As an academic, I have been exposed to countless controversies, politically-based character assassinations, tenure denials, a few student-professor affairs, etc.
Where are the novels that portray this mixed up group of barefoot shoemakers?
As an academic, I have been exposed to countless controversies, politically-based character assassinations, tenure denials, a few student-professor affairs, etc.
Where are the novels that portray this mixed up group of barefoot shoemakers?
A Separate Peace was set in academia, although I don’t recall any tenure denials or affairs.
i understand that A.R. Gurney’s Entertaining Strangers is set in academia, and talks about such relationships. I haven’t read it. Gurney is better known for his plays (Love Letters, especially), but he wrote three novels. One of my professors is supposed to be in here, in disguised form.
Wonder Boys by Michael Chabon.
Moo by Jane Smiley
Secret History by Donna Tartt
David Lodge has written several.
Jane Smiley’s Moo was also set on a college campus.
Amanda Cross’s mystery series features Prof. Kate Fansler as the detective type and usually has an academic theme.
Try James Hynes’ Publish and Perish: Three Tales of Tenure and Terror and The Lecturer’s Tale.
I really enjoyed Publish and Perish by Sally S. Wright. It’s a mystery novel, but I think it could appeal to non-mystery fans.
The Inspector Morse books are set in Oxford, many of them featuring academics aqnd some of them set in the University.
Lucky Jim is a classic of this genre, as are David Lodge’s Changing Places, Small World, Nice Work, and Thinks…
One the best, and most hilarious, novels concerned with academic foibles is Pnin by Vladimir Nabakov.
Check out Hearts In Atlantis, by Steven King (the movie from a few years back covers only the first third or so). The second part centers mostly around a group of students at a Northeastern state university, like the one that Stephen King attended, so presumably gives a reasonably accurate picture of the life there.
White Noise by Don DeLillo–the narrator is chairman of Hitler Studies at a midwestern university. And it just gets funnier from there. He pokes fun at tweed jackets and suede elbow patches and the whole college scene.
I just read Francine Prose’s Blue Angel, and found it pretty funny. I generally find academia to be an irritating subculture, but the book seemed to take that attitude too; the characters are more archetypes than anything, and there’s a lot of lampooning going on.
A number of Horror novels & short stories by H. P. Lovecraft are in academic settings, notably Miskatonic University.
Richard Russo’s Straight Man, which is one of the funniest books every written anyway – times two if you’ve spent time in academia.
A lot of John Irving’s “The World According to Garp,” and some of Daniel Keyes’s “Flowers for Algernon.”
Twickster recommended this to me on when I asked for books that were just plain funny, nothing more. And I thoroughly second this rec. Great book, easy, yet interesting read, a total gem.
The Big U is an early Neal Stephenson novel that’s just amazingly hilarious. There’s not much about the professors, but administration and student life is the source of a lot of the humor. (Seriously. Hilarious.)
Gaudy Night is a mystery by Dorothy L. Sayers set in a women’s college at Oxford in the early 30’s. Highly entertaining and informative - basic plot is that it looks like one of the faculty is a poison-pen letter writer with a hatred for academics, possibly escalating to murder. Harriet Vane and Lord Peter Wimsey are the sleuths.