Resurrected Review: Horizons, by Mary Rosenblum

Resurrected Review: Horizons, by Mary Rosenblum

by Rich Horton

Mary Rosenblum (1952-2018) was a fine writer of both SF and mysteries. I greatly enjoyed her short fiction, and I reprinted her story "Search Engine" in my first Best of the Year volume. Alas, she died far too soon in an airplane crash. (She was a pilot.)

I wrote this review back in 2007 when this novel, which turned out to be her last SF novel, appeared. I'm resurrecting it now.

Mary Rosenblum's Horizons is a near future SF novel with a somewhat old-fashioned shape and set of concerns. And I liked it for that -- it's very exciting, fast-moving, with some nice speculative elements. And with an engaging heroine. And really nasty bad guys. (Who espouse a philosophy I personally find repellent -- but which many might have at least some sympathy for.)

The heroine is Ahni Huang, daughter of the head of an influential Taiwanese commercial family. The opening sequence was originally a story in Asimov's ("Green Shift"), and in it she goes up to the North American Alliance's orbital platform, NYUp, to avenge her brother Xai's murder. But there she learns that Xai is actually alive, and acting against her family. She also discovers a secret on NYUp: a group of apparently illegally modified humans are living in microgravity, under the leadership of Dane Nilsson, the still "normal" chief "gardener" for the orbital.

After a confrontation with her father and mother, who are acting at mysterious cross-purposes, she returns to NYUp. The platform is under increasing tension. There is an independence movement, lead by Dane, but it is spiralling out of control, moving too rapidly, apparently as a result of external agitators. Possibly these are controlled by Xai, who may be working with Li Zhen, son of the Chinese leader, and the man in charge of the Chinese orbital platform.

All this moves very rapidly to a confrontation -- the World Council military is pushed to act against the people of NYUp, particularly Dane. So Ahni must figure out who is really behind all these problems, and how or if she can get sufficient cooperation between Dane's allies on NYUp, between an asteroid-based pilot/smuggler, and between Li Zhen to prevent a true disaster from destroying everybody's hopes for the future.

I quite enjoyed the novel. At the same time it shows some of the weaknesses of the genre ... some due to commercial considerations, and some more specifically SFnal. The commercial weaknesses lie in such aspects as the convenient brilliance of the heroine and hero and their associated, and in their routinely exalted social positions. Also, the resolution of the plot is quite convenient -- it is exactly what we as readers want, but it comes too rapidly, too easily, but also after (I felt) somewhat implausible raising of the stakes, increasing of the danger to the characters we care about. By which I mean that I think the end state could have been plausibly arrived at, but somewhat more slowly, and without the life-or-death confrontation towards the end, complete with dramatic courtroom intervention. But that would have been hard to make work novelistically. In the end it is lots of fun, good solid SF -- not a lasting masterpiece but nice work.

Review: Cahokia Jazz, by Francis Spufford

Review: Cahokia Jazz, by Francis Spufford

a review by Rich Horton

Francis Spufford is a much-admired UK writer who began writing nonfiction, then wrote a sort of amalgam of nonfiction and SF called Red Plenty (2010), and since has published three novels: Golden Hill (2016), Light Perpetual (2021), and Cahokia Jazz (2023). (It would appear that he considers the proper number of words for a title to be exactly two!) I bought Golden Hill when it came out, but still have not got to it. (Though I will soon!) And I saw enough about Cahokia Jazz that I knew I had to read it, and so I have.

Cahokia Jazz is an alternate history murder mystery doomed love story political thriller. And all of those elements work. It is urgently readable, speculatively involving, full of action, with a profound moral center, and tremendously moving. It is also very well-written. It is my second favorite SF novel from 2023, after the very different Booker Prize winner Orbital. As Cahokia Jazz was not published in the US until 2024, it is eligible for the 2025 Hugos, and it will definitely be on my nomination ballot.

