they could easily have been.

The one plotline that really creates some heat is the dispute between Howard and one of his students about a grade, and how much the student's grade is representative of his work and how much is reliant on his genuflecting toward certain attitudes or positions to please Howard. It's too bad that this thread gets largely dropped and there is no real satisfactory conclusion.

One passage from the book (pg. 188) that struck me when I was reading it because it felt symptomatic of the book itself. The Dean is discussing with Howard the essays of the student who Howard wants to fail: "[the essays] are bad and problematic. The trouble is they're evasive and they don't meet the tests you've set the man. But they also have intelligence, shrewdness, and cultural insight." The same is ultimately true of the whole of the History Man, a novel that isn't quite the devastating argument it thinks it is, but that approaches its subject with aplomb and that asks some serious questions of those of us on the left about how our politics should be represented in our personal lives.

[Hector Norris · Rating 3 out of 5]

A fairly over the top satire on shallow radicalism held by the main character only for personal gain in the setting of a 60s English new university. I liked the descriptive writing about places more than about people. Set in a fictional uni modelled on Sussex but in my mind it was set in Lancaster uni, where the tv adaptation was filmed. I don’t know how well it holds up really but that death of counterculture stuff and the idea of collectivism being co-opted by ruthless narcissism is just inherently interesting to me and more relevant than ever I think so I enjoyed.

[Ebenmaessiger · Rating 1 out of 5]

Here we go. A look inside a sociology department in a redbrick university on the early 70s Cornwall-ish coast, seen, especially, through the eyes of its most self-professedly “radical” and self-consciously “emancipated” professor, Howard Kirk. And we all know what that means: yes, he sleeps with his students. Well, that he does, but also with most other ambulatory females, as well. In terms of the utility of this amorousness for Bradbury’s aims, it’s uncertain, as the novel straddles the line (awkwardly so) between exaggerated, comic satire (such as Kirk manufacturing invitations for controversial speakers, just to spearhead the protests against them, or the presentation of departmental meetings that devolve over their increasingly ludicrous inability to decide upon mundane matters) and a largely mimetic takedown of true-to-form academic radical hypocrisy.

In retrospect, it is not “hypocrisy” that draws his ire; I wrote that because it’s the most obvious assumption for these attacks. In reality, all of Kirk’s problems stem instead from his sincerity, given that his ability to be blackmailed regarding infidelity with students stems from his sincere belief in grading conservatives on a biased scale, convinced, as he is, that their ideology is tout court incompatible with proper sociological methodology. In this way, Bradbury’s indictment is actually much more damming, for he is not holding radicals to task for betraying their values, but exposing what he believes to be the corrosiveness of their values altogether.

All this does not make, however, for the most scintillating reading or character development, given that Kirk never displays any internal compunction about his actions. We therefore simply follow along in Bradbury‘s minute, ratatat, present-tense, detail-heavy, long-paragraph after long-paragraph narration, as Howard moves from one assignation to another, with the final being, of course, his downfall … or, wait, no, it’s the opposite, for Kirk comes out fine (and the allegorical cross to bear for the sins of the radical chic falls upon Kirk’s frustratedly “emancipated” wife). Indeed, it’s this gross misstep by Bradbury at the end that signals not simply his latent sympathy for Kirk, but also his true inability to understand the creatures he’s created (Kirk, primarily, yes, but Annie Callender most egregiously). And it’s this that pushes the book to the one-star “bad” for me, which it doesn’t totally deserve, but a system’s a system, and we’re all beholden to them, n’est ce pas?

And, finally, while it’s the least of our concerns, it is worth bemoaning the bait-and-switch false advertising here. Aware that I’m getting a campus novel, and given the title THE HISTORY MAN, I think I’m within my rights to expect something set in a history department. That’s not what we have, however. And that disappointment sent me off in curious search of campus novels actually set within history departments. The results of that admittedly haphazard search were disconcerting. Basically we have just LUCKY JIM and then 50 years later, THE NETANYAHUS. Some heavy hitters for such a measly sampling, sure, and I’m likely missing many more, sure sure, but let’s have a bit more gripes and stabbed backs outside the English Department.

