The History Man
First edition
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| Author | Malcolm Bradbury |
|---|---|
| Cover artist |
Goya Dog Buried in Sand |
| Country | United Kingdom |
| Language | English |
| Publisher | Secker & Warburg |
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Publication date
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1975 |
| Media type | Print & Audio |
| Pages | 240 |
| ISBN | |
The History Man (1975) is a campus novel by the British author Malcolm Bradbury set in 1972 in the fictional seaside town of Watermouth in the South of England. Watermouth bears some resemblance to Brighton. For example, there is a frequent and fast train service to London.
Howard Kirk is a lecturer in sociology at the local university. He is a "theoretician of sociability." The Kirks are trendy leftist people, but living together for many years and the advance of middle age have left unfavourable traces in their relationship. It is Barbara Kirk who notices this change, whereas Howard is as enthusiastic and self-assured as always. Officially, the Kirks oppose traditional gender roles just as fiercely as the exploitation of humans by other humans. Nevertheless practices have crept into their lives which do not live up to such high standards: Howard writes books, while Barbara—stranded with much of the housework and two little children—would like to but never gets round to doing it. Any female student who comes to live with, rather than work for, them is made to baby-sit and perform domestic chores.
What we learn about the Kirks' past does not set them apart from most young working-class intellectuals who grew up in the 1950s when there was growing hope of improved economic and educational opportunity. When Howard and Barbara meet in their third year at the University of Leeds, Howard is still a virgin. They are both religious and working class and during their student years cannot afford more than the bare necessities of life. A few years after their graduation, in the summer of 1963, the "old Kirks", already a married couple living in a small bedsit, metamorphose into the "new Kirks" when one day, while Howard is at the university where he has a job as a lecturer, Barbara has spontaneous casual sex with an Egyptian student. This fling triggers a series of events: When he has got over the shock, Howard begins to associate with all kinds of radical people. The Kirks make lots of new friends. They smoke pot at parties, Barbara develops a new interest in health food and astrology, Howard grows a beard and they both start having "small affairs". When Barbara gets pregnant, rather than cancelling his class, Howard takes his students to the clinic to watch his wife giving birth. Finally, in 1967, he is appointed lecturer at Watermouth and right from the start he is intent on radicalising that bourgeois town, especially the newly founded university, an institution that he describes as 'a place I can work against'.
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