Dons don’t usually appear to much advantage in fiction.
Dons don’t usually appear to much advantage in fiction. Sillery, Samgrass, Cottard, Lucky Jim’s professor, the History Man, all Snow’s Masters: these spring to mind at once. Why are they so disgusting? Perhaps some are false fathers to young people expecting more attention, like the pompous young Gibbon at Magdalen. Perhaps because they are obvious targets to would-be writers at a time of life when the urge to debag and deflate is strong: they seem self-satisfied in ways which cry louder for satire than the ways of more, or less insignificant subjects. The clever students don’t need dons. The dons don’t need the stupid ones. Theirs is a marriage of inconvenience, bound to end in tears.
Not always. I come to praise, not bury Raymond Carr, a refreshing contributor to this weekly, who celebrated his 90th birthday last week, looking (according to his oldest friends) no less corvine than he did at 25.
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