Epiphanies of
Indignation
Karl Jaspers said something to the effect
that communication is a struggling love with other persons. The pathology or
the perversions to which this particular form of love is vulnerable are nicely
illustrated in colleges and universities, where different generations suppose
that they have come to instruct the others. The student brings his burgeoning
self; the younger faculty members are surfers on the tide of history; the
administration is in its second childhood, torn between peer bonding and
sibling rivalry.
One would think that a novelist, observing this rich material,
enjoying the leisure to color, distill and refine it, could turn out a book
both funny and sad-but this is not usually the case. Novels about academic life
are more often no better than the labored witticisms teachers wreak on their
students.
It used to be that a teacher's job was the interpretation of
his particular subject. In the last decade, it has increasingly come to seem
that what he is forced to interpret is a number of subjects sitting out there
in front of him. The student majors in himself and minors in everything else.
The instructor generally has a choice between integration and apostrophe. Once
in a while we meet an exception, a man perfectly conditioned to
"teach" today, one so "revolutionary" in his views that his
life is a perpetual regression from established authority. Such a teacher is
Howard Kirk, the hero of "The History Man," by Malcolm Bradbury.
Talent for Codifying Spontaneity
To substitute spontaneity for "the pathetic
contingency" of life is Howard's mission. Codifying spontaneity is his
talent. His seminars at Watermouth University are
like his books, "where urgent feeling breaks up traditional grammar,
methodology and organization. But, as Howard always says, "If you want to
have something that's genuinely unstructured, you have to plan it
carefully."
When his wife is about to give birth, instead of canceling his
sociology classes, Howard takes his students to watch her bring forth a
proposition. When a female student needs emotional and intellectual
stimulation, Howard grants her a horizontal conference. Howard's classes are a
"total experience": he begins by rearranging the room, by pulling
apart the previous occupant's "social construct." "I'm afraid
this is what Goffman would call a bad eye-to-eye
ecological huddle," he says. "We don't want these tables here like
this, do we?" The students "pick their places with care, examining
existing relationships, angles of vision, even the cast of the light."
Howard's latest book is "The Defeat of Privacy"-not
a lament, but a celebration. "It's about the fact that there are no more
private corners in society, no more private properties, no more private
acts," he says-to which his wife, Barbara, adds "no more private
parts." The marriage of Howard and Barbara is founded on the rock of
infidelity: they and their two children are the featured instruments in a
concerto grosso of affairs. Other couples bring their
problems to the Kirks because it is universally felt that they have "an
instinctive comprehension of all marital disillusion."
Howard and Barbara enjoy this role, because, as one of Howard's colleagues puts
it, "The most interesting thing about anyone's misfortune is the way it's
adopted by the surrounding parties." Myra Beamish, for example, suggests
to Howard that he might write a book on the boredom of orgasm.
Encyclopedia of Radical Chic
"The History Man" is an encyclopedia of radical chic
as well as a genuinely comic novel. Howard believes in his absurdity, a quality
some of us find endearing and others exasperating, but which attests, in the
last analysis, to man's touching and disarming need for faith. He is a fisher
for souls, and his lure is the promise of permanent, particolored
novelty. His courses are epiphanies of indignation.
Mr. Bradbury has a way with women characters. Barbara Kirk's
is the rueful voice of an emancipated woman who cannot seem to flesh out her
freedom, who discovers that spite is her only talent. Flora Beniform,
a psychologist, "likes going to bed with men who have troubled marriages;
they have so much more to talk about, hot as they are from the intimate
politics of families which are Flora's specialist field of study." Annie Callendar says: "I don't believe in group virtue. It
seems to me such an individual achievement." Poor Annie specializes in
lyric poetry, which is no match for Howard's "therapeutic"
Machiavellianism.
"The History Man" is as dense with contemporary
things as "The Whole Earth Catalogue." Whatever is happening now, you
will find it satirized here-not in cheap shots, but with the deep, heartfelt
love-hate that brings out the best in a novelist. As Howard says, "When
history's inevitable, lie back and enjoy it."
http://www.nytimes.com/books/01/04/01/specials/bradbury-history.html
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Universitat de Valčncia Press
Creada: 06/110/2008
Última Actualización: 06/11/2008