American Academic Novel,
1951-1965
Vanina Röling Student ID 10354034
Supervised by Dr. G.H. Blaustein Master Thesis American Studies University of Amsterdam 27 June 2016
Abstract
In this Master Thesis American Studies, I will focus my attention on anti-intellectualism and the mid-20th century American
academic novel. Although both topics have been written about extensively, I feel the two have not been sufficiently examined in correlation to one another. Can the academic novel help us understand points of contention central to anti-intellectualism? Using historiographical works by Richard Hofstadter and Christopher Lasch as well as literary scholarship on the academic novel, I will endeavour to place the academic novel in a historical context. Using four noted examples for close reading, namely Mary McCarthy’s The Groves of Academe (1951), Randall Jarrell’s Pictures from an Institution (1954), Vladimir Nabokov’s Pnin (1957) and John Williams’ Stoner (1965), I will look at themes concerning the notion of the ivory towers, the body of the academic and academia as a game of seduction.
I hereby acknowledge that I have read the University of Amsterdam’s guidelines on plagiarism. The work that follows is my own, and all citations are properly accredited.
Vanina Röling, June 2016
Introduction...4
Chapter 1: Hofstadter, Lasch and Beyond...8
Anti-Intellectualism as a Cyclical Force...8
The Intellectual as a Self-Proclaimed Beleaguered Minority...10
Hofstadter, Lasch and Beyond...12
Central Themes in Anti-Intellectualism...14
Chapter 2: The Campus Novel as a Genre...16
Characteristics of the Campus Novel...17
Genre Popularity and Broad Appeal...20
Functions of a Genre...21
Anti-Intellectualism and the Academic Novel of the 1950s and ‘60s...22
Chapter 3: Isolation and Alienation in the Ivory Towers...24
The Ivory Towers Opened Up...25
The Necessity of the University as a Vacuum...27
Academic Freedom...29
The Middle Class and its Fear of Falling...31
Inefficiency, Bureaucracy and Fraud in Mary McCarthy’s The Groves of Academe...32
A Refuge for Exiles...33
Chapter 4: The Body of the Academic...36
Brain vs. Brawn in the Academic Novel...36
Youth and Emotional Immaturity...37
A Genre of Mid-Life Crises...38
A Happy Ending for the Academic?...40
Chapter 5: Academia as a Game of Seduction...42
The Monastic Tradition and Sexlessness of the Academic...42
Desire as a Prerequisite for Academia...45
Romance of Academia in Stoner...46
Conclusion...49
Bibliography...52
Introduction
In the 1950s, “anti-intellectualism” became something of a buzzword in American public life. In the midst of concerns over Senator Joseph McCarthy’s witch-hunt trials and the onset of the Cold War, Americans became concerned about the role of the intellectual, as if they were the key to explaining the unrest felt by many. Although the term was first used in 1909 in the Catholic
Encyclopaedia, anti-intellectualism had been going undiagnosed until Richard
Hofstadter published his study Anti-intellectualism in American Life in 1963, which won the Pulitzer Prize for non-fiction the next year. While anti-intellectualism may have gone unnamed before the 1950s, “rationalism” has been a noted concern since the 1780s.1 The discussion about rationalism and the contested role of the intellectual has been a presence in public discourse ever since the Enlightenment, predominantly in the fields of Psychology, Sociology and Philosophy. Works such as Max Weber’s Wissenschaft als Beruf (1919), Julien Benda’s La Trahison des Clercs (1927) and H. Stuart Hughes’
Consciousness and Society (1958) have looked at the perceived failure of the
intellectual to adequately defend themselves from anti-rationalist attacks. As this would be a thesis-sized topic of enquiry in itself, I will not endeavour to give an overview of this, and will focus on my attentions on the 1950s and ‘60s instead.
Developments in the 1950s were Hofstadter’s motivation in writing the book, as he saw anti-intellectualism as key to Adlai Stevenson’s defeat in the 1952 Presidential election, central to reactions to the Cold War, and at the heart of McCarthyism, where “the critical mind was at a ruinous discount in this country.”2 Hofstadter argued anti-intellectualism comes and goes in waves in American society, but the anti-intellectualism of the 1950s and ‘60s is notable as it coincides with unprecedented numbers of people enrolled in higher education.
Since the publication of Hofstadter’s book, many more important works examining the contested role of the public intellectual have been written, books that endeavour to get to the root of this default mode of discourse in the American public debate. One avenue of research that I feel has not been sufficiently pursued is the correlation between the anti-intellectualism of the 1950s and ‘60s and the popularity of the academic novel in those decades. As higher education expanded, so did the genre of novels chronicling the ivory towers of academia. Although much has been written on anti-intellectualism and academic novels as two separate fields, one in historiographical scholarship and one in literary studies, the two have not been examined 1 “Rationalism, n.” OED online.
together. Can the academic novel illuminate common anti-intellectual criticisms of academia? While using fictional works as primary sources has its drawbacks, as one can never be certain of the author’s intent and a best-selling novel could just be a result of clever marketing if nothing else, many works dealing with the academic novel have not looked at historiographical scholarship to give the literary works extra meaning.
The academic novel, with its rich history on both sides of the Atlantic, is famous for its satiric characterisations. Considering the worries of Richard Hofstadter and his colleague Christopher Lasch over the American devaluation of intellect and academia by extension, unfavourable depictions in several noted American academic novels feel more biting, perhaps indicative of anti-intellectualist sentiments rife in American society. In my thesis, I will endeavour to unpick the traces of anti-intellectualism in four novels. It is not my intention to make broad claims about the authors or readers of these novels, but to situate the novels in the time they were written, and to unravel the complicated image of the academic in fiction. The 1950s were a dynamic decade in academic life, as higher education became more accessible, but also contested, as I will show in my thesis. From a 21st century viewpoint, with tuition fees at an all-time high and Humanities departments under attack the world over, academia in the 1950s, despite its limitations, seems almost utopian, especially considering the value placed on academic freedom in the American public debate.
In discussing anti-intellectualism in the American academic novel, I have chosen four novels to focus my attentions on: Mary McCarthy’s The Groves of
Academe (1951), Randall Jarrell’s Pictures from an Institution (1954), Vladimir
Nabokov’s Pnin (1957) and John Williams’ Stoner (1965). Not only is Mary McCarthy’s novel a noted early example of the mid-century academic novel, it was published at the beginning of the 1950s, the decade Richard Hofstadter saw consumed by anti-intellectualism. Stoner, the most recent work I will use, was published in 1965, the same year as Christopher Lasch’s The New
Radicalism in America, President Lyndon B. Johnson’s Higher Education Act of
1965, and just before the student protests of the mid-to-late 1960s left its imprint on American University life. While there are many other novels I could have considered, these four novels, through their succinct appraisal of
mid-century American academia, possess a greater appeal and have been better remembered than more specialist, obscure academic novels, which I feel is important for the topics I wish to explore in my thesis.
