📚 'Rather Dated' September: Barbara Pym's An Academic Question. 📚

[MotherofPearl]

I'll add the usual introduction and links in a moment.

Welcome to the Mumsnet 'Rather Dated' book club. This month we are reading and discussing Barbara Pym's An Academic Question. Please do add your thoughts when you are ready.

About the threads:

We are reading and discussing fiction from the 1930s to the 1990s that would have been described as 'contemporary' in its day. We are reading one book a month. Spoilers are permitted!

We started the chat thanks to a thread where we kicked off with a discussion of Penelope Lively, The Road to Lichfield.

Currently we have these separate threads:
November: Anita Brookner, A Start in Life
December: Margaret Drabble: A Summer Bird-Cage
January: Elizabeth Jane Howard, The Beautiful Visit.
March: Winifred Watson, Miss Pettigrew Lives for a Day.
April: R.C. Sheriff, The Fortnight in September.
May: Elizabeth Taylor, Mrs Palfrey at the Claremont.
June: Margaret Kennedy, The Feast.
July: Mollie Panter-Downes, One Fine Day.
August: Elizabeth Von Arnim, The Enchanted April.

Link to the main Rather Dated book club thread:

📚The Mumsnet 'Rather Dated' Book Group - All welcome to join📚 http://www.mumsnet.com/Talk/whatweree_reading/4624300-the-mumsnet-rather-dated-book-group-all-welcome-to-join

Gosh. It’s so long since I read any of these that I no longer have anything useful to say about them, but this is all my back catalogue! Wonderful writers but I wonder how I’d feel about them now?

I think you would really enjoy them Gertrude. I'm joking. Kind of ;)
I have to say, we're coming up to a year now and I love this bookclub. * *

Thank you for starting this thread MotherofPearl.

I'll have to look over this book again* *to refresh my memory. One thing that stood out for me was the lack of morality around the theft of the manuscript. It didn't come into play at all for either Caro or Alan. She was willing to do anything for him. She does say at one point that she isn't religious, but even so. You don't have to be religious to have a moral code.

Yes, I expect I still would but doubt I’ll find time to reread them! I got a slightly sniffy response on the “what should I read” thread when I suggested Barbara Pym, possibly (I’m guessing) because she depicts a world that’s largely disappeared and so is “rather dated”.

I’ll try to tag along …

she depicts a world that’s largely disappeared and so is “rather dated”

Well, that’s the USP of these threads, Gertrude! You’ll find a welcome here if you enjoy fiction from previous eras, and we’ve found that many of us do. I’ll be back in a bit with my Pym thoughts ☺️

@GertrudeJekyllAndHyde
Maybe "dated" in its setting but human nature doesn't change much and I love Barbara Pym's wry observations and subtle humour. I know she received more than "sniffiness" in the Sixties from publishers until Philip Larkin's championing of her in the late Seventies.

I haven't read An Academic Question so will seek it out.

Oh yes. Evidently, the books are dated in that they depict a world that’s largely disappeared - endless typing in offices, making tea for the curate at the church jumble sale - but they describe that milieu very well and (as you say) say a lot about human nature and particularly women’s lives. I was one of the many who jumped on the Pym bandwagon after Larkin championed her, which means it’s a very long time since I read the books, so I can’t point to examples, but it saddens me that “rather dated” might be used in a perjorative way. Depicting a setting that has since changed or disappeared is not in itself a bad thing.

So I’ll stick around on this thread …

Welcome, @GertrudeJekyllAndHyde.

We are reclaiming and embracing 'rather dated' on this thread, so you are amongst friends.

I need a day or two to finish rereading An Academic Question and will then post.

Ooh I'd be keen to join please! I'm a fervent Pym fan. After reading Paula Byrne's 2021 biography The Adventures of Miss Barbara Pym, I decided to read all Pym's novels slowly, in chronological order. I still have about four left to go I think. I have actually read this one before (during lockdown, before I read the biography!). But my memory is abysmal and I don't remember it very well, so I will reread it for this thread.

