Academic novels

[John Boylan]

David Casseres speaks :

>But what Barth did so masterfully is sometimes the deadly pitfall of the
>academic novel -- namely, being dependent on the illusion that the
>university is the universe. < deathless prose ruthlessly snipped >
>Wallace Stevens did not write poems in which the universe was like
>an insurance company office, < snip, snip >

Sez I : Yeah but Borges _did_ write 'The Library of Babel', in which
the universe is a library -- this was ( along with Mervyn Peake's
Gormenghast trilogy ) a key inspiration for 'Giles Goat Boy'. Borges
was, of course, a librarian.