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Both mother and son regarded the coming soire with awe; but while Tante Stphanie,

splendid in black satin and appliqu jet, with one of Mrs. Portways lilac chiffons scarves to cover her
dcolletage, proposed herself a retiring role in seeing that none of the food was eaten by the servants,
Yves, superb in midnight-blue smoking, a legacy of his Italian widow, saw every opportunity to shine.
He addressed himself aggressively to Robin as they awaited the arrival of the first guests. He
was one business tycoon to another. It was not at all what Robin cared for. []
Whats your wastage, Middleton? Yves asked, and before Robin could inquire the meaning
of this somewhat cryptic question, he followed it up with a machine-gun fire of searching business
questions intended to flatten Robin out, lay him stone dead with their ruthless drive, their dead-hit
punch, their incredible grasp of detail. What do your absentee figures show? he asked. Whats your
pension load? Have you got a record of your pay-out in widows benefits? Wheres your loss in toilet
time? These and many other questions which had once so depressed him from an American colleague
in the air force he now worked off on Robin and, without waiting for a reply, he cried. Good God!
Man, a guys got to ask himself these questions. You need an efficient expert to give your place the
works. And when Robin looked dejected, he patted him on the elbow. Thats all right, he said;
your worries are over. From today youre going to be lucky. Im going to save Middletons
thousands.
Marie Hlne, tightly swathed in crimson velvet, her bosom deadly yellow as a Japanese
corpses beneath the fires of her opal necklace, held up her hand in horror. No businesstalk, Yves,
please, she cried. You will ruin my soire. And in hard, flat tones, she said: Do you think that
Anouilh is pass? I find a terrible lack of esprit in his last play. Im afraid he has quite lost his
elegance. She gave it to him as a copybook model for the evening.
Yves looked her over. Mais tu est ravissante, ma chre cousine, he said, absolument
ravissante. He took her hand, and, raising her arm, he planted small kisses all the way up its scrawny,
yellow inner side. Marie Hlne had only just time to snatch her arm away before the first guests were
announced.
Thick and vast they came, filling the Hampstead double drawing-room, covering the gold-and-
white couches, sitting bolt upright on the little Empire chairs, staring over each others shoulders into
the gilt mirrors, leaning on the two unused harpsichords and the hardly ever used grand piano,
threatening the bad Svres with their elbows, swallowing quantities of champagne, gobbling up lobster
patties and vol-au-vents from Fortnums, debouching in elegant pairs into the little garden with its
walnut tree and its iris pool. The more cultured of Robins business friends were impressed by the
representatives of British Council and Arts Council and Institut Franais and a hundred other councils
and institutes; all these bureaucrats of modern culture were equally impressed by the odd French or
English poet or sculptor or violonist. Dotted among them here and there were B.B.C. officials
programme-planners, features-producers, poetry readers and an odd publisher or two; these had a
professional appearance of not being very impressed.
(adapted from Anglo-Saxon Attitudes, 1976: 213)

1. Discuss Englishness versus cosmopolitanism as underlying the text.


2. Point to the cultural stereotypes deconstructed.
3. What angry attitude may be inferred by considering the excerpt?
4. How much is revealed about the narrator-observer?
5. What is the function of language within the social milieu?
6. Analyse diction and idiolect with a view to disclosing standpoints.
7. Look into the social criticism allusively formulated.
8. Consider activity/passivity as modes of relating to the social context.
9. To what extent may the text be associated with realism?
10. Which twentieth century issues are addressed?
Itll be a good faint, Atkinson had said in his arrogant voice. Itll create a diversion all
right. Dont you worry. Recalling this now, Dixon had to fight down a burst of laughter. At the same
moment a disturbance nearer the platform attracted his attention: Christine and Carol were pushing
past Cecil and Beesley with the clear intention of leaving the hall; Bertand was leaning over and stage-
whispering to them; Gore-Urquhart, half risen, looked concerned. Flustered, Dixon stopped talking
again; then, when the two women had gained the aisle and were making for the door, went on, sooner
than he should have done, in a blurred, halting mumble that suggested the extremity of drunkenness.
Shifting nervously on his feet, he half tripped against the base of the lectern and swayed perilously
forward.
A hum of voices began again from the gallery. Dixon had a fleeting impression of the thinner
alderman and his wife exchanging a glance of disapproving comment. He stopped speaking.
When he recovered himself, he found that hed once more lost his place in midsentence.
Biting his lip, he resolved not to run off the rails again. He cleared his throat, found his place, and
went on in a clipped tone, emphasizing all the consonants and keeping his voice well up at the end of
each phrase. At any rate, he thought, theyll hear every word now. As he went on, he was for the
second time conscious of something being very wrong. It was some moments before he realized that
he was now imitating the Principal.
He looked up; there seemed to be a lot of movement in the gallery. Something heavy crashed
to the floor up there. Maconochie, whod been standing near the doors, went out, presumably to
ascend and restore order. Voices were now starting up in the body of the Hall; the fashionable
clergyman said something in a rumbling undertone; Dixon saw Beesley twisting about in his seat.
Whats the matter with you, Dixon? Welch hissed.
Sorry sir bit nervous all right in a minute
It was a close evening; Dixon felt intolerably hot. With a shaking hand he poured himself a
glass of water from the carafe before him and drank feverishly. A comment, loud but indistinct, was
shouted from the gallery. Dixon felt he was going to burst into tears. Should he throw a faint? It would
be easy enough. No; everybody would assume hed succumbed to alcohol. He made a last effort to
pull himself together and, the pause now having lasted nearly half a minute, began again, but not in his
normal voice. He seemed to have forgotten how to speak ordinarily. This time he chose an
exaggerated northern accent as the least likely to give offence or to resemble anybody elses voice.
After the first salvo of laughs from the gallery things quietened down [] and for a few minutes
everything went smoothly. He was now getting on for halfway through.
While he read, things began slowly to go wrong for the third time, but not, as before, with
what he was saying or how he was saying it. These things had to do with the inside of his head. A
feeling, not so much of drunkenness, but of immense depression and fatigue, was taking almost
tangible shape there. While he spoke one sentence, sadness at the thought of Christine seemed to be
trying to grip his tongue at the root and reduce him to an elegiac silence; while he spoke another, cries
of irritated horror fumbled for admission at his larynx so as to make public what he felt about the
Margaret situation; while he spoke the next, anger and fear threatened to twist his mouth, tongue, and
lips into the right position for a hysterical denunciation of Bertrand, Mrs. Welch, the Principal, the
Registrar, the College Council, the College. He began to lose all consciousness of the audience before
him; the only member of it he cared abut had left and was presumably not going to come back. Well, if
this was going to be his last public appearance here, hed see to it that people didnt forget it in a
hurry. Hed do some good, however small, to some of those present, however few.
(adapted from Lucky Jim, 1990: 116)

1. What kind of world is the academic one in the novel?


2. Analyse the narrative techniques employed and the roles they play.
3. Consider the shift from the outer to the inner dimension in relation with individual well-being.
4. Find the analeptic, proleptic and sylleptic forces at work within the fragment.
5. Discuss the structures of authority envisaged here.
6. Concentrate on language as communication vehicle and barrier.
7. Identify the type of comic obvious in the text.
8. How much rebellion may be gathered from the situation presented?
9. Which are the specific means of character drawing?
10. Develop on the timelessness of the scene.

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