I’m an ardent fan of Barbara Pym too. I hadn’t heard about that biography, @cassandre so thank you, just going to reserve it from the library.

Thanks for starting the thread, @MotherofPearl. I enjoyed reading my first Pym, especially her amusing depiction of academic life, which is truly very dated, and happily so in how it shows the central character to be a frustrated academic, which I'm mostly not, despite my username .

I felt it slightly lost momentum towards the end, but a satisfying, pleasing read, all in all. I do though agree with the lack of a moral stance regarding the manuscript theft. I had all sorts of scenarios going through my mind about why it was so sought after, what exactly was its attraction as a reputation-maker, so I feel that could have been developed more too.

N.b. I posted this on the main thread: an excellent episode of the Slightly Foxed podcast about the Pym biography: foxedquarterly.com/barbara-pym-other-excellent-women-slightly-foxed-podcast-episode-41/

It was a re-read for me too. A friend chose Excellent Women for a book club a few years ago and I was hooked on all things Pym after that - despite having been aware of her for years, I’d never read any of her books, but I’ve since devoured them all.

I really enjoyed An Academic Question although, for me, it isn’t one of her best - she was desperately trying to get published again in the 70s after having been dropped, and the introduction to my copy notes that she told Philip Larkin it was ‘supposed to be a sort of Margaret Drabble effort'.

And it wasn’t in fact published - her friend Hazel Holt edited it for publication after her death from two drafts and Pym's notes. For that reason I can see that it’s a bit thin, with not much of a plot (not that Pym's novels really do), and was trying to be 'swinging', with a younger narrator, married and with a small child, and elements like Alan being unfaithful. But even Pym admitted she couldn’t really keep it up, and there are some very enjoyable glimpses of echt Pym breaking through - like the ghastly Sister Dew, Dolly and her hedgehogs, and people constantly assuring each other that things are 'suitable'. Oh, and I loved the names. Iris Horniblow 😂

Interesting reading everyone's responses. I completely agree @frustratedacademic about the amusing commentary on academic life. Though much of it is indeed dated, some things haven't changed, especially the reference to people complaining about their 'crushing teaching loads' of a few hours a week!

I agree also with @Terpsichore that it feels a bit thin, and to me, rather unconvincing in its treatment of the central relationship between Caro and Alan. After his affair with Cressida is revealed, it is barely referred to again! They never seem to discuss it or resolve it - after Caro returns from visiting her mother and going to London it seems to be forgotten.

There were some very enjoyable Pym moments in the novel though, including the sly appearance in Chapter 15 of Pym and her sister in the shape of the two spinster sisters who came to lunch at Caro's mother's. We also get the reappearance of Esther Clovis, of course. And I also loved the names - Grimstone, Horniblow and Stillingfleet!

Overall this wasn't the most satisfying of Pym's novels, but still worth reading, especially for the snapshot of academic life in the early 1970s.

I haven't read Pym before and it does encourage me to read more by her.
I really liked this observation about the librarian; 'Evidently a life spent with card indexes did not make for generosity of spirit, I thought'. I have a friend who is a librarian who would enjoy that!

Well I managed to read it and I’m so glad that I did. It did feel very slightly thin compared to other Pym novels I’ve read, and this might be due to the novel’s provenance: edited by her literary executor and published posthumously. But it was a very satisfying picture of dreary academic life in (what I pictured as) an undistinguished modern university. Alan was so boring I wanted to scream. His article would have been deadly. Even his affair was boring.
There was lots of lovely period (dated) detail. We had a red and white kitchen, and I’ve definitely seen the washable wallpaper with hideous fruit and vegetables on it! There was a real sense of the seventies which I loved. Excellent dialogue as always in her books. I didn’t realise the two spinster sisters at the lunch in chapter 15 were portraits of Barbara Pym and her sister … just looked back at it and it made me smile. Lots about the book made me smile; her genius is not hilarious funny situations but rather a wry, clever, light way of describing the ordinary. Loved it.