The novel is set in Cahokia, the capitol of the state of the same name, in the US in the 1920s. Cahokia is located roughly where the present day city of that name is located -- just across the Mississippi River from St. Louis, though St. Louis is a small village in this alternate history. It seems that the Mississippian Culture of Native Americans (the Mound Builders or their immediate descendants) survived in Cahokia in until the coming of French missionaries around 1700, at which time they converted to a syncretic Catholicism. (In our history the Cahokian civilization had mostly dispersed by the end of the 14th century, and the remaining natives in that area were decimated by smallpox. The afterword to this novel posits a less severe strain of smallpox arriving first and conferring some resistance while causing far fewer deaths.) The natives, here called takouma, remain the political leaders of Cahokia, though they became a state during the Civil War. The city itself has a very roughly equal population of takouma, takata (whites), and taklousa (blacks). Joe Barrow, the main character, is mixed race, part takouma, part taklousa, and grew up in an orphanage in Iowa. He came to Cahokia with Phineas Drummond, whom he met in a military hospital while both were serving in the Great War. Now they are partners, detectives on the Cahokia police force. And their latest case is horrifying -- a man has been murdered on the roof of a major city building, in a way that resembles Aztec sacrifices, complete with the heart cut out of his chest.

It's quickly clear that the murder has political implications. The first suspects are a small radical group of takouma, who believe that they are descended from the Aztecs. And Joe and Phin begin to follow up on this notion. But Joe is summoned to meetings with the two major political leaders of Cahokia: Cuauhtemoc Hashi, the Man of the Sun, and Couma Hashi, his niece, the Moon. The Man of the Sun (called simply The Man throughout) is the true hereditary leader of the state of Cahokia, though the politics of statehood complicate his position. Hereditary succession is to nephews (or nieces if necessary) instead of to children, so Couma's brother is nominally the heir, but he has run off to Hollywood to be a movie star, and thus Couma acts as the Moon. This too is complicated, because women in Cahokian society have a specific role, different to that of men though quite as powerful. The Man is an admirable if devious person, and Couma is a very beautiful woman -- though also devious, and Joe is soon under her spell, though any sort of relationship is clearly impossible. The Man urges Joe to seriously investigate the case, and not to accede to a politically convenient solution.

So the story follows the investigation, which leads the Joe and Phin in unexpected directions. It's quickly clear that the murder was more of a false flag operation, but proving this and finding the real culprit will be tricky. Many of the whites in the city (including the murder victim) are under the influence of the Ku Klux Klan, which hates natives (and Catholics) as much as it hates blacks. And there are some takouma who are intrigued by the Aztec myth. There are powerful political figures involved, many of whom clearly would like to wrest power from the takouma. Throughout the course of the investigation we get to see a wide spectrum of city residents -- rich takata and poor, rich and poor takouma, and mostly poorer taklousa, including the jazz musicians with whom Joe -- a brilliant pianist -- likes to associate. We see the politics of the police department. There are some magical scenes with Joe playing piano in a couple of bars -- Spufford's writing about the music is exceptional. We meet laborers in a meat packing plant, and the middle class family of a takouma woman who works with Joe in the department, and takouma farmers out in the country, and the upper crust at parties -- at one of which Joe meets a certain anthropologist named Kroeber. (This book is set before Kroeber married Ursula's mother, and Spufford dedicates the book "In respectful memory of Professor Kroeber's daughter".) We get a fascinating look at the culture and society of Cahokia -- a plausible alternative to our own, though reasonably well integrated with the US society of that era, and presented as different -- neither especially better nor worse.

The story takes place over about a week, and the murder mystery -- though it is eventually and wrenchingly solved -- is less important than the political story. The fate of Cahokia truly hangs in the balance. Joe's fate, and that of his partner, and of the Sun and Moon, are intertwined with all this, of course. The events depicted are exciting, with some terrific action scenes, and some tragedy, some betrayals, some realpolitik. There is a host of characters, most sharply even if briefly portrayed -- besides the major ones I've mentioned there are newspaper reporters -- Mickey Casqui and Miss Anderson; and policemen: Doyle and Hanunu, plus Miss Chokfi, the capable and surprisingly deep office administrator (to use the current term); and a Klan-linked gangster; also Lydia Lee, the taklousa woman who runs the bar above which Joe lives; Sammy Noukouwa, a nasty takouma who has wholly bought into the Aztec myth; and the various members of a jazz band with whom Joe plays. One of the most beautiful things about the book is the descriptions of Joe while he's playing jazz -- writing about music is hard, I think, and these scenes are just wonderful -- they get the emotions of both playing and listening spot on. I wanted to be there! 

This is a first rate novel, and it succeeds in multiple ways -- as a mystery, as a political thriller, as alternate history, and as a love story. It's involving throughout. It's both optimistic and pessimistic -- a tragedy perhaps, but with elements of triumph, a hopeful story that we know might resolve years in the future either happily or darkly -- but most likely a mixture, just like the real world. Highly recommended.

