Strangers and brothers
I’ve finished reading C.P. Snow’s eleven Strangers and Brothers novels. Here are the grades.
(I also note each book’s position in the three-volume omnibus of 1972.)
The series has so many plot threads and recurring characters, it’s hard to assess each book on its own. You have to read most of the series to adequately judge this or that person.
But perhaps the three worst novels can be safely ignored.
I suppose it’s no accident that four of what I consider to be the best novels are largely concerned with university life. The Masters and The Affair are especially good.
Time of Hope, which is not about university life, is also very good, in a quieter way.
The narrator’s first wife and her father – who appear only in Time of Hope and in Homecomings – are two of the series’s most interesting characters. Hope is arguably Snow’s overarching theme. These two characters have great gifts, yet they are enveloped in despair.
Their effect on the narrator – who, alone among the series’s many strivers, pays heed to them – is to make him aware of a gloomy alternate existence.
The worst four novels are all about “real world” politics and its connections to the domestic sphere. There are lots of tedious pages about dinner parties, galas, etc. – which, I am aware, are essential for the depiction of social striving. The problem is that the narrator himself is too socially adept. He comments judiciously on others’ struggles, but there is too little tension for him in these scenes.
Strangers and Brothers is very long – indeed, it’s the longest unified work I’ve read.
Is there a pithier substitute?
The series has much to say about the role of natural science in human culture, and so the famous piece on “The Two Cultures” might be apposite.
But, in keeping with the idea of studying hope and despair by attending to biographical detail, a better substitute might be Snow’s Foreword to G.H. Hardy’s book (A Mathematician’s Apology).
(I also note each book’s position in the three-volume omnibus of 1972.)
GRADE: A
Time of Hope (1st overall; vol. I)
The Masters (5th overall; vol. II)
The Affair (8th overall; vol. II)
GRADE: A-MINUS
The Light and the Dark (4th overall; vol. I)
The Sleep of Reason (10th overall; vol. III)
GRADE: B-PLUS
George Passant (2nd overall; vol. I)
The Conscience of the Rich (3rd overall; vol. I)
GRADE: B
Homecomings (7th overall; vol. II)
GRADE: B-MINUS
The New Men (6th overall; vol. II)
Corridors of Power (9th overall; vol. III)
GRADE: C
Last Things (11th overall; vol. III; dead last, in more ways than one)
The series has so many plot threads and recurring characters, it’s hard to assess each book on its own. You have to read most of the series to adequately judge this or that person.
But perhaps the three worst novels can be safely ignored.
I suppose it’s no accident that four of what I consider to be the best novels are largely concerned with university life. The Masters and The Affair are especially good.
Time of Hope, which is not about university life, is also very good, in a quieter way.
The narrator’s first wife and her father – who appear only in Time of Hope and in Homecomings – are two of the series’s most interesting characters. Hope is arguably Snow’s overarching theme. These two characters have great gifts, yet they are enveloped in despair.
Their effect on the narrator – who, alone among the series’s many strivers, pays heed to them – is to make him aware of a gloomy alternate existence.
The worst four novels are all about “real world” politics and its connections to the domestic sphere. There are lots of tedious pages about dinner parties, galas, etc. – which, I am aware, are essential for the depiction of social striving. The problem is that the narrator himself is too socially adept. He comments judiciously on others’ struggles, but there is too little tension for him in these scenes.
Strangers and Brothers is very long – indeed, it’s the longest unified work I’ve read.
Is there a pithier substitute?
The series has much to say about the role of natural science in human culture, and so the famous piece on “The Two Cultures” might be apposite.
But, in keeping with the idea of studying hope and despair by attending to biographical detail, a better substitute might be Snow’s Foreword to G.H. Hardy’s book (A Mathematician’s Apology).