Postwar Academic Fiction: Satire, Ethics, Community

216 Pages·2002·2.595 MB·English

by  Kenneth Womack (auth.)

Postwar Academic Fiction
Also by Kenneth Womack
BRITISH BOOK-COLLECTORS AND BIBLIOGRAPHERS (3 volumes, co-edited
with William Baker)
FELIX HOLT, THE RADICAL (co-edited with William Baker)
RECENT WORK IN CRITICAL THEORY, 1989-1995 (compiled with William
Baker)
TWENTIETH-CENTURY BIBLIOGRAPHY AND TEXTUAL CRITICISM (com-
piled with William Baker)
Postwar Academic Fiction

Satire, Ethics, Community

Kenneth Womack
Assistant Professor of English, Penn State Altoona
© Kenneth Womack 2002
Softcover reprint of the hardcover 1st edition 2002 978-0-333-91882-1
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ISBN 978-1-349-42376-7 ISBN 978-0-230-59675-7 (eBook)

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Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Womack, Kenneth.
Postwar academic fction: satire, ethics, community /
Kenneth Womack.
p. cm.

Includes bibliographical references (p.) and index.

1. College stories, English-History and criticism. 2.
College stories, American-History and criticism. 3. English
fction-20th century-History and criticism. 4. American
fction-20th century-History and criticism. 5. Satire,
American-History and criticism. 6. Satire, English-History
and criticism. 7. Universities and colleges in literature. 8.
Community in literature. 9. Ethics in literature. I. Title.
PR888.U5 W66 2001
823'.9109355-dc21 2001053262
10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1
11 10 09 08 07 06 05 04 03 02
For Neneng
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Contents

Acknowledgments viii
1 Introduction: Ethical Criticism and Postwar Literary
Theory 1
2 Reading the "Heavy Industry of the Mind!: Ethical
Criticism and the Anglo-American Academic Novel 19
3 Negotiating the University Community: Lucky Jim
and the Politics of Academe 27
4 Scholar Adventurers in Exile: Nabokov's Dr. Kinbote
and Professor Pnin 43
5 Searching for Goodness and the Ethical Self: Joyce
Carol Oates's The Hungry Ghosts 60
6 The Professoriate in Love: David Lodge's Academic
Trilogy and the Ethics of Romance 77
7 Performing the Academy: Alterity and David Mamet's
Oleanna 98
8 Campus Xenophobia and the Multicultural Project:
Ishmael Reed's Japanese by Spring 109
9 Academic Nonfction and the Culture Warriors:
"Teaching the Conficts! in Gilbert and Gubar's
Masterpiece Theatre 127
10 Jane Smiley's Academic Carnival: Rooting for Ethics
at Moo U. 143
11 Conclusion: Ethical Criticism and the Academic
Novel beyond the Culture Wars 156
Notes 164
Bibliography 188
Index 202
vii
Acknowledgments

A project of this magnitude and scope only succeeds with the en-
couragement and guidance of an ethical community of friends and
colleagues. I would like to extend my warmest thanks to Craig S.
Abbott� Janice M. Arwood� Carol �ookhamer� Richard G. Caram�
Ildik� de Papp Carrington� Arra M. Garab� Susan Gubar� James L.
Harner� Thomas R. Lis�ka� Matthew T. Masucci� Harrison T. Meserole�
Dinty W. Moore� Neal R. Norrick� William P. Williams� Michael W.
Wolfe� and Katherine L. Wright. I would also like to thank Todd �.
Davis� James M. Decker� and Julian Wolfreys for their assistance
with my research and with the direction of this study. I am particu-
larly grateful for the scholarly experience provided by my students
in a Summer 2000 seminar at Penn State Altoona on "Reading the
Academic Novel.! The fnancial assistance of Dean Jerrold H. �ar of
Northern Illinois University in the form of a fellowship greatly
expedited the fruition of my project� as did the various travel grants
and course-load reductions afforded to me by Kjell Meling� Penn
State Altoona's Associate Dean and Director of Academic Affairs� and
the Altoona College Advisory �oard. I owe a special debt of thanks
to William �aker� David Gorman� and John �. Knapp for their tire-
less enthusiasm for my work and their many generous efforts on
behalf of this volume.
viii
���rod����o� 1
1

Introduction: Ethical Criticism

and Postwar Literary Theory

"Every decoding is another encoding . . ."
- David Lodge, Small World
How do academic fctions create meaning and value through their
satirical narratives in a critical era that bemoans the cultural rel­
evance of poststructuralist hermeneutics and proclaims the death of
literature in a postmodern world? As scholars engage in debate over
the social and pedagogical value of critical projects such as
deconstruction to contemporary institutions of higher learning, aca­
demic novels enjoy frequent publication during the latter half of
this century, an era marked by the increasing accessibility of
postsecondary education. Academic novels often satirize and
problematize the contradictions and sociological nuances of cam­
pus life, yet critics of academic fction - despite the remarkable
growth and evolution of the Anglo­American academic novel as a
literary genre since the 1950s - neglect to address the satiric ethos
that undergirds the genre's thematic landscape. The scathing repre­
sentation of professors and institutions alike in these fctions as
fgures of deceit, duplicity, and falsehood, moreover, remains
unexamined in the scholarly monographs devoted to the study of
the academic novel.
The brand of satire endemic to the genre of academic fction - a
"pejorative poetics" that I will trace through analyses of specifc
works in subsequent chapters of this study - fnds its genesis in the
disillusionment that marks the professional lives of academics in
the twentieth century. Like their forebears in the academic fctions
of the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries who languished
1
K. Womack, Postwar Academic Fiction
© Kenneth Womack 2002