Structure
In my first chapter, I will use Richard Hofstadter’s Anti-intellectualism in
American Life and Christopher Lasch’s The New Radicalism in America to
illustrate mid-century fears over the dangers of anti-intellectualism. In order to establish central themes in anti-intellectualism, I will look at what Hofstadter and Lasch perceived as key issues in the distrust academics were met with.
The second chapter will centre on the campus novel as a genre, and the rise of popularity the academic novel enjoyed in the middle of the 20th century. What are its defining characteristics, and what does the role of satire in the genre tell us?
The next three chapters will examine different themes to examine how anti-intellectualism features in the academic novel. First, I will consider the notion of the “ivory towers” and its implied alienation and isolation. The oft-used term hints at a removal from society, an untouchable, perfectionist coldness that no man can live up to, but in the 1950s, the ivory towers were opened up as a result of the 1944 Servicemen’s Readjustment Act. With the expansion of higher education came an increase of academic bureaucracy, and the academic became part of the managerial middle class and, as a result, came increasingly under attack. This chapter will look at how the role of the academic changed in the post-war years and how this is reflected in my chosen academic novels.
The fourth chapter will concern the body of the academic in fiction. Hofstadter argued that the intellectual is depicted as “effeminate” by their detractors, something I will elaborate on in the last chapter.3 In this chapter, I will ask, if the academic is considered unmanly, how does the academic novel depict dichotomies such as brain versus brawn and mind versus body - and does the tug-of-war between the army and the university become an allegory for this? Youth is the focus of many academic novels, not only because of the responsibility university faculty have for their young students. Although this 3 Hofstadter, 19.
raises the question of whether or not the faculty is failing the youths they are entrusted with, professors are also confronted with the loss of their own youth through their interactions with a younger generation, and the notion of corrupting youth, be it politically, morally or sexually, is ever present in the genre.
Lastly, drawing on the idea of the moral and sexual corruption of students, I will explore depictions of academia as a game of seduction. The academic is either depicted as sexless or as sexually depraved, with little middle ground. The lecherous professor, in the throes of a mid-life crisis, seducing the youthful student is an almost cliché staple of academic fiction, but what do these relationships signify? Are they only ever an indication of sexual depravity, or are these relationships commentary on the flirtatious nature of teaching? In my last chapter I will use examples from my chosen novels to illustrate the romance of academia and its Pied Piper effect.
As the genre of the academic novel is so rife with satire, dealing with stories of sadness and discontent among academic staff, how much of this correlates with trends in anti-intellectualism traced by historians? During the 1950s, American Universities enjoyed unprecedented growth, and as a result, this decade is regarded today with nostalgia, as the Humanities and academic freedom are threatened. But was the state of academia in 1950s and ‘60s America really so utopian? In my thesis, I want to examine the role of the academic in the mid-century academic novel, in order to paint a more nuanced picture.
Chapter 1:
Hofstadter, Lasch and Beyond
In influential studies published in the 1960s, both Richard Hofstadter and Christopher Lasch worried over the criticism aimed at the intellectual, but they saw different causes for this opposition. How do they regard the anti-intellectualism that they both deemed rife in post-war America?
Anti-Intellectualism as a Cyclical Force
During the 1950s, Richard Hofstadter argues, anti-intellectualism became a key term in the national vocabulary. As the Soviet Union rushed ahead with the development of the Sputnik, advancing in the Race for Space at a speed the United States could not match, it was a shock to the national sense of pride. Americans were forced to take stock of the American education system, wondering why there were not enough highly-educated specialists to further America’s position of power in the world as the Cold War gained momentum. But, instead of investing money in order to further educational standards, or encouraging a change in the national mind-set in terms of how the American intellectual was perceived, this defeat of sorts led to schoolchildren being viewed as a resource, and producing Sputniks was more important than “developing more intellect.”4
Although the 1950s seemed characterised by anti-intellectualism, Hofstadter claims that anti-intellectualism is a cyclical force in discourse, rearing its ugly head in uncertain times especially. America in the 1950s was especially vulnerable as the country, along with the rest of the world, was still reeling in the aftermath of the Second World War. Hofstadter emphasises that his book is not a formal history of American anti-intellectualism, instead offering his study as encouragement for other scholars to explore the topic further. He diagnoses the problem, but does not offer a particular explanation of where anti-intellectualism stems from. Hofstadter finds Americans especially susceptible to anti-intellectualism, as he notes the American people are “if not 4 Hofstadter, 5. Hereafter cited parenthetically.
the most self-critical, at least the most anxiously self-conscious people in the world, forever concerned about the inadequacy of something or other” (vii). This concern, ingrained in the national identity, gives the intellectual a special function in society, one that Hofstadter feels should be cherished, but anti-intellectualism has made the American intellectual a contested figure.
In his first chapter, “Anti-Intellectualism in Our Time,” Hofstadter gives exhibits A through L to illustrate the many preconceptions that are at the root of different forms on anti-intellectualism: intellectuals are seen as “pretentious, conceited, effeminate, and snobbish; and very likely immoral, dangerous and subversive” (19). The chapters in the book focus on how anti-intellectualism is ingrained in four areas of American life: religion, politics, business and education. In all fields, there is a constant tension in society between egalitarianism and the pursuit of knowledge, and anti-intellectualism gains the upper hand whenever the balance is upset. It becomes very clear from Hofstadter’s work that America’s relationship with education and intellectualism is a very complicated one, with many different roots to take into consideration. Indeed, Hofstadter is highly critical of the anti-intellectualism that plays a prominent role in education, criticising educational reformers who had the power to bring about positive change, but instead focused on short-term effects.
Of course, seeing as the term “anti-intellectualism” only became widely used in the 1950s, going undiagnosed before that according to Hofstadter, detractors of his book could accuse Hofstadter of making something out of nothing, of overstating the importance of this -ism. It is difficult to gauge how much of a problem anti-intellectualism was in the 1950s. While news articles from that decade do mention anti-intellectualism as a concern, perhaps it was just a panic created by the media, and so it is unclear whether or not Hofstadter is exaggerating the influence of this buzzword in the 1950s, as Hofstadter fails to engage with celebrations of intellectualism in the 1950s such as the rise of printed media, the enduring popularity of psychology in mainstream culture (chronicled by Adam Curtis in his 2002 BBC documentary series The Century of Self), and the onslaught of social scientists on the New York Times bestsellers list, such as David Riesman, C. Wright Mills and the Kinsey Reports. While Hofstadter ignores some obvious counter examples, on a
whole, his arguments still convince the reader of the need to take anti-intellectualism seriously, and Hofstadter’s explorations into the four different areas of American life show how deeply-rooted this sentiment is.
