Books in Brief: The Philosopher’s Pupil

The Philosopher’s Pupil, by Iris Murdoch (Viking, 576 pp., $17.75). When Professor John Robert Rozanov returns to Ennistone, England, at the end of a distinguished career, nearly all the residents of the town are profoundly affected, or at least expect to be. Readers of Miss Murdoch’s latest novel are continually reminded of “the spell of the philosopher” and are supposed to be unsurprised when everyone begins to wilt and waver in his paunchy aura. Most noticeably agitated is his former pupil George, another of Miss Murdoch’s Byronic creeps, who when he’s not being paralyzed by Rozanov is emitting his own disruptive force field toward everyone in sight: “ ‘You—you bewitch—everyone—’ said Brian, hardly able to speak.” In case one finds the notion of these two acting like psychological Kryptonite implausible, Miss Murdoch offers the possibility that Ennistone, built next to a hot spring, may just be experiencing “a kind of unholy restlessness which attacks the town at intervals like an epidemic.” It is good that this explanation exists, because no matter how hard Miss Murdoch tries, Rozanov and George always seem more boorish than frightening. One of her problems, in fact, is that having created and peopled this whole moist Middlemarch, Miss Murdoch has failed to put anyone decidedly likable into it. Only two characters (out of dozens) come close to being that, and, as it is, one of them is an airhead and the other a prude. It’s the elusive narrator who remarks that “We would all be comic characters if we were in novels,” and he’s right, of course, except that we’d be a lot funnier than the ones in The Philosopher’s Pupil. Iris Murdoch has in the past produced some marvelous, big, grim comedies, but in this book she approaches tedious self-parody. It is bloated with repetitive philosophical discussion. Its rivers of description are stocked with hundreds of adjectives through which the reader must navigate without the help of so much as a comma. Miss Murdoch’s great strength as a novelist has been her ability to arrange extraordinarily weird connections among her networks of characters. But if a book like A Word Child (1975) seemed the work of a crystallographer, The Philosopher’s Pupil might be the product of someone who saves string. What a disappointment to find her making a mess instead of a conundrum.

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Thomas Mallon

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The Philosopher’s Pupil, by Iris Murdoch (Viking, 576 pp., $17.75). When Professor John Robert Rozanov returns to Ennistone, England, at the end of a distinguished career, nearly all the residents of the town are profoundly affected, or at least expect to be. Readers of Miss Murdoch’s latest novel are continually reminded of “the spell of the philosopher” and are supposed to be unsurprised when everyone begins to wilt and waver in his paunchy aura. Most noticeably agitated is his former pupil George, another of Miss Murdoch’s Byronic creeps, who when he’s not being paralyzed by Rozanov is emitting his own disruptive force field toward everyone in sight: “ ‘You—you bewitch—everyone—’ said Brian, hardly able to speak.” In case one finds the notion of these two acting like psychological Kryptonite implausible, Miss Murdoch offers the possibility that Ennistone, built next to a hot spring, may just be experiencing “a kind of unholy restlessness which attacks the town at intervals like an epidemic.” It is good that this explanation exists, because no matter how hard Miss Murdoch tries, Rozanov and George always seem more boorish than frightening. One of her problems, in fact, is that having created and peopled this whole moist Middlemarch, Miss Murdoch has failed to put anyone decidedly likable into it. Only two characters (out of dozens) come close to being that, and, as it is, one of them is an airhead and the other a prude. It’s the elusive narrator who remarks that “We would all be comic characters if we were in novels,” and he’s right, of course, except that we’d be a lot funnier than the ones in The Philosopher’s Pupil. Iris Murdoch has in the past produced some marvelous, big, grim comedies, but in this book she approaches tedious self-parody. It is bloated with repetitive philosophical discussion. Its rivers of description are stocked with hundreds of adjectives through which the reader must navigate without the help of so much as a comma. Miss Murdoch’s great strength as a novelist has been her ability to arrange extraordinarily weird connections among her networks of characters. But if a book like A Word Child (1975) seemed the work of a crystallographer, The Philosopher’s Pupil might be the product of someone who saves string. What a disappointment to find her making a mess instead of a conundrum.