riley

This is a laugh-out-loud novel about what it's like to feel like a fraud teaching at a university (something I can sort of relate to) while you hate your (sort of girlfriend), hate your boss, hate your subject matter and generally hate your life - and that hate manifests itself in you screwing everything up. There are a whole bunch of passages that made me laugh out loud and or at least chuckle, especially the ridiculous climax. Someone's made a movie out of it and I want to see it (though I'm a little worried that, because it was made in the '50s, it will be far tamer than the book).

The one thing I can say against it is that the book has dated somewhat, in that universities aren't exactly like this any more (at least I suppose they aren't in England, they sure aren't in Canada) and also Jim's kind of coiled, inarticulate displeasure is rather too English, and too old-school English at that, to really, really connect with someone in the 21st century. But despite that, I still laughed a lot, though I think Jim would have been more likeable to me, had I been born 50 years earlier.