Hector Drummond is the most recent in a long line of writers (think Kingsley Amis, Malcolm Bradbury, Tom Sharpe) to take a jaundiced look at what has become of our universities. Far from the Ivory Towers they purport to be, Drummond finds them cesspits of festering academic jealousy, incompetent bureaucracy and intellectual poverty. To Drummond the explosive growth of the education sector over the last thirty years has resulted in a proliferation of nonsense where critical thought has been replaced by post-modern group-think.
This calamity is registered through the experiences of Ren Christopher, newly hired Philosophy lecturer at New Grayvington University. To complete his probationary period Ren needs to pass the newly-minted ‘Teaching in Tertiary Education’ course. Unfortunately, in Ren’s eyes, the course is nothing but left-wing brainwashing and he refuses to take it seriously. It does however provide him with an early warning that academia, at least at Grayvington, will not be idealistic quest for knowledge that he anticipated.
His disillusion is furthered fuelled by his departmental colleagues, some of whom owe their positions their political affiliations rather than their critical faculties. But at least philosophy still counts as a serious subject, unlike sociology which seems to be merely a posturing ground for left-wing agitators. Plotting the downfall of one of these sociologist scum, one Lucius Birch, provides what little plot the book contains.
Students meanwhile are generally indifferent, lazy and venal. A degree is merely a route to a better-paying job – or an alternative to one as hopeless students cling on year after year with no hope of getting a decent qualification. Meanwhile the university has given up the fight to remove malingering students, cowed by threats of legal action and a bad press. Allan Bloom will be spinning in his grave.
Rather than a story unfolding though, much of the book is constructed as a series of scenes from university life which could have been told in more or less any order. Visiting lecturers provide a source of macabre fun, being either sexually incontinent, mentally deranged, or both. Ren’s ordeal at the hands of a very drunk but very priapic philosopher of science, Henry Beagle, is reminiscent of Tom Sharpe’s wilder flights of fancy in Porterhouse Blue or Wilt. Some might find the toilet humour a bit strained though.
When not being propositioned by visiting illuminati, Ren engages in drunken mental jousting with the sociologists and their hangers on. This provides a convenient vehicle for developing Drummond’s many reservations about the modern universityand its inhabitants. Thus communists of all stripes are given a good kicking for daring to praise such psychopaths as Lenin or Che Guevara. Sociologists are further mocked for conducting research whose conclusions somehow always support their world-view.
Much of this needs to be said – I still cringe when I think of the university posters that used to cover my walls. Che of course was there, supposedly because we all supported his aim of global revolution but really because we just thought he looked cool. Similarly much recent sociological research (try looking in PNAS for example) is so ridiculous that it is hard to accept that the writers really believe it.
A novel, however, should seek to dramatize these issues more, rather than just have Ren act as Drummond’s mouthpiece. He does attempt this with the story of how Ren and others bring down Lucius Birch by demonstrating that his research is simply made-up. But there is not enough of this sort of thing in the book. A sub-plot about animal rights extremists kidnapping Ren’s friend Miles and freeing the animals from the Psychology Department could have been developed more, as could the relationship with the tin pot dictatorship of Murnesia.
Much of what Drummond writes is very funny though – I thought that some of his ‘set-pieces’ might make for a good academic version of ‘The Thick of It’. And the topic is now quite fashionable as ‘no-platforming’ of even mainstream figures like Jenny Murray shows how ridiculous and juvenile our universities have become. Drummond also gets the gutlessness and greed of the authorities, the greed here in seeking to forge a relationship with the corrupt state of Murnesia, which of course ends very badly.
Had I been Mr Drummond’s editor I would have asked him to tone down a few things. The swearing in places is overused so as to forfeit any shock value. Mr Drummond also seems awfully fond of obscure words that might annoy some readers– lanuginous anybody? And its all written in the present tense which although it gives it a certain immediacy, again suggests a set of scripts rather than a novel.
All in all though, an amusing and interesting read that made me fear for the future of the universities. Anyone with an open mind and a concern for learning should find it equally engaging.
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