I have ordered A Tenured Professor, published 1990. It has one, I think only one, similarity to Lucky Jim.
The main character, Montgomery Marvin, a professor of economics, writes a thesis: Mathematical Paradigms in an Approach to Refrigerator Pricing; a title that can compete with Kingsley Amis’s, The Economic Influence of the Developments in Shipbuilding Techniques, 1450 to 1485. The author of A Tenured Professor is not well known as a novelist. He was a towering figure as an economist, diplomat and politician; literally towering, he stood 6 ft 9 inches in his Harvard socks.
JK Galbraith (call me Ken) is our man. He tried to steer the US away from war in Vietnam but his day job was as a pragmatic and pithy economist.
“The modern conservative is engaged in one of man’s oldest exercises in moral philosophy; that is, the search for a superior moral justification for selfishness.”
“The only function of economic forecasting is to make astrology look respectable.”
“Economics is extremely useful as a form of employment for economists.”
“You will find that the State is the kind of organization which, though it does big things badly, does small things badly, too.”
And now two opinions that ring especially true today.
“There are few ironclad rules of diplomacy but to one there is no exception. When an official reports that talks were useful, it can safely be concluded that nothing was accomplished.”
“All of the great leaders have had one characteristic in common: it was the willingness to confront unequivocally the major anxiety of their people in their time. This, and not much else, is the essence of leadership.”
During my senior year at university, I was invited to a dinner hosted by the Harvard Lampoon in their architectural folly of a clubhouse – a small castle nestled among the Cambridge streets. About 25 of us gathered around a long table which bore platters of indifferent food, glasses of far better quality drink and plates of every conceivable size to hold the different courses and condiments. I even noticed finger bowls although none of the food required handling. The reason for the excess of crockery became clear at meal end. Each Poonie stood up in turn, recited a ditty or told a joke, then threw a plate or two to the ground. We were all then invited to “retire” our plates…and the pandemonium began. Every piece of crockery was smashed to the ground, against the walls, perhaps even through a window. When I finally tracked down my host to ask..WHY?…the reply was quite logical. The Harvard Lampoon was very rich as its founders had gone on to publish the National Lampoon and gave a generous annual income to the club. One year, the Harvard Lampoon took some of their money and gave an award to John Kenneth Galbraith which included a prize – a purple and gold Cadillac convertible. Well, the University could not have its professors driving around in such conspicuous chariots and they were probably just as concerned about even more creative future prizes so Harvard and the Lampoon drew up an agreed list of items that could be purchased for club use. Plates were included. The rest is history.
Your readers could do worse than read JKG’s brilliant book on the Great Crash of 1929. Rather relevant now.
Always good for a pithy line.
My brief experience with the Great Man was as a “cater-waiter,” as we called ourselves, working at a fund-raising party JKG hosted for a young Roosevelt who was running for office locally (Harvard Student Agencies hired us out to anyone who liked the idea of having university students serving their guests). The party was at Galbraith’s house, which was exactly as one hopes a professor’s house would be (slightly worn, grand but not intimidating, lived in, full of books, etc.). He was particularly nice to us, understanding that an important part of the bargain for the student servers was eating and drinking “behind the green baize door,” so he and his wife made sure we sampled the delicious hors d’oeuvres enough that we got a good meal out of it (“one for you, one for me”). JKG was rather intimidating, but a good host.
As the party broke up, we couldn’t help but notice that there was rather a lot of leftover wine and, as we’d had a few glasses ourselves during a break in serving as the candidate spoke, we decided to sneak a few bottles home. Having a capacious overcoat (an indestructible tweed that I hastily purchased in a second-hand shop when I realized the lined mac that got me through Texas winters would not suffice in Massachusetts [that coat will outlast me]) I somehow managed to get five bottles crammed into my various pockets, and bade the hosts goodnight holding my coat wide to avoid any suspicious clanking. The rest of our little band each managed a bottle or two, as well.
We made it back to the residential house congratulating ourselves on our stealth, and had just lined up the haul of bottles on the mantelpiece when there was a knock at the door. Someone looked through the peephole, and saw Mr. Roosevelt standing there. Were we “busted”!? Much whispering and a rush to hide the bottles ensued, and then the door was opened to the candidate. He very kindly explained that we had done such a wonderful job of serving that he and JKG wanted to give us the leftover wine. He brought up two cases, profusely thanked us again, and bade us goodnight.
Epic nightly wine binges followed for about a week. We suspected that none of the “adults” had wanted the budget wine, but of course we were very happy to drink it. (And naturally, we voted for the young Roosevelt, when the time came.)