The Intellectual as a Self-Proclaimed Beleaguered Minority
Influenced by Hofstadter, and thanking him in the preface, Christopher Lasch takes a different approach in his 1965 book The New Radicalism in America
1889-1963: The Intellectual as a Social Type, as he endeavours to get to the
historical root of anti-intellectualism. Where Hofstadter exposed how ingrained it was in society, Lasch aims to understand the derision of the life of the mind “in a world in which irrational has come to appear not the exception but the rule.”5
In his introduction, Lasch opens by stating the argument of his book: “modern radicalism or liberalism can best be understood as a phase of the social history of the intellectuals. [..] The rise of the new radicalism coincided with the emergence of the intellectual as a distinctive social type” (ix). Lasch defines the intellectual as a person “for whom thinking fulfills at once the function of work and play.” Intellectuals function as critics of society, which makes their role an uncomfortable and vulnerable one, but Lasch argues that anti-intellectualism, as Hofstadter described it, can only explain part of this tension (ix). A lot of this strain comes from within the intellectual community itself, and perhaps Lasch would amend Hofstadter’s claim that American
intellectuals are the most self-conscious people in the world. Lasch notes the
tendency of the intellectual to attack themselves as group (x), which begs the question of whether, through their own insecurity, be it a result of self-doubt, self-hatred or self-pity, the intellectuals themselves opened the door for anti-intellectualism.
Consisting of many sharply-written characterisations of figures ranging from Jane Addams to Norman Mailer, the biographies explore different ways in which these intellectuals were radical, how they viewed intellectualism in their time and what role it played in their lives. In many cases, this can only be gleaned by reading very much between the lines, as Lasch instead focuses on people’s interactions with liberalism and radicalism, leaving out a direct link to 5 Lasch, xvii. Hereafter cited parenthetically.
intellectualism. Because of their biographical nature, however, the chapters seem anecdotal at times, and it is difficult to gauge how these personal developments correlated with the world around them.
American intellectuals in the mid-20th century appeared very much preoccupied with their own role and image which was reflected by “the popular stereotype of the intellectual” (312). Lasch argues that a lot of the tension between society and the intellectual comes from intellectuals’ own insecurity within their community. Considering WWII and the Korean War were still fresh in the nation’s mind, and America got involved deeper and deeper in Vietnam, any anti-intellectualism could be a criticism of the perceived idleness of the academic in their ivory towers. Was anti-intellectualism a reiteration of the age-old struggle between brains versus brawn, with academics feeling guilty over their lack of participation or lack of influence over events in the world?
Lasch gives America’s lack of class consciousness as a reason for the divide between the intellectual and society, with Lasch quoting Alexis de Tocqueville as saying that the whole of American society has melded into one big middle class (xi). Lasch defines the middle class as a synonym for the bourgeoisie, a class of people who derive their income from owning property, trade and commerce. This, it goes without saying, makes for a very large middle class, and Lasch could have made a stronger case about the nature of anti-intellectualism by being more specific about why the intellectual could not exist within this middle class, when so many other groups of people could. Is the intellectual ousted from the middle class, or does the intellectual oust themselves? In Lasch’s argument, a key factor influencing the way they are perceived, is how the American intellectual appears intent on portraying itself as an outcast from the middle class. This alienation from the dominant values of American society leads to a “distrust not only of middle-class culture but of intellect itself” (xv).
Most interesting of the chapters is the last, “The Anti-Intellectualism of the Intellectuals.” From Lasch’s introduction alone, the reader gets a sense that the American intellectual suffers from an institutionalised, internalised self-pity, self-doubt, or even self-hatred. As Lasch explains it, the intellectual’s discontent with the middle class appears to stem from the intellectual’s side, and does not come from that of the middle class. The popular image of the intellectual was
that of “an Ivy League aristocrat,” and Lasch opts that the intellectual elite did not take into consideration “the essential accuracy of the popular image of themselves; they merely objected to the ugliness and unseemliness of organized envy” (313-4).
Anti-intellectualism is perhaps most noticeable within the intellectual community itself, the most noted mid-century America example being the disintegration of the American Popular Front, a period in the mid-to-late 1930s which saw a strong Communist influence in popular media (287). Lasch notes several times that the intellectual’s insecurities stem from the community itself, perceiving McCarthyism and other instances of anti-intellectualism as a mob mentality threatening the intellectual elite. Lasch explains anti-intellectualism as a confusion on the part of the intellectual, as they saw the “unexpectedly high degree of social status” as evidence that “intellectual
values were held in high esteem” (314). Thus, the intellectual confused the
importance placed on intellect with “the interests of the intellectuals as a class,” and any critical enquiry about the prestige enjoyed by intellectuals was deemed anti-intellectual (314). Did the notion of prestige associated with their work lead the academic to develop a superiority complex?
Somewhat frustratingly, the chapter entitled “The Anti-Intellectualism of the Intellectuals” deals mostly with trends within radicalism and liberalism, obfuscating the discussion of the role of the intellectual within anti-intellectualism. From earlier chapters and Lasch’s comments in the introduction, the intellectual seems to suffer from a martyr syndrome, permanently reminded of Socrates’ trial, always feeling like the underdog, or perhaps suffering from the noted imposter syndrome. Lasch implies that the intellectual had started to believe too much in the prestige they enjoyed, and that this skewed their reality, leaving them overly sensitive to any criticism, no matter how justified, of their field.
Hofstadter, Lasch and Beyond
Intriguingly, where Hofstadter paints the 1950s as a time rife with anti-intellectualism, Lasch instead gives examples where the intellectual seems more valued (or at least less contested) in the 1950s than before, focusing on the merits of print media in a way Hofstadter failed to do, and Lasch makes
note of Marilyn Monroe’s marriage to Arthur Miller, which showed to the greater middle class that intellectuals could marry even the most beautiful of Hollywood stars. If anything, Christopher Lasch’s book emphasises just how ambiguous the waves of anti-intellectualism are, as Lasch finds positives in a period that Hofstadter finds threatening and bleak, but perhaps this relative positivity found by Lasch is a result of the fact that his study covers almost 75 years of American history, where Hofstadter mainly draws conclusions about the 1950s and ‘60s.