[Betawolf · Rating 2 out of 5]

I come out of this book wondering what it was I was meant to find in it. Potentially, this is down to datedness -- perhaps if I'd read the book as an academic in the 1970's, I would find it a biting send-up of something or someone from real life. As it stands, however, the book comes off mostly as a description of a petty, malicious man who happens to be a sociologist, and the damaged company he keeps. I don't know anyone like Howard Kirk, or really anyone who fits into that milieu, so the book simply describes a hateful character and then... urges me to hate him?

It's not like it's a funny sort of satire. I mean, there are a few high-level jokes weighted largely on hypocrisy, but they're not going to make you smile so much as roll your eyes, because of course the despicable people would also be hypocrites. The only bits I found at all amusing were the couple of paragraphs about general university life, like the departmental board meeting that struggles for hours over an entirely meaningless agenda item. That's not even remotely enough to hang the book on.

So it's a scornful sort of satire, which, okay, but I really struggled to understand what I was meant to be scorning. The book has a sort of sneering tone which it seems to apply liberally to everything and everyone. I don't know, for instance, if the opening description of Kirk's open marriage is meant to be inviting my contempt or just setting the scene. Am I more liberal than the author, or less? It sounds a bit like several of the more conservative characters used as foils to Kirk are meant to be sympathetic, but does this mean we're meant to scoff at _all_ of the liberal elements of Kirk's life, or only be disgusted by his hypocrisies regarding them? The fact that I don't know makes it hard to get a handle on how exactly the book failed.

There are other issues. The use of present tense makes the whole plot one long scene, depriving it of any sense of development you might have wrung out of the meagre events. The close formatting of the dialogue is needlessly confusing. These might be issues if the book was more fundamentally worthwhile, but, while there is evidence of some authorial talent behind the scenes, it simply isn't worth the tedium.

[Dave · Rating 4 out of 5]

Two men are sitting in a shadowed corner of a secluded bar drinking their favourite beer. "What book did you read this week, Tony?" asks one of the men. "'The History Man' by Malcolm Bradbury", replies Tony. "Did you like it", says the man, "I mean, was it any good?" Tony puts his beer back down on the table and looks at his companion, "Yeah, it was ok, Bob." "Just ok", says Bob, "In what way was it just ok?" "Well the story was detailed enough, almost to the nth degree as the characters analysed the plot with each other", says Tony, "And the main character's backgrounds were told in the past tense which was a nice touch." "The past tense?" asks Bob. "That's right", says Tony, "Because everything else is told in the present tense." Bob takes a drink of his beer and looks at the clock on the wall. The time is 11.20 in the evening and Bob remembers he must be home soon to get to bed as he has a busy day ahead of him. "What didn't you like about it?" says Bob. "Well the conversational style took some getting used to", says Tony, "The characters dialogue is ping-pong and printed as page long paragraphs." "A minor point surely", says Bob, "What about the ideas?" "Oh there's plenty of them in there", says Tony, "Although I'm not sure that an interpretation of the phrase 'Love thy neighbour' means to rush about having promiscuous sex with all your friends and colleagues." Bob looks at the clock again and thinks that his wife will be already in their bed waiting for him. "History is an inexorable process", says Tony. "Isn't that what Tolstoy said?" says Bob. "That's right", says Tony, "Only Tolstoy added that man cannot influence it. Our History Man thinks he can." Bob takes a last drink of his beer and stands up. "Sounds like pretty existentialistic stuff to me", says Bob, "However, if I don't make a move home soon, I'll be the one wanting to influence history." "Good night, Bob", says Tony as he watches his friend leave the bar and start the long walk up the hill towards home.

