The dominant sense I had reading
The Masters was the authorial underlying motto – 'I may be a scientist but I've got feelings, you know'. He tells us so frequently through the reminiscences of Lewis Elliot looking back from some future time on the election campaign for the mastership of a small Cambridge college. Eliot was a young man then yet his judgments of the fellows of the College, 13 of them, are those of the older man looking back. His assessments, this one is sound, that one is windy and so on seem middle-aged which is legitimate yet the active engagement of a 32 year old is neglected. A great novel has life which may be defined as lived immediacy. Just appending 'my feeling then' to an impossibly mature observation is a little too unreliable narratorish for an empiricist like Snow. Everything is accounted for causally and character really is destiny which leaves no room for the surpassing of the individuals fate by a creative leap whereby the facts of the case fall into a new pattern. As a scientist Snow would be aware –
(I am in the sitting room typing this and my gudewife has come and whispered into my shell like – “I'm doing a zoom at 11”. Sitting Zoom. Later then)