Review: In Memoriam: A Novel of the Terran Diaspora, by Fred Lerner

Review: In Memoriam: A Novel of the Terran Diaspora, by Fred Lerner

by Rich Horton

Fred Lerner is a long-time SF fan, and I've known him for several years, meeting him once or twice a year at conventions. I read and enjoyed his story "Rosetta Stone", which appeared in Ian Randal Strock's Artemis way back in 2000, and I was happy when he told me a few years ago that he was writing a novel set in that story's future (though not really directly related.) That novel appeared last year -- In Memoriam, from Fantastic Books.

It's narrated by David Bernstein. As the novel opens, he's finishing his final year of school before going to college. And he's attending a performance staged by the alien race that is native to the planet on which he lives. We learn quickly that these aliens, the Wyneri, rescued the survivors of the Cataclysm, which wiped out humanity on Earth, a couple of centuries prior to this story. The couple of thousand who were rescued have been fruitful enough that the human population is about 30,000 -- living in small chapters embedded among the Wyneri. The humans have been gifted one island, on which they have built a University, and to which they go once each year for the Ingathering. And this Remnant, as they style themselves, devote themselves to preserving as much knowledge of Terran history and culture as they can. 

Their relations with the Wyneri appear cordial enough, but both populations appear mostly to ignore each other. So David's interest in Wyneri art, and, soon after, his close friendship with a Wyneri girl named Harari, are considered decidedly unusual. The Wyneri are very humanoid (indeed, it's hinted that David and Harari are tempted to have a sexual relationship, but they decide not to go that far.) It turn out that many among the Wyneri are disgusted by David and Harari's friendship -- and so are many of the humans.

There are some shocking instances of violence, before and after David and Harari go to their separate universities. But the two of them have already discovered something very surprising about the Cataclysm and the Wyneri rescue operation. David, at his university, forms close relationships with many fellow students, and realizes that there are factions in the human Remnant who are pushing for Terran's to disassociate from the Wyneri, perhaps even to return to the Solar System. And there are increasingly active factions among the Wyneri that are hostile to Terrans. The situation becomes terribly threatening -- and David finds himself forced to a fairly prominent position, especially regarding the information he and Harari have found. The results will profound change both societies.

The novel is consistently interesting, and the society Lerner portrays in intelligently put together. David and his friends are characters we root for. Lerner's Jewish background contributes to much of this -- not just the fact that David and his family maintain Jewish traditions, but the obvious analogies with the "Terran Diaspora" of this novel, and the Jewish Diaspora, not to mention the Terrans situation as "strangers in a strange land" among the Wyneri. There are certain aspects I thought a bit underdeveloped, and I will say the dialogue doesn't always convince -- the characters speak as if reciting essays at times. But these are quibbles -- I enjoyed the novel, and cheered for its humanistic message.

Review: Nadja, by André Breton

Review: Nadja, by André Breton

a review by Rich Horton

Last year at Windy City Pulp and Paper convention, I got a copy of André Breton's Nadja, a surrealist novel first published in 1928. I hasten to add that Nadja is in no way a "pulp", not even by the debased criteria that labels paperback novels with salacious content "pulp". Instead it was a gift from a friend, another attendee of the convention. This copy is a recent Grove Press printing of a 1960 translation by the fine poet Richard Howard. (It turns out that, shortly after Howard's translation appeared, Breton produced a revised version of Nadja, that has not yet been translated into English.)

André Breton (1896-1966) was a French writer and the leader of the surrealistic movement in literature, author of the Surrealist Manifesto. He studied medicine, worked in a mental hospital, and, after the first World War, started a magazine, Littérature. He wrote prolifically for the rest of his life: poetry, novels, criticism (of literature and art), theory. He was a prolific art collector. He spent much of the Second World War in the US, as his politics and artistic attitudes were distasteful (to say the least) to the Vichy Regime.

Nadja remains, as far as I can tell, Breton's best known novel, though Les Champs Magnétiques (The Magnetic Fields), with Philippe Soupalt; and L'Amour Fou (Mad Love) also have a reputation. Nadja is quite short, a bit less than 25,000 words in the English translation, though there are also 44 black and white photographs (including reproductions of drawings supposedly by the character Nadja). Surrealtistic writing supposedly includes "automatic writing", but I don't really see evidence of that here. And, at risk of forfeiting my avant garde membership card, the novel didn't really do a lot for me.