[George · Rating 4 out of 5]

A cleverly written, funny, disconcerting, provocative satirical novel of university life set in 1972, in the fictional university town of Watermouth, England. The main character, Howard Kirk, a radical sociology lecturer who has written successfully published books, is married to Barbara. They have two children. Howard and Barbara openly have sexual affairs. Howard has sex with his students and fellow female lecturers. Howard has a confrontation with one of his male students that quickly escalates.

A very good send up of university life.

Here are some examples of the authors writing style:
‘Why is it that married people always say “Come in” when everything they do says “Get out”? They talk about their miseries and then ask you why you’re unmarried.’
‘There’s always something or someone to do. “But don’t you ever find it too much work, Howard? asks Flora, ‘All this dressing and undressing, all these undistinguished climaxes, all this chasing for more of the same, is it really, really, worth it? Of course.’

This book was first published in 1975.

[Emily · Rating 3 out of 5]

I started reading The History Man because I stumbled upon an interesting article suggesting that the novel had been co-opted during the Thatcher era to promote an anti-left wing stance, and had also contributed to sociology’s reputation becoming somewhat tarnished. This fascinated me primarily because of how the book was being used for political purposes exceeding the satire intended by it’s author, and indeed Bradbury says in the postscript, reflecting on the novels many years later, that he hopes sociology will see a rejuvenation in the coming decades.

With these aims in mind, I began the History Man, not a little excited to read some middle-class lefty bashing, that being one of my favourite pastimes as a left-wing middle-class person.

The novel starts off doing this well, introducing us to a pretty horrid cast of characters, each one more dislikable than the next. Various party scenes are used to good effect, allowing us to quickly get a sense of the prevailing intellectual climate of ennui, patriarchy disguised as sexual liberation, and detached egotism. The novel then moves into showing the daily working life of the protagonist Howard Kirk.

For me, this is where things start to get a bit slippery, as the caricatured nature of the characters that seemed suitable for the hectic party scene begins to feel unnatural in a normal environment. Despite Howard’s psychology, or inner emotions, being central to the events of the plot, they are never made explicit, nor are the feelings of any of the subsidiary characters. Everything is left buried, beneath the surface and implicit, and although this is party effective in suggesting how false, disconnected and manipulative Howard is, it also begins to feel reductive, as we are never given access to real human emotion. In fact, for a novel that seems to constantly parody the sociological tendency to reduce all human feeling to historical trends and power dynamics, markedly little genuine feeling is portrayed. This, for me, is the chink in this novel’s armour, as the lack of insight into the character’s inner world risks mirroring the shallow worldview it is trying to undermine.

A good example of this is the way the novel treats ‘problematic’ or controversial material. There are two incidences within the novel where two opposing groups are formed who disagree as to whether a certain piece of intellectual work should be censored or not (Mangel’s visit and Carmody’s essays). The accusations of Kirk and his radical group are made hyperbolic (particular in Carmody’s case where he calls him a ‘fascist’ for writing an essay where society is said to run effectively rather than being mired with social conflict), so that they appear ridiculous and influence the reader to agree with the opposing group’s view that Kirk is threatening free speech. What I find a bit reductive about this scenario is that in both cases the reader is not given any direct access to the controversial material, so as to make their own decision. The reader naturally is repelled by Kirk’s hatred towards Carmady simply for having a different opinion, yet the actual content of Carmady’s essays is never shown. The same is true for Mangel, where the radicals are presented as unintellectual and ridiculous for labelling him a racist without even meeting him, but again we are never given access to this purportedly racist comment that he made, or the reasoning for their accusation. What I dislike about this is that it leads the reader into a very negative view of left wing theory, and although this is not bad in itself perhaps, by withholding the actual material basis for the radical’s allegations, it promotes this stance based more on the form of left wing argument than the actual content. Because of this textual gap, the book passes beyond a critique of left wing politics to a pretty damning caricature that could be used to justify a hatred for all left wing stances en masse, regardless of their nuance, although I don’t feel this was the author’s intention.