Susan Jacoby, writing The Age of American Unreason in 2008, has the benefit of hindsight when looking back on anti-intellectualism and its influence on 20th century American life. Very much influenced by Richard Hofstadter, Jacoby is almost nostalgic for the optimism with which Hofstadter concluded
Anti-Intellectualism in American Life, as Jacoby freely admits that, as a cultural
conservationist, the anti-intellectualism she finds rife at the beginning of the 21st century worries her deeply.6 Jacoby argues that anti-rationalism is now synonymous with anti-intellectualism, and vice versa, and in her book she charts how matters could have gotten so out of hand. Jacoby blames the evolution of mass media, which is a popular modern concern, as texting makes way for writing and a large percentage of the modern American does not read a single book over the course of one year. Religious fundamentalism is another scapegoat in Jacoby’s opinion, as the lack of a national education standard allows for schools to determine their own curriculum, with Jacoby concluding that, “Americans are alone in the developed world in their view of evolution by means of natural selection as ‘controversial’ rather than as settled mainstream science.”7
When covering the same ground as her predecessor Hofstadter, Jacoby describes the same problems as he does, but she views the 1950s and ‘60s with a sense of nostalgia, as the post-war popularity enjoyed by book clubs is evidence that people were more invested in literature than they were celebrity culture. While she does not discredit Hofstadter’s claims about the anti-intellectualism that was rife in the 1950s, quoting Eisenhower at a 1954 Republican fundraiser where he claimed that an intellectual is “a man who 6 Jacoby, xii.
takes more words than are necessary to tell more than he knows,”8 Jacoby sees the student protests of the mid-to-late-1960s at the root of a change in American academic life. Jacoby writes it could be argued that the denouncement of “Dead White Guys” in favour of popular culture scholarship caused a free-fall in university standards.9 In this, Jacoby seems to agree with Christopher Lasch that, in some sense, the intellectual is to blame for anti-intellectualism as they themselves sold out academia, not having sufficiently safeguarded the academic standard. Considering Women’s studies and African American studies were two fields that were severely underdeveloped before the 1960s, these laments about the popularisation of academia could be subliminally racist or anti-feminist.
In Inventing the Egghead: The Battle Over Brainpower in American
Culture, Aaron Lecklider examines the importance of intellect as a tool of power
and control, and the way in which anti-intellectualism tried to subvert this authority. Brainpower was a way of expressing and staking claim on intelligence, and it was often through works of popular culture that this was attempted.10 Although Lecklider focuses on representations of intelligence in popular culture and political debate, and how they shaped culture and politics in 20th century America, Lecklider does not focus on the academic novel as an avenue of investigation.
Central Themes in Anti-Intellectualism
As the works by Hofstadter and Lasch have shown, there are several recurrent criticisms aimed at the intellectual community. Hofstadter described that the intellectual was “seen as pretentious, conceited, effeminate, and snobbish; and very likely immoral, dangerous and subversive.”11 Lasch summarises that, in the eyes of a critic, every attribute that stereotyped the intellectual in popular opinion was turned on its head, and “the intellectual’s cosmopolitanism became un-American, his sophistication snobbery, his accent affectation, his clothes and his manner the badge, obscurely, of sexual deviation.”12 8 Jacoby, xii.
9 Jacoby, 144. 10 Lecklider, 5. 11 Hofstadter, 19. 12 Lasch, 314.
Considering Lasch’s arguments in The New Radicalism in America, however, how much did the intellectual influence anti-intellectualism, and could it be said that it is a form of self-hatred? Perhaps anti-intellectualism grew as an elitist reaction to the growing middle classes, or the expansion of higher education following the G.I. Bill.
In 1961, Michael Belok worried over how negative portrayals of the professor in popular culture influenced social attitudes.13 In an article co-written with Fred Dowling the same year, Belok even links unfavourable fictional depictions to a nationwide teacher shortage.14 Concerned with the damage inflicted on the profession, Belok proposes “action should be taken to combat stereotyped notions and attitudes about the professor. The public relations departments of college and universities should be cognizant of these stereotypes and attitudes.”15 He even places responsibility upon the individual professor to combat negative influences, although Belok’s proposed mode of self-defence is an interesting one:
They should make every effort to develop a critical ability in college students so that the students may properly evaluate stereotypes and specious social attitudes. There is a great need for critical examination not only of novels, but of all the mass media of communications.16
The professor needs to educate students so that they can recognise anti-intellectual depictions in mass media, as Belok appears to condemn the reader for not being sophisticated enough to realise many academic novels are satiric. In the next chapter, I will look at the genre of the campus novel, in order to consider the anti-intellectualist traces present in the genre.
13 Belok, 404-8.
14 Belok and Dowling, 255-6. 15 Belok, 407.
Chapter 2:
The Campus Novel as a Genre
The cinematic qualities of the dappled quads of Oxford and Cambridge in 1980s screen adaptations of Evelyn Waugh’s Brideshead Revisited and E.M. Forster’s Maurice and the enduring popularity of novels such as C.P. Snow’s
The Masters and Kingsley Amis’ Lucky Jim have perhaps skewed perception of
the campus novel being an intrinsically British genre, but the genre is just as popular among American authors, and the history of the American campus novel is as rich as its British counterpart. While the title ‘First American Campus Novel’ is a uselessly arbitrary one, it is impossible to consider the genre without deciding on some sort of starting point, however meaningless, as it helps set the parameters for the genre. For example, Nathaniel Hawthorne’s 1828 novel Fanshawe is commonly cited as an early example of a campus novel as it includes characters in the academic world in the form of Dr. Melmoth, President of a fictional college, and the titular Fanshawe, an intellectual. However, its claim to the title, or even inclusion in the genre, can be disputed as the novel’s plot is not about the academic life on campus – the most basic prerequisite of the campus novel. More likely contenders for first American Campus novels are Charles M. Flandreau’s 1897 Harvard Episodes and Reginald W. Kauffman’s Jarvis of Harvard (1901).17 At the very least, these novels are indicators the campus novel genre has been around for a considerable amount of time in the United States, with early examples generally set at institutions like Harvard and Yale, similar to the early British campus novels set at Oxford and Cambridge.18 Early examples, however, were 17 Foster, 464.
largely uncritical of academia, more concerned with using the college “as a setting for carefree and mildly exciting adventures.”19
While it may be difficult to pinpoint the conception of the genre, the campus novel enjoyed a huge rise in popularity in the years after the Second World War, coinciding with the rising numbers of people attending institutions of higher education following the introduction of the G.I. Bill. What are the defining features of a campus novel, and what role does satire play in the genre? What is the function of genre, and what function does the campus novel serve? And finally, how could the academic novel of the 1950s and ‘60s be considered anti-intellectual?
Characteristics of the Campus Novel
The ingredients required for a campus novel are relatively simple: the novel’s main action needs to take place at a college or university, and its protagonist should be part of academia. It is tempting to say that in the campus, the setting is the genre, but Irving Yevish argues there is a distinction between a campus novel and a novel with an academic setting. The campus novel, according to Yevish, should concern itself with the intricacies of University life instead of just using academia as a backdrop to the novel’s drama, such as Theodore Morrison’s The Stones of the House (1953), Everett Marston’s Take
the High Ground (1954) and Bernard Malamud’s A New Life (1961).20
Within the overarching genre of the campus novel there are many distinctions to make. There is the varsity novel, which concerns students (examples include F. Scott Fitzgerald’s This Side of Paradise (1920), Philip Larkin’s Jill (1946)); the as-yet-unnamed sub-genre focusing on administrative staff (with Malcolm Bradbury’s Eating People is Wrong (1960) a famed example); and the academic novel, with features university or college faculty as its subject.21 Some of the latter may be “doubly academic novels,” which incorporate the field of study of its protagonists.22 When considering the presence of anti-intellectualism in the genre of campus novels, the academic 19 Carpenter, 444.
