Customer Reviews

THE MASTERS

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A novel set in the intimate, closed world of a school or college (or a convent, or cathedral close) has a better-than-average chance of being fascinating to begin with. Whether a school story is a work of literary art such as Snow's The Masters or Antonia White's Frost in May, a decent novel in the vein of Hughes's Tom Brown's School Days, Kipling's Stalky and Co., or Farrar's Eric, or even the kind of boarding-school story churned out by the likes of Angela Brazil and the author of the Greycliff series, school stories tend to hold one's interest because they are school stories. Generally written by one with insider knowledge, such books seem to reveal not only the characteristics of a society in microcosm, but also the particular stresses and strains imposed by intimate, closed worlds.

Snow's The Masters is perhaps the supreme example of this genre. A perfectly plotted and self-contained novel filled with unforgettable characters (Mrs. Jago, the embittered Despard-Smith and the beautifully-realized Professor M. H. L. Gay come to mind), The Masters is certainly C.P. Snow's best work. Snow's college world is no ivory tower. Passions and ruthless hatreds surface as two factions clash over the election of a new Master of a Cambridge college. The power brokers Chrystal and Brown display their practiced adroitness as they machinate to put their candidate in office and angle for a major benefaction from a wealthy industrialist. Political overtones from the outside world (the novel is set iduring the period of Hitler's rise to power) begin to agitate the election question further. This is a novel to read again and again.

The Masters concerns an election of the head of a college in England by the masters (professors) at the school. Snow skillfully illustrates to us the politics of small groups, and how very different those politics are from politics in a broader sense. This book is one of the Strangers and Brothers series, but it reads very nicely as a stand-alone work. The Masters is a good read, in which we follow the partisan manuvering of two factions seeking different candidates in the school election. Snow's style is straightforward, almost a latter-day Trollope, and his ideas are very insightful. This is a classic, which deserves to be more read.

I'd urge you to read this one. Few people describe the inner life of men, or at least his class of 20th century Englishman, so well as Snow. The characterisations are the strength, all vanities and motivations probed as if by a surgeon, though the "closed" politics plot is entertaining enough. Other reviewers list their favourite characters, I'd plump for Winslow and Brown myself. Beautiful writing style.

C.P.Snow has some fine qualities; he is succinct, perceptive and astute. This novel, perhaps to a greater extent than any of his others, reflects these qualities as "The Masters" is a triumph of characterisation. Jago, Brown, Calvert, Nightingale and Gay will live long in the memory and the understated way in which Snow brings them to life is most adroit. Ultimately, however, like all of the Strangers and Brothers sequence, it is a novel about the narrator, Lewis Eliot; the relationship between tale and teller here is particularly impressive. The reader becomes unconsciously embroiled in and fascinated by his life - here is a narrator who is both partial and impartial, intense and detached. The claustrophobic, parochial and insular world of academic life is captured perfectly here. I recommend it highly; for anyone who has read it and enjoyed it, I commend to their attention "The Affair" by the same author. Set in the same Cambridge college, many of the characters reappear and it is another very fine read.

How does an assortment of 13 professors at an English university choose the next head of their college? "The Masters" examines the personal and university politics that shape this decision through the narrative style of C. P. Snow. This captures a brainy professorial world through heavy reliance on complex and conditional dialogue, acute but unspoken observations, and highly abstract character analysis. Here's an example of his approach: "His manner was deliberately prosaic and comfortable. He was showing less outward sign of strain than any of us; when he was frayed inside, he slowed his always measured speech, brought out commonplaces like an amour, reduced all he could to the matter-of-fact." Still, the story, while minutely imagined, doesn't go deep. It's a tempest in a teapot.

Another terrific book , supposedly the best in the series ("Strangers and Brothers"), but I think that several others are possibly better. And, really, it ends so dismally. Although I guess any other way would be too trite, and I'm quite sure that this is based on some real event in Snow's life, as I feel all the books are. The dons are all so sharply drawn, each clear in his own character. And the eating and drinking they constantly did! I guess they walked a lot. I loved it. The intrigues and politics that Snow writes about, are worthy of any Washington lobbyist. Except that here we are at Cambridge.

This book came up in discussion since we were talking about the historian Hugh Trevor-Roper and it was mentioned that he may have been a model for one of the characters in the book. I usually consider such suggestions homework and so got the book and read it with great interest. It certainly was an interesting study of men interacting over the nature of their status in a close knit group in an institution with a great sense of tradition regarding the status and promotion of individuals to offices in the college. I found it odd that hardly any description of the Fellows interaction with their students was part of the book though certainly that would have been off the theme. But it left the impression that most time spent is done in meetings and over drinks or meals. Throw in a few walks now and then. There was no discussion regarding their studies except for those of a scientific mind who were working on their experiments, or the individuals love for the subject was viewed as mildly annoying in the case of Professor Gay. All in all it was certainly a worthwhile read and I have done my homework for the week.

C. P. Snow's THE MASTERS, the fourth in his STRANGERS AND BROTHERS sequence, is his best-known book and has often been hailed as his masterpiece. It's been compared frequently to BARCHESTER TOWERS: a valid comparison, since among his many other achievements Snow was also a biographer of Anthony Trollope. Certainly THE MASTERS does seem to have used Trollope's governing plot of the jostling and politicking to fill vacant episcopal seats; but it is in comparison to Trollope that Snow's novel most seems to suffer today, despite its fame and undoubted influence since its publication in 1951.

When the master of an unnamed Cambridge college becomes fatally ill at the beginning of this novel, the fellows of his college begin to maneuver to ensure the success of their own favorite candidates for the master's position. The novel is mostly an exhaustive description of the jockeying for influence and loyalty undertaken by the two opposing sides, behind Jago on the one side (that shared by our narrator, the central figure in STRANGERS AND BROTHERS, Lewis Eliot) and Crawford on the other. The competition is fought with fierce desperation, but because it's so difficult to tell what sort of vision either man has for the college should he succeed, it's hard to care much about the outcome--and Snow does very little to satirize his participants, as Trollope did to signal his awareness of the pettiness of the battle. Crawford, we are told, is an awful snob; but since when was this new among Oxbridge dons? Although the characters of the fellows are often amusingly drawn (particularly the two eldest among them, Gay and Despard-Smith), they're also not given much depth. The whole thing comes off as a bit arid.