Considering how Kirk’s reversion to gender and racial politics in every situation is so ruthlessly parodied, it seems ironic and predictable of me to talk briefly on the presentation of diversity within novel itself. But times have changed since the novel was written, and it seems relevant to bring up some issues that a modern university student probably would. Race is mentioned in the novel merely as a tool by the white intelligentsia to accuse others, but the novel provides no counter glimpses into actual experiences of racism to confirm it’s existence, or that it is more than just a liberal insult. Compare, for example, Ellison’s Invisible Man, where the white communists are similarly shown to be self-serving and irresponsible, but the harsh realities of racism that the narrator experiences stops the whole reality of racism from being undermined or made to seem silly.


Similarly, the novel highlights how underneath the radical politics of the time women were still forced into a subordinate position, whilst simultaneously giving its female characters little autonomy or personality. Like Kirk, the female characters are not explored in any detailed human way, but worse than Kirk they are also not the centrifugal force around which the satire resolves, and so serve simply to reinforce Kirk’s sexual magnetism. It particularly annoyed me when Miss Calendar, perhaps the only not completely horrible character, magically falls for Kirk despite there being no interior reason provided as to why she should. The sudden flip from a potential downfall for Kirk to suddenly being out of danger is extremely anti-climactic.

On the whole, it was a fairly interesting read and I commend the author for capturing a feel of the political tone of the era, but purely as a work of literature it depends too much on the satirical gaze to truly penetrate into the psyche of it’s characters; this flatness becomes so pronounced that for me it becomes indistinguishable from the very stance it wishes to satirise - that is the subordination of other value systems to theoretical political systems.

[Michael Scott · Rating 3 out of 5]

The History Man is the story of the activist couple the Kirks. The book starts from the premise that, like history, a true reactionary's path cannot changed by whichever contemporary events. The Kirks, Howard and Barbara, live in the 1970s in Britain, Howard as a young professor of sociology, Barbara as a house-wife, and find their true call in political activism; their political credo is change, fueled with young student minds and promiscuous social exploration. The writing style is interesting: there is almost no descriptive passage or even passive tense, and most of the book is action despite a focus on political rhetoric. On the negative sides, most of the characters in this story, including Barbara, remain coarsely defined, and the plot is rather thin. Overall, an interesting topic but a wordy book.

[Jane Faigan · Rating 3 out of 5]

Probably would have enjoyed this more if I'd read it when I originally purchased it, 20-30 yrs ago - recently found it,yellowed, slightly water damaged with spots of mould throughout. It felt little bit dated,(it was published mid 70s). I've read similar, thinking David Lodge in particular, who I love actually,but same kinda English social satire of that era. Main guy radical left wing professor, Mr Liberal of the campus, roots his impessionable female students... all too familiar...Yeah, enjoyable, wouldn't call it masterpiece but I'm keen to check out what else this guys written.

[strategian]

A strange book about some of the most hateful, nasty people in the world. It has an unusual prosaic style which is interesting but it's not very funny. It does have a lot going on, it's just not fun to read really.

[Belf · Rating 5 out of 5]

Dated now, but still so funny I laughed my striped stockings off

[Dasein · Rating 3 out of 5]

The way the author writes is not exactly my cup of tea, but I enjoyed the irony upon the characters and the new world order that was yet to come. Also, I found it funny.

[987643467881 · Rating 3 out of 5]

I have a bit of a love-hate relationship with sociology, so this seemed like the perfect book for me to read. For a discipline that aims to analyse and theorise the realities of society, it never ceases to amaze me just how out of touch with reality so many of its students/teachers are. Is there something inherent about theorising society that inevitably makes one (appear) to stop living in it? Or is it that those not living in it are inevitably drawn to studying it? Or does it perhaps offer a means for those forced to live in it a convenient way to escape it by arbitrarily labeling, defining, classifying and analysing it to the point of meaningless non-existence (all the while criticising the very same processes in other disciplines)? I've often wondered (and lamented about) how something with so much potential could produce such ridiculous outcomes – I think this book tries to examine this very question in the form of a “campus novel”, and in doing so also reveals the larger issues that were at play in 1970s Britain (and the Western world in general) and perhaps even gives some insight into the world that we find ourselves in today.