The book is narrated by a man named André, clearly the author himself. It opens with a long section discussing his life in Paris in the 1920s, the milieu, his friends, and his theories about surrealism and literature in general. Some strange movies are discussed, particularly one set at a grils' school, seeming to depictg the murder of one of the girls by the headmistrass and her friend. The actress, a friend of his, is mentioned. This is all a tad rambling though of some interest.

The long middle section is about Nadja, a mysterious and pretty young womman with whom the married narrator has a brief romance. Their affair consists of several rendezvous at restaurants and such, of discussions of their philosophies, and eventually of a revelations about Nadja -- that she is having mental problems, due to a death in the family, and that hshe is under pscychological care. After which the narrator abandons her, apparently because her oddly surrealistic philosophy of life is revealed to be a sympton of her mental illness. The final section concludes by discussing the narrator's continued devotion to his theories. 

If I had more sympathy with surrealism as a theory of life and art, rather than a sometimes interesting method of displaying reality at on odd angle, I might have enjoyed it more. It is well written, and the translation seems good. I also find surrealism more interesting in visual art, and in poetry, than in prose fiction. But that's just my taste I suppose. I'm glad I read the book, but in the end it's not quite my thing.

Old Bestseller Review: Belinda, by Rhoda Broughton

Old Bestseller Review: Belinda, by Rhoda Broughton

a review by Rich Horton

Rhoda Broughton (1840-1920) was a very popular writer in the last third of the 19th century, and continued publishing until her death. She was born in Wales, the grandaughter of a baronet, and her uncle was Sheridan LeFanu, the great writer of supernatural stories, including Carmilla, one of the earliest vampire stories. Her first two novels were serialized in Dublin University Magazine, edited by LeFanu. Her early novels were popular, but were denigrated as "sensation novels", with plots such as having a married man kill his mistress and himself in despair. Along with Mary Elizabeth Braddon, she was one of the "Queens of the circulating libraries". Belinda was part of her attempt to rehabilitate her reputation with less sensationalistic works. Happily, both Broughton and Braddon have experienced something of a revival in the last few decades.

Belinda's heroine is Belinda Churchill, a young woman (20 at the outset of the novel) who lives with her grandmother and with her younger sister Sarah. They seem to be in comfortable financial circumstances, though their parents must be dead. We meet them in Germany on an extended visit. Sarah, a vivacious and flirtatious girl, has become engaged, for about the seventh time, this time to an aging Professor named Forth. And Belinda meets a young man, David Rivers, whose father is wealthy but, unfortunately in the eyes of Belinda's family, in business. And soon David and Belinda are deeply in love, while Sarah is trying to extricate herself from her inappropriate engagement. The characters are quickly established -- Sarah is effervescent and friendly, Granny is profoundly lazy, Belinda is internally passionate but externally rather cold, hard to get close to. Professor Forth is a bore, and an hypochondriac. David Rivers, it must be said, is a very thin character. The other recurring character is an impossibly rude and pushing woman named Miss Watson, who will not take no for an answer, and in so doing thrusts herself into any social situation at the most unpropritious times. 

David and Belinda's relationship proceeds slowly, due to Belinda's shyness and coldness, and when Sarah finally pushes her to maneuver him to proposing, just as they are about to return home, David leaves suddenly, even as Belinda as arranged a rendezvous. Belinda and Sarah return home, and for some reason David never contacts them. Belinda is thrown into a deep depression, and after the vile Miss Watson reports having seen David Rivers in the company of a young woman, Belinda decides -- against Sarah's desperate opposition -- to agree to marry Professor Forth, with the understanding that it's a loveles (and presumably sexless) marriage, and that he shall teach her Greek and suchlike while she acts as a secretary to him. And so they do marry, and the Professor turns out to be an abusive taskmaster, while Belinda finds that she doesn't find a classical education inspiring (at least not the way the Professor does it) and begins to hate him. And, of course, we learn that David's absence was for a very good reason, and so he's back in the picture,but of course any relationship is entirely improper.

This summary mskes the novel sound downright dreary, but it isn't. Part of this is that though this situation is objectively terrible for Belinda, the novel remains oddly lighthearted, and often funny. Part of this is due to the character of Sarah, who really is a delight. Part is the comic relief -- the awful Miss Watson and the horrible Professor Forth are awful and horrible in quite comical ways. Belinda and David do eventually meet again and are tempted into a technically improper relationship, though of course they never cross boundaries. There is a portrait, clearly drawn from life, of the Professor's college, here called Oxbridge though it's openly based on Oxford, where Broughton was living by that time. There is a climactic trip to the Lake District, after the Professor's insistence on overworking Belinda drives her close to death. And the reader can see all along the only solution -- which comes as no real surprise.

