Customer Reviews

Goodbye Mr Chips

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Few Americans attend prep school, and the culture of an English boarding school is especially foreign. But Americans still love this book. I admit I'm one of them, even though the main character is a stodgy, conservative character whose politics aren't mine.

Is it a sentimental book in a cynical time? Are we nostalgic for sentimentality? Are we in some impossible, double-jointed way sentimental for sentimentality? Do we read "Chips" as we'd visit the homeplace of Laura Ingalls Wilder, sifting over antique furniture evoking an antique morality, pleasant but too rickety for our modern condition? All we can do is marvel that people once lived thus and enjoy a brief visit to what amounts to a morality theme-park. Or is it only a jaded elite that is cynical, while the mass of people find in "Chips" a refuge from the oppressive message of human malignity to be found everywhere, literary fiction as well as genre fiction? And what is sentimentality anyway?

I guess all I have are questions.

At the end of the day, this book, seemingly about one crusty gentleman in one dusty corner of England, just makes you feel better about the whole human race.

Goodbye, Mr. Chips, Goodbye...This selection is a favorite especially for teachers. Mr. Chippings, was Brookfield School and Brookfield was Mr. Chippings. Any teacher who can read this book without a tear, a laugh, a sigh and a smile, only read the Cliff Notes. This is one of the best books ever written by anyone ever. A true classic