This series of posts about a proposed Alan Turing conference at Stanford left me wondering about the best academic novels I had read. Pnin is good, but not very academic. Gone by Renata Adler is fantastic but about office politics. I didn’t like Changing Places nor Lucky Jim. I doubt a novel could be better than this:
A couple of days later we received a note from Lester Earnest to say he was withdrawing from the committee. Since Les was underwriting the event this was a blow; we had lost our funding.
I wrote to Les asking him what had happened, knowing that the exchange with [Jennifer] Widom [chair of the Stanford CS department] over the December holiday was surely sufficient to deter and depress anyone.
A few hours later Ed Feigenbaum wrote to the committee saying that he had not spoken to Les but that he would withdraw from the committee himself. This puzzled both me and Les because Les had just told me that Ed that had talked him out of supporting the conference.
Is there a blog about academic politics?
Gripping.
“Changing Places”, you mean. I didn’t like it either.
Seth: Thanks for the correction.
Richard Russo’s “Straight Man” is the funniest novel I’ve ever read.
Pamela Dean’s “Tam Lin” is just the thing if you have any fondness for small liberal arts colleges. Something rotten in the classics department.
Donna Tartt’s “The Secret History” is a gripping story about a less attractive small liberal arts college. Also has something rotten in the classics department.
The only thing I remember from “Publish and Perish”, aside from that it’s a horror novel is a scene of going berzerk in a boring meeting. I like to think the scene was developed over the course of many boring meeting.
“I didn’t like … Lucky Jim”: then it’s as well I don’t read you for your sense of humour.
Cantor’s Dilemma: A Novel, by Carl Djerassi, is an academic novel. I read it years ago, when it first came out. It was decent but not great. (Djerassi is the inventor of the Pill. He is emeritus professor of chemistry at Stanford University.)