Academic fiction

[Bill Millard]

Along with all the other examples of good novels with university 
settings (a rare but not nonexistent species), like David Lodge's and 
Ishmael Reed's, I'd recommend Nabokov's _Pnin_ and Jane Smiley's 
_Moo_.  

Just finished the latter and liked it; it's light entertainment, but 
less light than its annoying cow-college title implies.  Its lineup 
of widely recognizable faculty types may border on stereotyping to 
some degree, but some of the caricatures are dead-on and richly 
deserved, especially the loathsome market-worshiping economics prof.  
I'd be interested in what other people on the list think of it, if 
anyone here's read it. 

Obligatory TRP Content: isn't the "People's Republic of Rock & Roll" 
section of _Vineland_ close to this genre?  A-and the stuff in 
_COL49_ about textual variants in revenge tragedies and the strange 
people obsessed with them?  I wouldn't say the campus novel is 
entirely below TRP's field of attention, even if some academics are 
in fact solipsistic baffle-gabbing boobs and worthy targets for 
Steely-style derision.  

--Bill Millard
(in academia w/o being entirely of it)


\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/
\ Bill Millard 
\ millard at cuadmin.cis.columbia.edu
\ Editor, 21stC, Columbia University
\ http://www.21stC.org
\ Voice, bass, and songs, Shanghai Love Motel 
\ http://www.columbia.edu/~wbm1/slm.html
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