Campus Novel Variations: a Comparative Study of an Anglo-American Genre
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Palacký University Olomouc Philosophical Faculty Department of English and American Studies English and American Literature Petr Anténe Campus Novel Variations: A Comparative Study of an Anglo-American Genre Proměny univerzitního románu: Komparativní studie angloamerického žánru Ph.D. dissertation | dizertační práce Supervisor | vedoucí: Mgr. Ema Jelínková, Ph.D. Olomouc 2015 1 Prohlašuji, že jsem dizertační práci napsal samostatně, pouze s použitím citovaných pramenů a literatury. I hereby declare that I have written this dissertation by myself, using only literature and sources cited below. V Olomouci 24. března, 2015 | Olomouc, March 24, 2015 2 Acknowledgements: First of all, I would like to thank my supervisor Mgr. Ema Jelínková, Ph.D., for her valuable comments on the content of this dissertation and her patience with which she read several drafts of this project. Consultations with Professor Marcel Arbeit also contributed to the final shape of this dissertation. Also, I would like to express my gratitude to Professor Josef Jařab and the doctoral board of the English and American Literature programme at Palacký University, as well as Professor Clinton Machann, a member of both the English Department at Texas A&M University in College Station, Texas, and the Brazos Valley Czech Heritage Society in Bryan, Texas. Thanks to the Hlavinka Fellowship, arranged by the cooperation of these people and institutions, I was able to spend two academic years in the USA as a M.A. student, which provided me with a great opportunity to conduct research for this dissertation. Finally, I would like to thank my family for their support and understanding as I was completing this dissertation. 3 Abstract: This dissertation provides a chronological overview of the development of the campus or academic novel from the 1950s to the early 21st century. Since the campus novel has been a specifically Anglo-American phenomenon, I compare two representative texts from each decade—one British and one American—in all of the six chapters. As campus novels are usually characterized as comic or satirical texts, I also address the coexistence of the comic and the satirical within the genre. My findings show that while the British campus novels have been written by a rather limited number of authors (Kingsley Amis, Malcolm Bradbury, and David Lodge), the American campus novels have been authored by various recognized writers of general fiction (Vladimir Nabokov, Bernard Malamud, Don DeLillo). Also, whereas all the novels discussed in this dissertation are set at humanities departments, the British campus novels tend to take place at English departments, implicitly defending British literature and culture. Finally, I conclude that although Philip Roth’s The Human Stain, one of the most recent addenda to the genre, can hardly be characterized as a comic novel, all of the texts analysed in this dissertation are satirical in their effect, as they try to name and potentially reform various problematic aspects of academia. Abstrakt: Tato dizertační práce poskytuje chronologický přehled vývoje univerzitního neboli akademického románu od 50. let 20. století do prvního desetiletí 21. století. Jelikož univerzitní román představuje specificky angloamerický jev, každá ze šesti kapitol porovnává dva reprezentativní texty—jeden britský a jeden americký—ze stejného desetiletí. Protože univerzitní romány bývají charakterizovány jako komické a satirické texty, práce se rovněž soustřeďuje na výskyt komických a satirických prvků v tomto žánru. Mé srovnání ukazuje, že zatímco autoři britských univerzitních románů tvoří relativně malou skupinu (Kingsley Amis, Malcolm Bradbury, David Lodge), mezi americké autory daného žánru patří různorodí uznávaní prozaici (Vladimir Nabokov, Bernard Malamud, Don DeLillo). Přestože všechny analyzované romány se odehrávají na humanitních katedrách, britské texty jsou obvykle zasazeny na katedru anglistiky, čímž implicitně obhajují britskou literaturu a kulturu. Závěr práce zdůrazňuje, že i když jeden z posledních univerzitních románů, Lidskou skvrnu Philipa Rothe, lze stěží popsat jako komický román, všechny analyzované texty mají satirický účinek, neboť se snaží pojmenovat a potenciálně reformovat nejrůznější problematické aspekty akademického světa. 4 Table of Contents 1. Introduction and Literature Review……………………………………………….6 2. The 1950s and Outsiders in Academia: Kingsley Amis’s Lucky Jim and Vladimir Nabokov’s Pnin………………………………………………………….......................20 3. The 1960s, Transatlantic Voyages and Quests to the West: Malcolm Bradbury’s Stepping Westward and Bernard Malamud’s A New Life………………………..43 4. 