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Russell Smith. How Insensitive. Erin, Ont. Porcupine's Quill. 1994. 258 pages. Can$14.95. ISBN 0-889-84143-8.
In the tradition of Aldous Huxley's Antie Hay, Evelyn Waugh's Vile Bodies, and dozens of lesser-known novels, Russell Smith's How Insensitive, a beginning novelist's picaresque situation report on the younger generation, seems designed to make readers not the author's age feel very young or very old. Even the title is confusing, for it alludes not to the Jobim song but to something by the Bile Ducts, a group which may or may not exist outside Smith's imagination.
Ted Owens, the central character and semi-anti-hero, is a kind of Candide with an M.A. in cultural studies (with an emphasis in psychoanalytic feminism). He leaves a tediously earnest girlfriend and his academic life in Montreal, the novel's capital...