Malcolm Bradbury is a master of enumeration. "The History Man" … is packed with ludicrous or gloomy taxonomies. The female lead, Barbara Kirk, is … a promoter of Women for Peace, the Children's Crusade for Abortion, and No More Sex for Repression. The glass-and-concrete English academe in which her husband teaches burgeons with notices for all seasons. They include the Women's Lib Nude Encounter Group, the Gaysoc Elizabethan Evening: With Madrigals…. Each year, campus fashions change in delicate modulation with the spirit of the day…. At the party that is the crux of the novel we find young guests in Afghan yak, combat wear, wet-look plastic. The fauna ranges from bearded Jesuses and long-haired androgynes to girls with pouting plum-colored mouths….

These lists define the brittle, hectic landscape of Bradbury's comedy, which is England in its current dishevelment. Open your door and the jetsam of a broken culture tides in...