The Campus Novel: Why Is It So Bad & Hated

And the same sort of joke permeates Nabokov too

Have we talked about “A Separate Peace” or “The Rules of Attraction” yet?

Gaudy Night is good imo, if you can put up with its being a Lord Peter Wimsey mystery.

^ yes

Ross Macdonald's The Chill comes to mind too ... sometimes the campus novel is improved by murders

Is Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets a campus novel y/n

i recall richard russo's 'straight man' being v. funny and good

Characters in Small World, some of whom had appeared in the campus novel Changing Places, maintain that the campus novel is obsolete.

at the more fantastic end of campus novels: loved giles goat-boy in my teens, really not sure what i'd make of it now in the unlikely event of ever revisiting. only other barth i've read is end of the road, also a campus novel from my vague recollection of it.

trying to remember if there was a chapter on this subject in fiedler's waiting for the end? they definitely get covered to some degree there in any case.

also re: pnin, yes!

Gaudy Night is good imo, if you can put up with its being a Lord Peter Wimsey mystery.

in the same realm, a number of michael innes (a.k.a. professor j.i.m. stewart) novels are set on campus. can remember a good one based at a circa 1950s so-called red brick university.

Well there's Hangsaman...

xp I just started reading that! It's called Old Hall, New Hall

In a similar vein, many of the Gervaise Fen mysteries by Edward Crispin are set on or around campus

my takeaway here: campus novels are less bad and hated when characters are regularly being killed off

Nobody gets killed off in Gaudy Night though, it's a murder-free mystery.

Seem to be having a campus novel year: have read Stover at Yale, Pnin, and Cather's The Professor's House this year, and just looked at my unread copy of The Art of Fielding (put it back on the shelf). Also watched The Group last night, though not enough time on campus to make that a campus movie/novel (read the book years ago and gave it to my sister as a questionable graduation present).