Eating People Is Wrong

"Eating People Is Wrong" is a social satire set in academe among the faculty and students of a provincial university in 1950s England. Malcolm Bradbury, who would later become a professor of literature like his protagonist Stuart Treece, took nearly a decade to write the novel, beginning when he was a student and finishing it as a professor. This makes his insight all the more remarkable, since Bradbury's understanding of faculty politics and middle age was limited when he started the book. Perhaps that is why his observations of students and student-faculty parties are so keen. The result is insightful, literate, and hilarious, with an uncommon sympathy amid the candor. Stuart Treece is a professor of English literature, come to the provinces to bestow beneficent guidance on his working class students so that they might advance themselves through merit. He is an idealist, a liberal humanist formed in the 1930s, now pushing middle age in the 1950s and unsure where a person of his ideals fits in these days. There doesn't seem to be a lot to actually do to actively advance his values. He tries to help his more eccentric students -an African man, the son of a chief, who's having trouble adjusting, and Louis Bates, an unstable but brilliant writer who struggles fiercely with social ineptitude. And Treece has an eye on Emma Fielding, a graduate student of like mind who is always pursued, always rejecting men, and always feels terribly guilty about it. "Eating People Is Wrong" is unique among satires in its compassion for its characters. It sympathizes with people as it makes fun of them. Treece, Louis, Emma, and the more pragmatic professors are all treated with great humanity. We understand them; we sympathize; it makes them no less ridiculous, just as they remark that Louis Bates is so good at literature but so bad at living that it makes him ridiculous. The satire is no less insightful or absurd for this, but it is less harsh than it might be. Bradbury is a brilliant observer of modern humanity's foibles but also sensitive to people's intentions. The result is a humane satire that nevertheless shows up the quandary of an earnest man who feels duty-bound to be a protector of civilization amid post-War prosperity and provincialism.

A first novel with the kind of uneveness that you might expect, but a very good read, and often very funny -- especially if you've spent some time around universities. Liberal academics are the target here, although the book is not unsympathetic or mean-spirited; he's writing about Britain, but it connects with the US scene pretty seamlessly. "Liberal" here refers to the 1950s version (the book came out in 1959) of the well-meaning socialist left, with its ideological moorings in the 1930s and beginning to entertain guilty doubts about the perfectibility of either man or society. Bradbury was writing before the appearance of the New Left, Black Power, militant feminism, and political correctness, but his antennae were up and humming. He saw what was coming, and something about why it would all find a home among university liberal arts faculty. There is a fascinating Afterword, where Bradbury writes about the context of the times, and how he came to write the book.

This a sensitive, hilarious, thought provoking and well thought-out novel. Its settings is a provincial British University where you encounter Mr. Eborebelosa, a student from Africa and a son of a tribal chief, who escapes the pecularities of the British life by locking himself in public lavatories and promising sensitive Emma Fielding of attractive African clothing if she is to join his long line of domesticated African wives. There is the would-be poet Lous Bates, a prospective genius for some of the time and a madman for the most of the time. There is the almost beautiful Emma who invokes images of Virginia Wolf especially if you hadn't seen Virginia Wolf on or off the screen. But above all there is Treece, a true liberal acting as liberals should, he has to carry out other people's burdens when they don't have the capacity to carry it out for themselves, and if the immoralities of others didn't disturb their conscience it was not his place to condemn them, but if had been around while those immoralitites were commited he felt it his duty to square them. A major English novel.

The most amusing, scintillating, ascerbic book yet. Keep up the excellent work, Malcolm!

The college setting and the main characters have remained with me since reading this book approximately 3 years ago. Rather highbrow, although expected from Malcolm Bradbury's background as a professor. Well worth the time and money.