20 Yevish, 47.
21 Moseley, “Types of Academic Fiction,” 100-8. 22 Moseley, “Types of Academic Fiction,” 112.
novel is most worth examining, as these are novels about the people who have either dedicated their lives to the pursuit of knowledge (in the most utopian view), or those who, according to their detractors, have chosen to idle away their lives in the ivory towers.
Although the campus novel can take many forms, with mysteries and science fiction popular in the genre, noted literary scholar Elaine Showalter writes in her anthology Faculty Towers: The Academic Novel and Its
Discontents that the academic novel especially is a genre of sadness,
seriousness and discontent, with Showalter opting that, “perhaps we professors turn to satire because the academic life has so much pain, so many lives wasted or destroyed.”23 Indeed, many academic novels are satirical, with Jo Allen Bradham noting that the academic novel is predominantly a genre of satire, diluting Emerson’s notion of Man Thinking, originating from his 1837 essay “American Scholar”, by showing the academic as a fumbling, insecure figure.24 Merritt Moseley concludes that satire “reveals and punishes,”25 and in his chapter further divides satiric novels in four categories: satire on professors themselves; satires on conditions that undermine college education or faculty liberty; satire on the publish-or-perish syndrome; and satire on the political environment (including racial and gender relations).26
Writing for The Guardian in 2004, Aida Edemariam summarises the attractions of the genre: “it is a finite, enclosed space [..]; academic terms, usefully, begin and end; there are clear power relationships [..] and thus lots of scope for illicit affairs; [..] revolutions have been known to begin on campuses [..]. And it’s all set against the life of the mind.”27 Sally Dalton-Brown notes the genre’s preoccupation with the academic’s “struggle for survival,” and the question of whether or not the fight is worth it, when there is so much at stake on a personal level.28 The protagonist is often satirised, with the faculty surrounding them usually made up of caricatures to emphasise the protagonist’s naïve nature. The University is usually depicted as “a place of 23 Showalter, 3.
24 Bradham, 215.
25 Moseley, “Introductory: Definitions and Justifications,” 7. 26 Moseley, “Types of Academic Fiction,” 110-2.
27 Edemariam. 28 Dalton-Brown, 592.
politicking, an environment that requires considerable cunningness if it is to be survived,” and many novels revolve around the choice between “the life of the mind or the life of desires, whether sexual, status-oriented, or commercial lust.”29 Jeanne Marie Rose writes that the academic novel is almost uniformly about “a quest for membership in the academy or a struggle to escape.”30
The academic novel has attracted criticism as it is highly critical of academia, with its preoccupation of highlighting “the limitations placed on the intellect.”31 Irving Yevish notes how the academic novel has been far more critical of academia than the varsity novel.32 Frederic Carpenter voices five points of critique: he perceives a lack of economic and emotional realism, a “confusion of values,” and the failure “to hold fast the one universally accepted value-freedom of speech” and its inability “to recognize and to make allowances for the half-adolescent, half-adult nature of the college student” limit the genre.33
Keeping these criticisms in mind, it is worth noting that many novelists contributing to the genre, including Randall Jarrell, Mary McCarty, Vladimir Nabokov and John Williams, taught at University themselves. Not only were they responsible for unfavourable fictional depictions of academia, they were responsible for “rough, almost cannibalistic handling of writers” within the fictional Universities,34 a remark reminiscent of Lasch’s suggestion of the self-hatred among intellectuals. In Pictures from an Institution, the novelist character Gertrude Johnson, a visiting professor in Creative Writing at Benton, is working on a novel where “the most powerful professor in a department was always just about to expose the head of the department’s love-affair with one of the students, in order to get the head’s rank and salary and power for himself.”35 Was fiction the only way for professors, both in novels and in reality, of exposing the shortcomings of academia?
29 Dalton-Brown, 592. 30 Rose, 58. 31 Dalton-Brown, 592. 32 Yevish, 43. 33 Carpenter, 445. 34 Yevish, 46. 35 Jarrell, 106.
The increase of academic-authors influenced both the academic novel and academia greatly, with “creative writing seminars, writers’ conferences, and artists in residence” a transformative influence,36 one also noted by Jeffrey Williams37, and Mark McGurl in The Program Era: Post-war Fiction and the Rise
of Creative Writing. In his book, McGurl explains the history of the “writer’s
intimacy with the University,”38 and claims that “the rise of the Creative Writing program stands as the most important event in post-war American literary history” (ix). A quote from writer and literary critic Alfred Kazin summarises attitudes before the Second World War:
“When I was in college in the ’thirties, it was still well understood that scholars were one class and writers quite another. They did not belong to the same order of mind, they seemed quite antithetical in purpose and temperament, and at the very least, they needed different places to work in.” (22)
Were critical depictions of academia by academic-authors a response to this divide? Perhaps they had more in common than they wished to admit, as, just as the academic within the ivory towers was subject of critique, the writer attached to Creative Writing programmes was met with suspicion. John W. Aldridge, himself a professor of English and writer of campus novel Party at
Cranton, was wary of these writers as their works were produced in an
environment void of reality, and he feared the originality of the author’s voice was infringed upon by the “assembly-line” nature of the novels (26).
Genre Popularity and Broad Appeal
In the anthology he edited, The Academic Novel: New and Classic Essays, Merritt Moseley states the academic novel “raises a number of important literary, philosophical and even sociological questions.”39 Throughout the 20th century, the genre of the campus novel enjoyed a huge rise in popularity, but is this rise in popularity good or bad for academia? Since many of its depictions are satiric, there is an understandable concern over whether or not the genre contributes to an unfavourable view of academia, but it could just as well be a variation on the age-old “chicken or egg”-question where the genre arose from 36 Yevish, 41.
37 Jeffrey Williams, 578.
38 McGurl, 21.Hereafter cited parenthetically.
an already existing unfavourable view. These questions do not have a single answer, which is perhaps what makes the genre so intriguing.
In introducing the genre, Moseley writes that the tension between satire and the romantic view of academia is a key characteristic, and presenting the university as a microcosm of present-day America or Britain was an oft-used allegory. The academic novel as a genre started as a niche genre, primarily of interest to those involved in the academic world, or at the very least those who enjoyed higher education, but since the 1950s the genre has risen in popularity, with the academic novel overtaking the varsity novel in publication.40 Moseley attributes this popularity to the expectations the academic novel raises within the reader. Like many other smaller genres such as the marriage plot novel, the Hollywood novel or the sex’n’shopping novel of the 1980s,41 the academic novel could be regarded as a formula turned genre. The academic novel, more than the varsity novel, follows the cyclical structure of the school year, sometimes clashing with the linear trajectory of the students coming and going at the protagonists’ institutions. Although the genre has become very broad in the second half of the 20th century, branching off into mysteries, science-fiction and post-modernism, the mid-century academic novel genre is defined by setting, including the aesthetics of the university campus (or ivory towers), with a focus on the academic pursuits of its protagonists and often structured by the repetitive nature of the school year’s beginning and end.