Like many inter-disciplinary subjects, sociology is riddled with paradoxes, which is perhaps part of its appeal. In it's attempt to provide a comprehensive account of the workings of society, it analyses and combines the abstract concepts within philosophy, anthropology, political science, economics, history and culture, and attempts to bring them all down to earth with it's empirical data and quasi-scientific objectivity, and in doing so, hopes to make them applicable to the real world by giving them some practical use. But ultimately, it only deconstructs theories and ideologies in order to create new ones, and it's this that makes the subject so vulnerable to the whims of its proponents at any given time – proponents such as this book's protagonist, Professor Howard Kirk.

Howard Kirk, a sociology professor who, in coming to terms with the fading enthusiasm for the revolution of the 60s, tries desperately to keep the momentum of that Zeitgeist going, and ironically, in doing so turns into a hypocritical caricature of himself. Kirk's not just your average hypocritical run-of-the-mill bourgeois Marxist though - oh no, he takes action, and not just any old action: “radical” action! He sees it as his duty to help move things along in a certain direction (supposedly towards “freedom” as he sees it), without any qualms about how it might affect others, or any self-awareness about the fact that his means of giving a helping hand to “historical inevitability” somehow, coincidentally and conveniently, coincides with his own interests.

Kirk refuses to accept liberal humanism as a valid philosophy, and is driven by a desire to dominate, humiliate, and ultimately destroy the liberal humanism represented by his collegues Henry Beamish and Annie Callendar, whose self-doubt, hesitance and tolerance, left them vulnerable to Kirk's determination, relentlessness and conviction in his monopoly on the “truth”. By elevating his own opinions to the status of facts, Kirk attempts to condemn the views of those who don't agree with him, like conservative student George Carmody, to “historical irrelevancy”.

(George Carmody is an all too familiar example of someone who, when forced into a corner and made to feel crazy, is left with no choice but to actually act crazy out of his, justifiable, sense of injustice at the attempts made to invalidate and censor, not only his work, ideas and beliefs, but also, ultimately, his very existence. But fascistic censorship is fine, as long as it's not the fascists that are doing it, right?)

The author's sardonic, detached style, and lack of descriptions of the characters' emotions and inner motivations is made up for with dialogues between characters who endlessly talk about themselves – allowing the reader to make their own deductions. Deductions such as the one I made that liberal humanism for some reason actually frightens Howard Kirk. What is it about liberal humanism that threatens him so? Is it the human liberalism of it all? :)

Using Howard Kirk's rise to fame, the author neatly outlines the rise and fall of the reputation of sociology from the 1950s to the late 1970s, and the subsequent swing from a left-leaning cultural/political atmosphere to the right-wing policies of Margaret Thatcher. What makes this rise and fall so interesting is that it almost gives you a sense of history repeating itself, with the rise and fall (in popularity) of sociology (which can itself be seen as a sociological phenomenon) acting as a sort of gauge or indication as to where a society is politically and culturally at any given time. It's even more interesting to think about this today, in what seems to be like an increasingly absurd era of identity politics (of both the left and right wing varieties). If we assume that the rise and fall is a cycle, at which stage might we be at now?

Are we experiencing the “radical alienation that was one of the consequences of modernity” (or postmodernity in this case?) that made sociology so popular in the 1950s postwar Western society?

Are we going through the same paradox of the 1960s revolution in which “Marxist utopian dreams were somehow to be financed by endless bourgeois wealth” and lost their inclusiveness, along with their true meaning?

Or are we at the stage that the author describes as “the great Nineties dumbing-down” that was the result of the attempt to democratically spread cultural understanding from the elite to popular culture - an attempt that gradually corrupted the ideological skepticism of the 1960s and provided the perfect “ideological and moral framework of postmodern consumer capitalism” of the 1990s?

