Part 1, Chapter 1 Summary

Having recently completed a master's thesis on Shakespeare's influence on T. S. Eliot, Persse McGarrigle is attending his first-ever professional conference and does not know what to expect. Rummidge College has never before hosted an event like the annual convention of the University Teachers of English Language and Literature (UTE). The college packs the fifty-odd participants into substandard student dormitories and feeds them blandly. Veterans of such conferences accept the poor conditions and being stuck together for three days of artificial sociability. The spread-out nature of the event is harder to take, as is the fact that the stars of the profession have skipped it.

At a sherry reception, Persse meets several of the organizers and hears at length the tale of woe of Robin Dempsey. Ten years previously, he is a lecturer at Rummidge. He is beaten out of a...