Functions of a Genre
In Hard Facts: Setting and Form in the American Novel, Philip Fisher explains the purpose cultural works can serve: “Culture [..] articulates, in the sense of giving shape to and sorting out, some part of the past as it can be of use to the particular present.”42 In order to prove his main argument, that “the ambition to redesign the common world is the ambition of the best instances of cultural work,”43 Fisher discusses the way three key American novels (James Fenimore 40 Jeffrey Williams, 566-9.
41 Baldick, 307. 42 Fisher, 3. 43 Fisher, 9.
Cooper’s series The Leatherstocking Tales, Harriet Beecher Stowe’s Uncle
Tom’s Cabin and Theodore Dreiser’s Sister Carrie) set out to highlight “hard
facts,” or momentous problems found in society at the time of the novel’s conception.
These novels “created an almost dream-like simplification in which, nonetheless, the most troubled and volatile features of the whole were preserved intact,”44 and through achieving this, created a dialogue about the treatment of America’s indigenous people, slavery and the corruptive dangers that city life posed. Through bringing these problems to light in a stylised manner and creating a dialogue as a result, the “hard facts” at the centre of the novels were dealt with and through “their very success [the novels] made themselves obsolete, and perhaps even a hindrance, once their cultural work was complete,”45 because the very life they depicted no longer existed. This notion of a cultural work becoming a hindrance is very relevant to the academic novel, as popular depictions inform people in how they regard certain professions. If, time and time again, depictions of the academic veer towards the unfavourable, it could very well influence the way academia as a whole is viewed, and could fuel anti-intellectualism.
This social conscience of the novel that Fisher is so interested in is reminiscent of the Victorian social problem novel, although these generally read like political tracts. The genre of the social problem novel, popularised in Britain by Elizabeth Gaskell and Charles Dickens, existed with the purpose of “redesigning the common world.” According to Philip Fisher, this is “the ambition of the best instances of cultural work,” but he does not express an opinion on whether or not all novels must fulfil this purpose, or whether novels that do not meet this criterion are the lesser novel for it, or if the “cultural work” is a category unto its own. Still, if there are “hard facts” to be found in academic novels, it could be said that the genre as a whole revolves around the role of the intellectual and the devaluation of academia in society.
Anti-Intellectualism and the Academic Novel of the 1950s and ‘60s
44 Fisher, 5. 45 Fisher, 7.
There are several explanations for the rise in popularity the campus novel enjoyed in the 1950s and ‘60s. While Mark McGurl argues the influence of Creative Writing University modules on post-war fiction, others look to the increasing number of people entering higher education after the Second World War. Elaine Showalter is tempted to proclaim that the rise in popularity of the academic genre is down to a peculiar brand of narcissism, because people “like to read about their own world,”46 and while this seems plausible, the anti-intellectual tendencies found within the academic novel are more difficult to explain.
In 1964, Leslie Fiedler worried about the spate of what he called “anti-college novels,” novels about the inevitably doomed battle against the academic establishment.47 In his essay “The War on the Academy,” Fiedler does not give specific examples of fictional works, instead looking towards changes in society to form his argument. Likening the revolt against institutions of higher education in the 1960s to similar sentiments in the 1920s, as exemplified by Robert Herrick’s 1926 novel Chimes,48 Fiedler argues the importance of the fact that the writers famed for the academic novels of the 1950s were all born before the Great Depression.49 For people who experienced the instability and insecurity that the Depression brought, academia signified a security, a safe haven. With time to explore and pursue their own creativity and writing, the teacher-writer or academic-author as Fiedler calls them, was able to turn the failure of the academic career into a success, into a best-selling novel.50 This in itself is a curiously anti-intellectual statement to make, as Fiedler cannot seem to fathom academics gaining enjoyment from their positions as teachers.
For the generation coming of age in the 1960s, the Baby Boomers who grew up in relative stability post-WWII, the ivory towers of academia were something to kick against.51 Fiedler sees this as a motivator in anti-intellectual depictions in 46 Showalter, 1. 47 Fiedler, 46. 48 Yevish, 42. 49 Fielder, 60-2. 50 Fiedler, 47, 51. 51 Fiedler, 62.
academic novels, with its emphasis on satire and portraying the academic as a failing figure. Merritt Moseley’s category of “satires on conditions that undermine college education or faculty liberty” is most prevalent in academic novels of the 1950s and ‘60s. Sally Dalton-Brown adds that academic novels generally highlight the limits placed upon intellect and/or intelligence, portraying the academic as a powerless figure in these books.52 Just how the academic, and academia on a whole, was critiqued, I will explore in my next chapter.
Chapter 3:
Isolation and Alienation in the
Ivory Towers
John Williams wrote Stoner in the early 1960s, tracing William Stoner’s life from his days as a student in 1910 up until his death in 1956, aged 65. As the novel looks back on the past, considering the time of writing and the great affection it is written with, Stoner is an obvious commentary on the changes to academia in post-war America. With the love for academia firmly at its centre, Stoner’s pivotal academic awakening to the last couplet of Shakespeare’s Sonnet 73 is telling. “‘This thou perceivest, which makes thy love more strong, / To love that well which thou must leave ere long’”53 may be interpreted as commentary on developments in academia during Stoner’s life. No matter how strong Stoner’s belief in the importance of academia, the ivory towers of Stoner’s institution cannot remain untouched forever.
Over Friday afternoon drinks with his friends and fellow graduate students David Masters and Gordon Finch, William Stoner listens as Masters unveils the “true nature of the University” (28). Masters guesses that Stoner has a utopian view of the University “as a great repository, [..] where men 52 Dalton-Brown, 593.
come of their free will and select that which will complete them” (28-9). Finch, according to Masters, sees “the institution [as] an instrument of good -- to the world at large, of course, and just incidentally to yourself” (29). Masters, most cynical of all, sees academia as “an asylum or [..] a rest home, for the infirm, the aged, the discontent, and the otherwise incompetent.”
Masters does not give his friends much a chance of succeeding in “the real world,” seeing a divide between the world of academia and that outside of it. According to their friend, Finch and Stoner are both “cut out for failure,” with Finch “capable of work, but you’re just lazy enough so that you can’t work as hard as the world would want you to,” but still able to “impress upon the world a sense of your importance. [..]. In the world you would always be on the fringe of success, and you would be destroyed by your failure” (30). Stoner is “the dreamer, the madman in a madder world,” convinced “there’s something here, something to find. Well, in the world you’d learn soon enough. You, too, are cut out for failure; not that you’d fight the world. You’d let it chew you up and spit you out, and you’d lie there wondering what was wrong.” Of himself, Masters says, “I’m too bright for the world, and I won’t keep my mouth shut about it.” It is salient to note that all of Masters’ predictions about Finch and Stoner come true, as Finch becomes Chairman of the English Department, successful in his own way, while Stoner’s idealist view of academia causes him many difficulties over the span of his career. Masters, bold and brash, does not get the chance to see how he was fit into the academic world, as he is killed in action in Europe.