It's not a great novel. The plotting is exiguous, and the key events are implausible. (For that matter, Sarah's initial engagement to Professor Forth makes no sense at all -- it's inconsistent with her character, and clearly just an initiating plot device.) But Broughton is a fine writer, with an eye for appropriate images, and she's effective in characterizing those people she wishes to depict. (Though as noted, when she isn't really interested in close observation, as with David Rivers, the character is essentially a placeholder.) So -- Sarah, Belinda, Miss Watson, the Professor ... all do come to life. The novel is written in present tense (apparently a habit of Broughton's) but that doesn't distract the reader. So -- if not a great novel, this is a pretty good novel, and quite enjoyable.

The reader will probably have noted a distinct echo, in the marriage of Professor Forth and Belinda, to that of Casaubon and Dorothea Brooke in Middlemarch, which appeared a bit more than a decade earlier. The similarties can't be missed, but the two novels are quite different, and certainly Belinda and Dorothea are much different characters. Having said that, it is reliably asserted that Professor Forth is based a rather well known academic, a one time friend of Broughton's, Mark Pattison, the Rector of Oxford's Lincoln College. Pattison was notorious for having married a much younger woman, who refused sexual relations with him after a few years of marriage. And he was considered a bit of a fussy academic -- though, unlike Forth, he was apparently a well-respected teacher. Pattison's friendship with Broughton deteriorated after he began an affair with another much younger woman. Interestingly, one of Pattison's research interests was a man named Isaac Casaubon, about whom he wrote a biography. Casaubon from Middlemarch has also often been associated with Pattison, though this position is controversial. 

Resurrected Review: The Balmoral Nude, by Carolyn Coker

Here's a review I did for my old blog back in 2009, published unrevised. I understand that the author died not too long after that, in 2011. It's a minor work, but so be it!

Resurrected Review: The Balmoral Nude, by Carolyn Coker

by Rich Horton

Back in the early 90s I joined a paperback mystery book club on a trial basis but quickly cancelled my membership. One of the books I received and didn't then read was Carolyn Coker's The Balmoral Nude, a 1990 novel reprinted in paper in 1993. I picked it out of my bookshelves for hard to understand reasons this weekend and figured I'd read it. And it's not too bad, though nothing earthshaking. The heroine, sort of, is Andrea Perkins, an American art restorer who I believe appeared in other Coker novels. [She did -- some five books total.] In this book she is in London doing some work for the Victoria and Albert Museum. She bumps into an old boyfriend, Clayton Foley, who has married a rich Englishwoman, Deborah Fetherston. Deborah's ancestor, Cecil Fetherston, was a second-rate Victorian painter who was executed for murdering a prostitute. Fetherston started a gallery that remains in the family, and they have recently found some old drawings by Fetherston, which they believe can be sold for a tidy sum, particularly the one called "The Balmoral Nude". Clayton and Deborah hire Andrea to restore the drawings before the sale. It soon becomes clear that there are two major bidders: an American nouveau riche couple, and an English academic who wants to use the drawings in his new book about William Gladstone (who was a witness to Fetherston murdering the prostitute). 

It soon becomes clear that someone plans to acquire the drawings by foul means -- one is stolen from Andrea's lab, and another attempt is made which results in the accidental death of a woman who resembles Andrea. And behind the scenes, as it were, we learn that a shadowy woman is being urged by her lover to kill someone in order to get ahold of the drawings -- or perhaps for some other reason? There are three women who seem to be suspects -- the American couple's rackety daughter, who is fooling around with Deborah Fetherston's rackety son; a TV producer who seems to be trying to sleep her way to the top, and who gets embroiled in some controversy about the potential sale of the pictures; and the manager of the Fetherston gallery. Plus Clayton is a shady figure -- already putting moves on Andrea despite having long before rudely ended there previous relationship, and also caught in an embrace with the American daughter. 

