This has sat on our bookcase since October 1977 unread. It seems to be quite a famous book, but it is pretty poor.
I don’t know who Butler was, or quite why it is so celebrated (perhaps it isn’t); but it is a poor book. The closest analogy I could think of was (maybe) the ‘angry young man’ novels of the 1950’s, but even here the analogy is dissipated by the 3rd party narrator, who is a pompous and possibly suppressed homosexual friend of Ernest the vicariously angry young man, who isn’t really terribly angry at all, just makes lots of poor choices due to a degree of parental pressure.
I must google Samuel Butler. Just did, doesn’t tell me much.
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