Interpreting Academic Identities: Reality and Fiction on Campus

Ravelstein, by Saul Bellow. New York: Viking, 2000. $24.95 ($13.00)

The Human Stain, by Philip Roth. New York: Houghton Mifflin, 2000. $25.00 ($11.20)

Blue Angel, by Francine Prose. New York: Harper Collins. $18.20 ($11.20)

Benjamin De Mott once wrote, "No novel of academe has ever produced a believable prof" (1962, p. 245). Times have changed. Within the last few years some of our most celebrated authors have written academic novels and concocted entirely believable professors. We may not like what we see, but Saul Bellow's Ravelstein, Philip Roth's Coleman Silk, and Francine Prose's Ted Swenson, along with an oddball assortment of their colleagues, are painfully believable professors of the late twentieth century.

In his highly regarded, The College Novel in America, John Lyons defines the academic novel as "one in which higher education is treated with seriousness and the main characters are students or professors" (1962, p. xvii). Although such a workmanlike definition is useful for setting the parameters of the academic novel, one aspect that the definition does not take into account is the positionality of the reader. Unlike articles in refereed journals that are designed for one's scholarly peers, academic novels have a broad reach--they are meant for the general public. The academic novel may paint a portrait for an uninformed public about what takes place on campus, but most readers who are academics will likely take different interpretations from an academic novel. Academic novels are helpful for academics not merely for the pleasure one may derive in reading fiction, but also for what the text tells us about ourselves; a good novel can be a mirror to our lives. In what follows I am particularly interested in how three prominent novelists have constructed academic identities. Bellow's, Roth's, and Prose's books are the most well read academic novels written over the last decade, and they deserve a careful reading. They take up the perplexing question: what does it mean to be an academic?

In Ravelstein (2000), Saul Bellow concocts essentially a two-character play. Abe Ravelstein is a brilliant philosophy professor at a prestigious Midwestern university, and the narrator, Chick, is Ravelstein's friend and colleague. Ravelstein is a closeted gay man dying of AIDS and he asks Chick to write his memoir. As with other novels by Bellow, Ravelstein is short on plot and long on character development. It is a novel of ideas where we hear the inner workings of two great minds who are two old friends. Bellow moves the dialogue effortlessly from Borscht belt comedy routines to philosophical meditations on death and dying that are entirely believable.

As the book opens, the reader finds that Ravelstein has penned a polemic about academic life and he has become rich and famous. Ravelstein and Chick are at a penthouse hotel in Paris, and Ravelstein is about to buy a $4500 gold Lanvin jacket. He no sooner buys the coat then he spills espresso on the lapel. We learn to forgive Ravelstein his excesses--stereos with speakers at $10,000 apiece, lavish dinners, silk ties that he airmails to Paris to get cleaned, $20,000 gold watches, Oriental carpets, Lalique chandeliers--because he combines exorbitant spending with an exuberance for life.

Chick tells us that Ravelstein also has a unique ability to avoid personal grudges or pretensions. Chick reminds Ravelstein at one point that a friend had "almost" gotten Ravelstein the appointment he wanted at the elite Midwestern University where they both work. Ravelstein responds: "That's true. I'm the only one with rank who doesn't have a named chair. After all I've done for the university--And the only chair the administration offers me is the electric chair" (p. 36). Chick continues by telling the reader, "But Ravelstein was unusually free from such preoccupations and...