It's one of those mystery novels where the main murder doesn't occur until perhaps 3/4 through the book (in fact, in a sense it doesn't occur until perhaps much later, as the victim ends up in a coma). And it's also one of those mystery novels -- all too many, for my taste -- where the murder isn't resolved until the criminal gives it away by committing another murder. I found it breezily readable, but not great. Andrea is far too passive ... she has little to do at all with solving the crime. (In fact, no one does, really -- as I said the murderer gives it away by committing another murder.) There is one nice touch -- a cute resolution to the mystery of the drawing itself, the "Balmoral Nude".

Review: Changing Places, by David Lodge

Review: Changing Places, by David Lodge 

a review by Rich Horton

David Lodge was born in 1935, and died, less than a month short of his 90th birthday, this past New Year's Day. His first novel was published in 1960, and he published a total of 15 novels, as well as plays and short fiction. He was also an academic, primarily at the University of Birmingham, with a couple of interludes in the US, including at Cal Berkeley. He wrote a lot of nonfiction as well, primarily criticism, and some memoirs late in life. I read a few of his novels a number of years ago, with considerable enjoyment, and also some of his critical works, particularly The Art of Fiction. Upon his death I realized I should continue and read his best known three novels, the so-called "Campus Trilogy". The first of these is Changing Places (1975). 

Changing Places opens with the two main characters on airplanes flying in the opposite direction. Philip Swallow, a lecturer at Rummidge University, a "redbrick" institution in the industrial town of Rummidge (obviously modeled on Birmingham) is heading to Euphoria State in Plotinus, near Esseph (even more obviously based on Berkeley and San Francisco) to spend an academic year as a visiting Professor. This is part of an annual exchange between the two universities, and Swallow's counterpart, Morris Zapp, is thus heading to Rummidge. We learn about their motives -- Philip had been feeling stuck -- hadn't published anything in years; while Morris, a much more successful Professor (modeled on Stanley Fish) is having marriage problems: his wife wants a divorce, and he thinks perhaps a year in Europe might give her time to reconsider.

Both of them are at first very much struggling to adapt to their new positions. Philip has no idea what to teach in his assigned classes -- one being on writing a novel (something he has never done.) Zapp is amused and to some extent horrified by the looseness of the teaching at Rummidge, and by the mostly somewhat grimy and underheated accomodations.

One prime mover of the plot is the late '60s student unrest, which has completely engulfed Euphoria State. Swallow never seems to do much teaching, partly because the students go on strike. But he gets involved in their protest movement, sort of by accident, and becomes a surprisingly popular figure. One of the leaders is an old student of his, Charles Boon, who had caused all kinds of trouble at Rummidge and is now heading a late night call in radio show. At the same time Morris gets heavily involved in campus politics at Rummidge, which is also mildly affected by student protests but also affected by such things as who will get the next promotion and who will run the English department after the retirement of the previous rather superannuated leader.

The other issues are more personal, and turn somewhat on their precarious housing arrangements. Philip's house is in a mudslide area, and is subdivided into two flats -- one for him, and the other for three young women, one of whom turns out to be Morris Zapp's daughter thought Philip doesn't know that. They introduce him to pot, and he sleeps with Zapp's daughter before she takes up with Charles Boon. Morris, on the other hand, has vowed to stay celibate while away from his wife (though he had never been faithful before) and he has to deal with the extremely eccentric Irish doctor who lets him the upstairs of his house. And won't say much more except to note that things progress to the point where each of Swallow and Zapp are offered jobs at the university they are visiting ...

The real interest of the novel isn't in the plot, to be sure, but in the comic elements. Lodge has great fun with the academic maneuvering at each college, and also of course with what might be called sex comedy elements. He plays some formal games, too -- each of the six sections is told in a different fashion, including one entirely in letters between the Swallow and Zapp and their respective wives; another uses found text -- newspaper excerpts and such, another is in screenplay form. This is the book in which Lodge introduced the game Humiliation, in which each participant (typically literature academics) cites a very well known text that they have not read, and gets points for how many of the other participants HAVE read it -- so that you do better the more you humiliate yourself by confessing to not have read something everybody else has. 

I liked the book, but found it a bit uneven. Some of the sections were outright hilarious, but some dragged a bit. The student unrest part, and the entire portrayal of what people in those days called the "hippie subculture" seems dated. The academic maneuverings, on the other hand, and the sexual politics, are both essentially timeless, and they work pretty well. Lodge is an enjoyable writer -- often very funny indeed -- and I'll be reading at least the two loose sequels to this novel (Small World and Nice Work) -- I'd already ready a good sampling of the rest of his work.