Well, I hadn’t, unfortunately, read any Barbara Pym before, but I certainly will now. The plot didn’t really go anywhere - the stolen manuscript, the affair - but it seemed more of a vehicle for a nice, ironic humour and characterisation. The one thing I was disappointed by was that I hoped for some revelation/plot point concerning Coco and his relationship with Caro/the Caribbean immigrants.

It’s ages since I read it, but I thought it made an interesting contrast to Malcolm Bradbury’s ‘The History Man’, not so much as a portrait of the forces of a reaction, more that most people weren’t being radical and revolutionary at the time, and were preoccupied with more mundane matters anyway. The bored, dissatisfied educated mother/wife is very of the time (although I don’t think BP had met many 4 year olds: the daughter of two university graduates would surely be much more articulate). I rather liked the way that it was the older characters that, so far, had had more interesting lives, out in the colonies, studying “primitive peoples”, taking lovers, even rejoicing in hedgehogs.

How have I missed these threads? These books (especially those from the 30s - 70s) are totally my thing!
I shall hunt down the book and join in. I LOVE Barbara Pym but haven't read this one yet.

My copy arrived yesterday, so I shall be back as soon as I’ve reread it. I’m a newcomer here, but how lovely that the ‘slightly dated’ clan is growing!

Welcome new joiners.

Do check into our main thread (link at the top of this thread).

Looking forward to reading your responses to An Academic Question.

Our book for October reading and discussion will be Dorothy Whipple's High Wages.

I love Barbara Pam but thought this was a very poor specimen. I found Caro incredible as a character, no personality, no feelings or passion, and the depiction of her marriage and of Kate/motherhood devoid of any empathy or understanding. The husband had no redeeming features at all, and the storyline was pretty pointless. I did quite like Coco but otherwise I struggled. The other characters were either nasty, stupid or dull.

For the most part Caro seemed to just saunter along doing whatever her husband told her - she didn’t drive the plot at all. Alan instructed her to steal the manuscript so she did. Alan instructed her to take a job at the library ( leaving poor Kate with the au pair who seemed to do all the housework) so she could put it back, so she did. She showed no interest or even liking for him and clearly was something - cross? when she thought he was having an affair/he casually said he had shagged someone else, but I don’t know what she really felt or thought.

The 70 are a tough era - but The Female Eunuch was published just before this book, and Barbara still seems to have one foot very much in the 1950s. I can see why she struggled to get published.

Next please!

I love Barbara Pym, I discovered her only a few years ago so it's been great to have such a back catalogue to work my way through!
I'd not heard of this one.
I agree with much of what @olderbutwiser has written. Caro wasn't a very likeable character, but then nobody was really. It sort of pootled along as a story, even when things that should have been quite dramatic happened, they didn't seem to affect Caro very much at all. But then, perhaps that was the point?
I rather like the mundaneness of BP's writing, the way that the most ordinary things are worth putting down, so while I agree this wasn't her best, I still enjoyed it.

Looking forward to the October one now, another new author for me!

I’ve just finished rereading it.

It’s a very long time since I worked through her novels, and my recollection is that I used to enjoy the way (as longroad says) they pootle along, but this was disappointing and, I felt, unconvincing. Caro wasn’t very endearing. I might have expected that, in one way or other, the revelation of Alan’s affair would be a pivotal moment, but Caro’s reaction was so muted that I strained to believe in it, even allowing for the fact that the early 70s were a very different time. For a depiction of academic life, I prefer The History Man!

I've just read it too, and I don't have much to add to what everyone else has said. I've read most of Pym's novels now, and this is my least favourite of those I've read. I suspect this must be at least partly down to Hazel Holt putting the novel together for publication from different drafts?

And I completely agree that the first person narrative voice doesn't seem convincing.

I enjoyed it nonetheless. The character of Coco was fun!

The academic satire might have been more compelling if the story had gone into a bit more detail about the academic debates. We're told that an important manuscript was stolen, but we never really learn anything about its content, so it's hard to believe that it matters.

In terms of academic satire, I prefer Crampton Hodnet (an early Pym novel which was published posthumously) and Less Than Angels, which is about anthropologists. I loved both of those!