Masters concludes: “It’s for us that the University exists, for the dispossessed of the world; not for the students, not for the selfless pursuit of knowledge, not for any of the reasons that you hear” (31). It is a decidedly negative view of academia, which does not take into account the positives the safety of academia can offer in a world at war, nor the merits of a life of the mind. Masters instead sees University as an institution removed from the realities of life, as it protects people who have no chance of survival in a ruthless “dog-eat-dog” society. Frederic Carpenter notes the tension between “the academic ‘good life’ and ‘the full life’ outside,”54 and Irving Yevish writes that the academic novel constitutes “not so much a search for freedom as a 54 Carpenter, 450.
search for security, the one at the expense of the other, [..] not so much a quest for self as a selfish quest.”55 If the academic life is “good,” and the outside world “full,” this implies life within the ivory towers is limited, especially emotionally. In the next chapter I will elaborate further on the emotional life of the academic, but first let us consider why this emphasis on the limitations of academia is so prevalent in the academic novel.
The Ivory Towers Opened Up
It is notable that the writers behind mid-century academic novels lived through the Great Depression of the 1930s, as Leslie Fiedler has pointed out.56 Perhaps the economic and societal instability they were faced with in that period popularised the view of the ivory towers as a safe haven, and therefore it is interesting to consider what might be behind the attack on academia. Was it merely disillusionment, as the term “ivory tower” implies a cold perfectionism that no man can live up to, or was it an elitist reaction to the changes in the nature of University as the G.I. Bill of 1944 brought an influx of new students?
Jeffrey Williams notes the lasting popularity of depicting the University as a “separate sphere—like a sanatorium or asylum [..] with its own protocols, peculiar customs, and insular politics.”57 Just as the Victorian notion of the separate sphere is one associated with the feminine, the fictional academic is often depicted as an effeminate figure, something I will return to in my last chapter. The intention on depicting academia as existing outside of “the real world,” Susan Jacoby notes, could be explained as its detractors deeming it “at odds with traditional American values.”58
Many mid-century academic novels, set in small, avant-garde Universities, concerned themselves with how, “rather than an asylum, the university was assumed to be a main battlefield of American culture, and the academic novel became a kind of roman a clef of current cultural politics. [With a focus] on struggles over gender, race, and sex.”59 The Serviceman’s 55 Yevish, 50.
56 Fiedler, 60-2.
57 Jeffrey Williams, 563. 58 Jacoby, xviii.
Readjustment Act of 1944, or the G.I. Bill of Rights, single-handedly brought about a great changes in academia, as it paid for veterans to attend school and provided a monthly allowance.60 The increase in academic novels in the middle of the 20th century was a direct response the expansion of post-WWII higher education,61 and many novels comment directly on the influence of the G.I. Bill, such as John Williams’ Stoner, which views the changes to University life with optimism: “Veterans of that war descended upon the campus and transformed it, bringing to it a quality of life it had not had before, an intensity and turbulence that amounted to a transformation.”62 Stoner, now feeling slightly more secure in his position in academia than he did as a graduate student, sees the years after the Second World War as the best and happiest years of his life, as the students, “strange in their maturity, were intensely serious and contemptuous of triviality.”63 Just as the authors of the novels came of age knowing the hardships of the Great Depression, the outlook of these G.I. Bill students was transformed by the realities of the Second World War. Their maturity translates, in the eyes of Stoner, into a studiousness he himself experienced as a young student.
The criticism of the influence of the G.I. Bill seems not so much an unwillingness towards the students it brought to the University, but the bureaucracy that came with the expansion of the institution. This is especially noticeable considering the number of novels set in small institutions less affected by the Readjustment Act, such as the women’s college of Pictures
from an Institution. These novels forego any pretence of responding to the
merits of the 1944 Bill for students and instead looks at the way it changed academic life for the professor. Mid-century academic novels focused primarily on the problems gaining tenure, as according to Sally Dalton-Brown, the bureaucratic pressures of academia weighed heavy on University staff, leading to “disempowerment, for those academics on which the campus novel focuses, those still ‘unplaced,’ or untenured, is still valued more than the ‘death’ of exile from the university.”64
60 “Servicemen's Readjustment Act (G.I. Bill): Title II, Chapter IV Education of Veterans.” 61 Jeffrey Williams, 563.
62 John Williams, 257. 63 John Williams, 258. 64 Dalton-Brown, 594.
The Necessity of the University as a Vacuum
As the ivory towers opened up, the pros and cons of the isolation of days gone by became a focus, as some scholars worried about academic freedom becoming subordinate to bureaucracy. Frederic Carpenter, writing in 1960, notes how the University exists in a kind of vacuum, “lacking in vital materials [and] pumped dry of the sensuous and emotionally effective ingredients of natural existence.”65 Although the view of University as a microcosm of society is a popular one, Carpenter disagrees: “The American college is not a microcosm of the larger world, but is rather a specialized and somewhat expurgated version of it.”66 He goes on to give several examples of how the ivory towers exist outside of real life. Unlike “real life,” academia is a world free of economic pressure. Students in the years directly following the Second World War “seldom [had] to work [their] way through college,”67 enabling them to dedicate themselves entirely to their educational pursuits. There is a potential drawback in how this deprives the student of practical lessons concerning economic self-reliance. On the part of University faculty, it is difficult to support a family on a professor’s wages, leaving many fictional academics “[envying] the wealth of the business world.”68 Where Stoner is pressured by his wife to take a house they cannot realistically afford, Nabokov’s Timofey Pnin is an exception. The émigré academic, without a family to support, is asked by his ex-wife, a fellow expatriate, to act as a kindly Uncle to her son, as Pnin is the only person she has close to an extended family in America. In novels such as
Pictures from an Institution, the end of the year signifies the departure of
several academic in search for a better paying job and greener pastures, or in the case of Gertrude Johnson, the urban environment of New York City.
Many academic novels are set in smaller, progressive Universities which appear unhinged from reality. Randall Jarrell’s fictional women’s college Benton, for example, is described as having a campus half-designed by Bottom the Weaver, the hapless tradesman from Shakespeare’s A Midsummer Night’s 65 Carpenter, 444.
66 Carpenter, 455. 67 Carpenter, 445. 68 Carpenter, 446.
Dream whose head is transformed into that of a donkey, the other half
designed by Ludwig Mies van der Rohe, the modernist architect.69 Half-dreamlike, half-industrial steel and plate glass, Benton’s campus seems to be suffering from an identity crisis, an identity crisis represented in many of the University’s faculty. Gertrude Johnson longs for the cold realities of New York City, while resident composer Dr. Gottfried Rosenbaum has been displaced by the Second World War and cannot shake the memories of his old homeland, nor can he shake his thick Austrian accent. Comedy and tragedy battle it out as the novel’s predominant style, as Gertrude is exposed as a venomous, self-obsessed snob, while Rosenbaum is left to assemble the pieces of his life, broken by the Nazi regime.
