The History Man by Malcolm Bradbury

First published in Great Britain in 1975; published digitally by Open Road Media on May 19, 2015

I love novels that feature the kind of impossibly witty conversation that real people never have -- at least I'm not witty enough to have them and I don't know anyone who is. Maybe only the British have learned the art of witty conversation. Kingsley Amis and Malcolm Bradbury mastered the fictional witty conversation, which is one of the reasons I enjoy reading them.

The History Man is a send-up of the conspicuously unconventional, studiously modern social science academic, newly imbued with the fashionably permissive attitudes of the 1960s. Set in the 1970s, The History Man is about life as performance, "self-made actors on the social stage." To the extent that it skewers self-styled radicals who have since fallen out of fashion in academia, it retains its relevance in its skewering of academics who care more about themselves than their students.

Howard Kirk teaches sociology at a progressive college. His wife Barbara is involved in a variety of activities. The couple is well known and liked, in part because of their spontaneous willingness to open themselves to everyone they encounter (although their spontaneity is carefully stage managed). Having achieved commercial success writing about "new" sex (what's new is that people are having a lot more of it with a greater variety of partners), Howard is enjoying the bourgeois benefits that he denounces.

While condemning all forms of snobbery, Howard indulges in his own. His carefully cultivated image as a "free traveler through life" allows him to condemn colleagues who have put down roots, who are part of the establishment he seeks to destroy (but only if its destruction forms a foundation for his own success). He is also a confrontational rabble-rouser who manipulates others to assure that he can be confrontational without harming his job security. In fact, he bases his opinions not on reason or ideology, but on how much controversy the opinions will generate. Chicly radical in her own way, Barbara avoids employment by leading consciousness-raising sessions, organizing unions, and engaging in whimsical acts of community activism.

Howard and Barbara love to talk, mostly about themselves. For example, when Howard criticizes one of his friends for having gone bourgeois, Barbara smugly reminds him that "they haven't had all our disadvantages." They also love to give parties that celebrate freedom (from "economic timidity, sexual fear, and prescriptive social norms"), although the parties really celebrate Howard and Barbara's ability to give a party that others will appreciate and admire. Some of the novel's best passages consist of characters dissecting each other with scalpels made of wit, peeling away their superficial exteriors to reveal their hollow cores.

Howard's friend Henry is the novel's most likable character. As he ages, he has come to value only "attachment to other knowable people, and the gentleness of relationship." For holding beliefs that are sincere and sentimental, poor Henry is mocked by most of the other characters. Another likable character, Miss Callander, manages to see right through Howard but succumbs to his charm anyway.

The novel's most insightful moment comes when a student whose politics are markedly different from Howard's gives him a polite verbal thrashing. The reader might or might not agree with the student, but he raises a good point about the possibility of a professor's political bias affecting the perception of a student's academic efforts. Howard's response, on the other hand, is petty, vindictive, and narrow-minded -- just like Howard.

Howard wants to make his life interesting, an end he accomplishes by using deceit and guile and provocation and then stepping out of the way so he can enjoy the dramatic consequences before engaging in the academic version of gossip by discussing "interesting" problems with his analytical friends. The question in the reader's mind is whether all of Howard's disagreeable character traits will at some point backfire. I think most readers will root for that, while at the same time enjoying his roguish antics. Enjoying the witty conversations that pepper the novel, though, is the real reason to spend some time with Howard and his friends.

Appended to the Open Road volume is a 1998 essay in which Bradbury discusses the novel and the rise and fall of sociology. Since that was my undergrad major (chosen because it was easy to get good grades without actually attending classes), I enjoyed his remarks.

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