Bibliography

[the_lady_lily]

Men At Arms - Evelyn Waugh

I thought this was a first read, but it's actually a re-read for me - I'd forgotten the first time I'd picked it up as a teen and, I suspect, rather missed the point. It's the first in the Sword of Honour trilogy, and I found it presented a wistful look at the strange sorts of characters produced in the conditions of war. Not nostalgic, precisely, but fond whilst being cuttingly honest about the ridiculousness and pointless paperwork of the actual business of carrying out war. A portrait of absurdity, perhaps, albeit one lovingly painted. It's about the outbreak of the second world war, if you've not read it, and is concerned primarily with the career of Guy Crouchback, who was too young for the first world war and is really too old for this one; he gets planted as an officer in a new brigade starting up, courtesy of a man whom he happens to meet in his father's hotel, and the appropriate jinks ensue. So there we go. There's also quite a bit about Catholicism and religion and war and duty, but there would be.

Travels With My Aunt - Graham Greene

Another re-read, consciously this time - I do remember reading this and feeling as if I'd not got the joke. I hadn't. A retired bank manager, Henry Pulling, discovers an aunt he has hitherto had only the shadowiest intimations of at his mother's funeral. He agrees to go travelling with her, first within the bounds of England, and then further and further beyond - actually, once again representing the way in which borders and travel can represent an identity growth experience thing rather neatly through a geographical metaphor. Aunt Augusta turns out to be great fun, but also to have a past of... colourful character. Good fun, although peppered with racism typical of the period.

The Masters - C.P. Snow

This is supposedly one of the great classics of Oxbridge literature, and I can see why it's attracted that label. It tells the story of the election of a Master of an unnamed Cambridge college, made particularly fraught since the previous one is slowly dying of cancer, which draws out the election campaigning and manoeuvring since the election cannot be held until he has died. It is, I think, a masterly evocation of the interactions between a small group of men who know each other well and find themselves split into unexpected groups because of the election. The interpersonal tensions, the stresses on each individual, the different ways each character reacts to the situation... it's all rather beautifully and painfully drawn out, so that you get a real sense of the usual run of college life being turned utterly upside down. I am going to have some Thoughts, I think, about the representation of the classicist in this book, but that's for another time and another place.

Comments

[gurdonark.livejournal.com]

I like the whole C.P. Snow Strangers and Brothers set, 11 good old-fashioned Trollope-ian novels that keep me entertained. I liked the point made in The Masters about the difference between "small group" politics and party politics. I also liked that in subsequent novels
it became clear that the "right side" in the election had actually backed the wrong horse, aesthetically speaking. So many small group debates benefit from hindsight that way.

[the-lady-lily.livejournal.com]

I've not read any of the other ones, and The Masters is held up as the ultimate insight into college politics. I think I am going to have to go back to the beginning and work my way through after this taster, although it does work well as a stand-alone volume.