The novel, although written in 1954, does not comment on the influence of the G.I. Bill, which almost seems like a conscious decision so the novel can instead focus its attentions on the pros and cons of the vacuum of academia. In the case of Pictures from an Institution, the University without strong ties to reality leads to staff developing delusions of grandeur, as the University’s faculty “felt that if Benton were gone it would no longer be possible to become educated.”70 The narrator even writes, “Benton was not only a delusion, it was a gratefully primitive one: at Benton the members of the faculty had an importance, a dignity and significance that we have lost.”71 Existing in a separate sphere, without the outside world looking in, the academic is free to pursue research and to enjoy their academic freedom.
Academic Freedom
In academia, academic freedom, and freedom of speech in particular, “has almost universally been accepted as the highest value of university life: it is what makes possible the disinterested search for truth.”72 Encyclopædia
Britannica defines academic freedom as, “the freedom of teachers and
students to teach, study, and pursue knowledge and research without unreasonable interference or restriction from law, institutional regulations, or 69 Jarrell, 3.
70 Jarrell, 83. 71 Jarrell, 87. 72 Carpenter, 451.
public pressure.”73 Frederic Carpenter argues that this academic freedom can only exist inside the isolated walls of the ivory towers of University: “it involves the very negation of the economic and emotional values of the market place, the lack of which most writers of academic fiction have criticized.”74 Academic freedom is necessary for the advancement of knowledge, which benefits society, but if it can only exist in a controlled environment, this withdrawal from the masses can also be seen as elitist. But while academic freedom may flourish under these vacuum-like circumstances, it is this removal from society that causes so much distrust, as it was regarded as a symbol of self-proclaimed superiority. The removal serves as a Catch 22 that leaves the academic so vulnerable to criticism, with Michael Belok and Fred Dowling noting, “teaching is in the strange position of being a highly honored occupation and yet one constantly ridiculed.”75
In essence, academics “have a structural position as caretaker or facilitator,” and “because of their comparatively low salaries, they have a reputation for less self-interest than doctors and lawyers,” which makes them a trusted figure.76 The Humanities professors that dominate the academic novel “represent an altruistic interest in knowledge, culture, and liberal learning rather than their own gain.”77 Yet the withdrawal from “regular” society can be seen as elitist, especially in the times before the G.I. Bill when individuals’ economic circumstances perhaps prevented them the opportunity of enjoying higher education. The withdrawal into the ivory towers becomes an arrogant retraction from the masses.
The pursuit of academic freedom is what sets the academic apart as a profession. With the “freedom to pursue their intellectual interests,” University staff becomes the envy of people with a desk job, Jeffrey Williams opines.78 However, this dream-like view is a hindrance to academics as well, as the realities of University are usually less utopian, more interested in commercial
73 “Academic freedom.” 74 Carpenter, 451.
75 Belok and Dowling, 255. 76 Jeffrey Williams, 582. 77 Jeffrey Williams, 582. 78 Jeffrey Williams, 582.
success than breakthroughs in research.79 Especially in later years, many academic novels concern themselves with the pressures placed on professors to publish, although this also features in Stoner. In Pnin, the novel’s narrator describes the jealousy amid colleagues over successes in publishing, writing that with every new academic year, “sterile instructors successfully endeavoured to ‘produce’ by reviewing the books of more fertile colleagues,”80 It is worth mentioning again, as I did in my previous chapter, that the academic novel itself is, in many cases, a product of academic-authors.
Christopher Lasch notes that, by the 1960s, intellectual profession ranked highly in sociologist’s studies on social prestige,81 and Jeffrey Williams finds that prestige illustrated by the “quasi nobility” implied by the many titles that can be achieved in the field.82 But this prestige is constantly threatened, not only from the outside, but from the inside of the ivory towers as well, as the growth of the “post-welfare state” University brought with it a new bureaucracy that turned the academic into a manager. Frederic Carpenter summarises the common critique directed at the academic thusly:
The academic world is supposed to value pure intellect, disinterested scholarship and a search for truth untroubled by pressures from the outside. But the very word “academic” has become a term of reproach, and almost all imaginative writers have criticized the colleges for their negation of the pragmatic realities of business and of the emotional life.83
According to Williams, this new managerial branch in academia explains “why the culture wars had such purchase on higher education,” as the culture wars of the Cold War symbolised the struggle of contemporary bureaucracy, and were “about politics within institutions rather than in the public sphere. Moreover, casualization, downsizing, and underemployment literalize the ‘fear of falling,’ making anxiety a constitutive part of contemporary professorial life.”84 The expansion of higher education changed the nature of academia, but also made the academic a more recognisable figure. Through their improved profile, the academic became more visible and as a result came under attack. 79 Jeffrey Williams, 582. 80 Nabokov, 154. 81 Lasch, 314. 82 Jeffrey Williams, 581. 83 Carpenter, 449. 84 Jeffrey Williams, 581.
But why were they such an easy target? As Theodore Morrison wrote in his 1953 novel The Stones of the House, “true that academic people were funny and awkward; but how much worse than any other professional group, say a convention of doctors or clergymen or executives?”85
The Middle Class and its Fear of Falling
Echoing Christopher Lasch’s worries, Jeffrey Williams explains the difficulties academics faced in the middle of the 20th century as a result of the fact that they became part of an emerging middle class. Scholars became part of “the professional managerial class”, a phrase coined by Barbara and John Ehrenreich in their 1989 study Fear of Falling: The Inner Life of the Middle
Class. Gaining access to the middle class through “advanced education and
professional credentials rather than from inherited wealth or ownership of property,” academics had to “[mediate] between the traditional poles of the working class and the ruling class, with more status than the working class but subordinate to the ruling class, yet that still has some autonomy, managing the production and dissemination of culture.”86 Attracting envy from the working classes and condescension from the upper or ruling class, the middle class academic is stuck, forever trying to adjust to other people’s expectations. This vulnerability of the academic as a sitting duck, an easy target for attack and critique, led to the academic novel more often than not taking the form of “anxiety narratives.”87
As higher education expanded, more people came into contact with academia, and the academic became a more familiar figure. Just as Lasch described the intellectual as a (perhaps self-named) “beleaguered minority,”88 Jeffrey Williams writes that the mystique around the academic disappeared and that they became “like other beleaguered white-collar workers and denizens of the middle class.”89 As a result, the academic novel “grafted with the mid-life crisis novel, the marriage novel, and the professional-work novel to become a 85 Yevish, 47.
86 Jeffrey Williams, 579. 87 Jeffrey Williams, 581. 88 Lasch, x.
