Describe Regarding Books The History Man

Title	:	The History Man
Author	:	Malcolm Bradbury
Book Format	:	Paperback
Book Edition	:	Deluxe Edition
Pages	:	Pages: 230 pages
Published	:	1984 by Arena (first published 1975)
Categories	:	Fiction. Humor. Novels. Comedy. Academic. Academia

The History Man Paperback | Pages: 230 pages

Explanation As Books The History Man

[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.

Itemize Books Toward The History Man

Original Title:	The History Man
ISBN:	0099149109 (ISBN13: 9780099149101)
Edition Language:	English
Characters:	Howard Kirk, Flora Beniform

Rating Regarding Books The History Man

Ratings: 3.63 From 1515 Users | 90 Reviews

Critique Regarding Books The History Man

First read this when I was at university years ago. I remember liking it, but this time it left me a bit cold. Its a bit silly and the characters are implausible.

The premise of this book is one that would normally appeal to me - how can one have too many satires about university life, after all. But in the end, despite trying very hard to cling to my immediate bias in its favour, this book inexorably wore down my good opinion and in the end I was more than a little relieved to finish it.Minor irritations - I'm not a big fan of present tense narrative. It just irks me. And then the actual typesetting is dreadful. There are no linebreaks between the speech

"the exemplary case of the Kirks, an instructive public matter, the tale of two bewildered people who had failed themselves and then suddenly grown. It was a attractive and popular story for the times. and it went through many refinements. The earlier tellings had concentrated on the liberation plot; the cramped lives, the affair, the running around naked on the moors, the explosion of consciousness and new political awareness. But after a while there were certain elements of scepticism that

I remember originally reading this for school back in the day. It was good to revisit it although it felt somewhat dated. The themes still resonate now though. The hypocrisy & artificial confrontation that appears to come with radical (or what appears to be radical) activity is savagely lampooned. Howard Kirk is portrayed as a total fraud who is content to mark his students not their work & complains when it is done to him. Short enough to get through quickly but with enough memorable

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.

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,

Perhaps one of the most definitive campus novels of all time, Bradburys 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 its here embodied in the figure of Howard Kirk, one of literatures 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