Customer Reviews

Stepping Westward

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If I could give this 3.5 stars, I would. Bradbury's "Stepping Westward" strings together many comic scenes--some of them cheesy, but some downright hilarious--and takes a satirical westward stab at American campus politics at the outset of the sexual revolution; however, there never seems to be enough tension scraped together to congeal into a viable, inviting plot.

Englishman James Walker, a struggling writer, is invited to Benedict Arnold University, in the American town of Party (oh, the hilarity of invented names), to be writer-in-residence for the year. He accepts the offer and moves to the States, where the English department is peopled with all brands of stereotypical American academics, from tight-collared traditionalists to spouse-swapping wannabe radicals. Comedy ensues.

There is a great deal of situational humor in this book, largely of the fish-out-of-water, culture-shock variety, with America representing the free-wheeling bedlam and Walker the congenitally repressed Brit, but it's simply not enough to drive the novel to its end, and the later chapters drag. When, at the story's close, Walker boards his England-bound ship, it is quite unclear whether the book's events will leave any lasting impression on him, or on the novel's reader.

As an American academic, I appreciated much of the humor in "Stepping Westward," and found myself nodding my head in agreement, even at some of the sillier moments. If you have an interest in these sorts of academic gags (like the novels of David Lodge, for example), then I'm guessing you'll enjoy this book (if and when it comes back into print). If not, I really wouldn't recommend it too strongly.