1970s: Adultery in the Time of Vietnam War and the Student Unrest in Alison Lurie’s The War between the Tates and David Lodge’s Changing Places: A Tale of Two Campuses………………………………………………………………...64 5. 1980s and Excursions beyond the Ivory Tower: Don DeLillo’s White Noise and David Lodge’s Nice Work……………………………………………………………….87 6. 1990s and Academic Research as Detection: A. S. Byatt’s Possession: A Romance and Michael Dorris and Louise Erdrich’s The Crown of Columbus………………………………………………………………………..111 7. Early 2000s and Racial Conflicts in Academia: Philip Roth’s The Human Stain and Zadie Smith’s On Beauty…………………………………………….........134 8. Conclusion………………………………………………………………………161 9. Works Cited…………………………………………………………………….169 5 1. Introduction and Literature Review While the novel as a genre was only born in the 18th century, contemporary readers often tend to think of novels as bread and butter of literature. To explain the persisting popularity of novels, one could argue that throughout the genre’s development, readers have been attracted to these texts for two main reasons. First, some readers have been craving stories set in times and places recognizably different from their own as a means of entertainment, escape or education; some of gothic novels, fantasy and science fiction or historical novels could serve as examples here. However, others (or even the same) readers have also been interested in reading about fictional worlds similar to the one they inhabit, for such worlds are peopled by characters who are potentially closer to them, as they have to face situations and problems resembling their own. It is mainly the latter reason that explains the popularity of the campus novel, which has often been seen by literary critics as a kind of fiction “written about scholars, typically by scholars and often for scholars.”1 Indeed, given this relatively small community, the wide-spread tendency to read campus novels as romans à clef does not come as a surprise. In addition, in the introduction to Faculty Towers: The Academic Novel and Its Discontents (2005),2 the most comprehensive survey of the Anglo-American campus novel so far,3 Elaine Showalter admits to having used campus novels as resource books of academic mores and manners: “In an era before there were handbooks, self-help guides, or advice columns for graduate students and junior faculty in the Chronicle of Higher Education or the Times Higher Education Supplement, novels taught me how a proper 1 See e.g. Merritt Moseley, “Introductory: Definitions and Justifications,” in The Academic Novel: New and Classic Essay, ed. Merritt Moseley (Chester: Chester Academic Press, 2007), 5. 2 Like Showalter and David Lodge, whose article is quoted later in this introduction, I am using the terms academic novel and campus novel interchangeably. 3 Showalter denies such a characterization, claiming that her volume is “a personal take,” reflecting her preoccupations, mainly with feminism. See Faculty Towers: The Academic Novel and Its Discontents (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2005), 16. However, even up to March 2015, no other scholar has written a comprehensive study of the British and American campus novel whose scope would surpass Faculty Towers. 6 professor should speak, behave, dress, think, write, love, succeed, or fail.”4 Importantly, as Showalter mentions graduate students and junior faculty as target readers, it needs to be said that the faculty rather than undergraduate students are also the more typical protagonists of the modern campus novel as it developed from the 1950s on in reaction to the wider spread of higher education in both the United Kingdom and the United States. Thus, while many earlier Bildungsromane (such as Evelyn Waugh’s Brideshead Revisited, 1945) feature the protagonist’s university experience within their narrative, such texts are beyond the scope of the campus novel as I and other critics understand it.5 While this dissertation illustrates that the professor- centred academic novel continues to flourish, Jeffrey J. Williams suggests that campus film gradually replaced the novel as the main narrative vehicle of undergraduate experience.6 As a graduate student in English and American literature that has studied in both the Czech Republic and the United States, I must agree with Showalter that I have also appreciated campus novels as sources of information about various aspects of university life. Accordingly, as early as in 1987, John Thelin and Barbara Townsend argued for the “opportunity, even obligation, to read the fiction that use colleges and universities as subject and setting”7 in order to better understand American higher education. As social scientists, the authors also suggest that campus novels may be usefully employed along with various other data, such as “institutional records, archival materials, and student and alumni memoirs and biographies.”8 While