The Magazine

THE END OF THE ACADEMIC NOVEL

Aug 4, 1997, Vol. 2, No. 46 • By J. BOTTUM
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Richard Russo

 

Straight Man

 

Random House, 391 pp., $ 25

 

Jon Hassler

 

The Dean's List

 

Ballantine Books, 416 pp., $ 24


Two of America's most interesting novelists have recently produced books about the academic life: Richard Russo, author of the well-received working- class story Nobody's Fool, and Jon Hassler, author of the utterly charming Staggerford trilogy about a Minnesota schoolteacher's long- distance friendship with an Irish priest. In their competent and professional hands, the academic novel proves unexceptionable: funny where it can be, dramatic where it must be, clever, smooth, well constructed -- and such old, old news that even writers as capable as these two can find nothing new to say with it.


In Straight Man, Russo tells the story of William Henry Devereaux Jr. -- chairman of English at a Pennsylvania college and son of a famous literary critic -- who in the midst of various personal and professional difficulties announces on national television his desperate intention to kill a goose per day from the campus pond until his department gets its funding.


In The Dean's List, Hassler tells the story of Leland Edwards -- the hero of the earlier Rookery Blues, now the 58-year-old dean of his small school in Minnesota -- who tries desperately to shelter a visiting Robert Frost-like poet from his publishers, his fans, and the Internal Revenue Service.


The most significant thing about these books is something their authors could not possibly have intended: They reveal how utterly worn-out the academic novel has become in less than 50 years' time.

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