The German department, run by somebody he calls Sourgrapes, has taken over his office, and his boss - known only as the New Head - bugs him to stop quoting Latin and get computer-literate. O.'s, the king must be cornered, and Straitley's old-school resistance is deceptively nonpassive. It's like a prison sentence." But it is a sentence he is less and less eager to end, for he is the white king. For the old-guardsman 99 terms "cross the years like paper lanterns. Computer science is required, irritating to the Latinist who disdains e-mail. Hardest hit are the classicists generally and Straitley in particular. Oswald's, whose traditions are already in disarray. Oswald's down, I want Roy Straitley to be there."Ī new year has just begun at St. That they will intersect is foreshadowed often but never more ominously than when Mole thinks "the day I bring St. For three-fourths of the way the voices of the two narrators alternate. Ozzie's and whose given name is significantly left unrevealed, revenge is all. To Snyde/Mole, whose underclass origin has closed off St. He, of course, is the white king, his chapters headed by that graphic.įor Straitley, who is deeply respected if not universally loved by his colleagues and both respected and loved by his boys, true grain is loyalty. Chips figure - the lone remnant of the old order, Roy Straitley, Latinist. Also on that page the author denies readers one kind of suspense by revealing that murder lies just ahead.įor 300 of the book's 400 pages we are privy, in telling dramatic irony - that is, the reader knowing, the characters, except for the black pawn, in the dark - to interior games between Snyde, the destructor, referred to by the unaware victims as "mole," and a much more chipper Mr.
Oswald's Grammar School by crossing with insidious intent the boundary lines of class. The first page of Gentlemen & Players leads off with a graphic of a significantly black pawn, and the chapter allows the porter's child, the black pawn, to declare war on St. Knowledge of chess, while not a prerequisite for enjoying Harris' astonishing novel, might be a help in sorting out the action, especially at the end.
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