Despite it's bad reputation in the late 1970's, the sociology of Howard Kirk definitely seems to have made a come back - perhaps using different language and terminology, but it's still definitely recognizable. It was surprising just how familiar so much of the book was:

“The new buildings all had toilets with strange modern symbols of man and woman on them, virtually indistinguishable; the new students came, and they stared at the doors, and at themselves, and at each other; they looked, and they asked questions like ‘What is man, any more?’ and so life went on. Gemeinschaft yielded to Gesellschaft; community was replaced by the fleeting, passing contacts of city life; people came into the university, and disappeared; psychiatric social workers were appointed, to lead them through the recesses of their angst.”

“‘There’s a rumour that Mangel is coming here to speak,’ says Howard […] 'Mangel the geneticist. Mangel the racist.’ […] ‘Christ, we can’t have him here.’ ‘Well, that’s precisely what I thought,’ says Howard […] ‘It’s an insult, an indignity,’ says Moira. ‘It’s an outrage,’ says Howard. […] ‘I’ll raise it at the departmental meeting tomorrow,’ says Moira, […] ‘I’ll fight. You can count on me.’”

“‘Justice!’ cries Roger Fundy. ‘Democratic justice is clear injustice.’ ‘You always seem to find it convenient when it is in your favour,’ says Marvin.”

“But by now Howard was Dr Kirk [...] he had been at work on a book, an argumentative book, about cultural and sexual change, which urged, as you might expect, that there had been a total restructuring of sexual mores in Britain, that sexual roles had been totally reassigned, and that the use of the traditional concepts of ‘man’ and ‘woman’, to designate stable cultural entities, was irrelevant. ‘We need new names for these genitally distinct types of persons,’ it said.”

(This last quote in particular reminded me of something that might be created by Andrew Bulhak's Postmodern Generator.)

In the words of the author: “Like most Enlightenment projects, the great enterprise [of sociology] became lost in its own ironies.” For all it's claims to “deepen and enrich the sense of society and social existence”, I have to wonder how much of a role it plays in creating exactly the opposite effect. It's difficult to tell where in the curve of rise and collapse of sociology we find ourselves today (opinions most certainly will vary) but one does have wonder just how ridiculous things have to get before we get to the inevitable collapse, and perhaps equally as inevitable rebirth. Could it be that with every reincarnation the limits of ridiculousness are pushed ever further as an inevitable result of the repeated “dumbing down” stage? Is every reincarnation an ever sadder revival of a previous revival leading backwards to an original idea that everyone has long forgotten the real essence of?

It was only inevitable that Bradbury's critique (from a liberal humanist stand point) of the way in which sociology (a subject for which he always maintained the utmost respect) was being used to teach radical left-wing ideology at universities, would be appropriated and perverted by the right-wing proponents of 1980's Britain. History seems to form an endless reiterating loop and it's difficult not to feel a little bit nihilistic about it all.

All in all it was an interesting book to think about – albeit not a very entertaining one in my opinion. I like my satires a little bit faster paced and with more sub-plots/parallel story-lines; for this reason I much prefer David Lodge's work in the campus novel genre, which, although it offers a much more lighthearted approach to the issues, still gets the point across in a much more engaging way.

[• L A U R A • · Rating 2 out of 5]

Went into this assuming that a "campus novel" would be more centred around the students but wasn't necessarily too disappointed in the end. Although Howard is a horrible character who lies, spreads rumours, and is involved with like 6 women at once, the humour in the writing lets me laugh at how disgusting he is rather than just get mad.
The time period this is set in is very interesting because Howard seems to be using this mask of "radicalism" and "freedom" to cover up his gross predatory behaviours. He was also so interested in other women that he didn't notice his own wife (also involved in an affair which made her happy but then the guy went on a press tour so then she was sad?) was spiralling into depression. This resulted in the interesting but confusing ending where she repeated the actions of Henry at a party, driving her arm through a window. But then the book ended so idk what happened.
** also new years resolution to actually review books to hopefully cure my short term memory loss