157. Back to School Prof Edition

AMY: Welcome to another Lost Ladies of Lit mini episode. I’m Amy Helmes, here with my co-host, Kim Askew. Fun fact about Kim: she works on a college campus by day. Are you guys gearing up to welcome a new class of students, Kim?

KIM: Yeah, we sure are. It's always exciting to see. I work at a fashion college. So good to see everyone's outfits on the first day. They take it to a whole other level.

AMY: Oh, I bet. Do you feel like you have to up your style game?

KIM: No, I don't anymore. Maybe when I first started, but no. Um, so

we know that a lot of our listeners out there ALSO work on college campuses. Many of you out there are academics — so this week’s mini is dedicated to you.

AMY: That’s right. A few years ago around this time we did an episode called “Backpacks and Boarding Schools” which was all about novels that take place in a school setting. That was a fun one. But today, we’re going to be discussing some books which center around the lives of university professors.

KIM: There’s a lot to love about college professors, not the least of which is because they literally have inspired an entire Tiktok subculture.

AMY: Yeah, I assume you're talking about Dark Academia, uh, which I actually read a New York Times article that said that the pandemic is what kicked off the Dark Academia. trend. There were so many young people who  couldn't be on campus, so they wanted that college-y vibe. Because they couldn't have it!

KIM: Right. That's one trend we were way ahead of. Our blog, if you'll remember from the early Aughts, Romancing the Tome, it had a skull, a stack of books and a quill pen for our branding. 

AMY: The skull! [laughs]

KIM: I mean, I don't even know where we got that. 

AMY: The only thing missing was like a candle with dripping wax. 

KIM: Yeah, exactly. But I’m thinking if there’s one book that epitomizes this concept of Dark Academia, it’s The Secret History by Donna Tartt, the origin book of Dark Academia.

AMY: Yeah, yeah, I think everyone listening knows this book, and the best place to learn more about it is the “Once Upon a Time at Bennington” podcast, which we both loved listening to. 

KIM: We were OBSESSED with it when we were listening to it. It was so great.

AMY: It tells the real story behind the character of Julian Morrow, the classics professor in that novel. Donna Tartt based him off one of her real instructors when she was at Bennington. Did I ever tell you, Kim, The Secret History anecdote about Mike, my husband, at the library?

KIM: It's not coming to mind, but maybe there's a vague memory there somewhere. Remind me what happened?

AMY: Okay, so he’s always looking for book recommendations from me, so I had told him to read The Secret History. He did, and he loved it. So he, on his own, like a lunch break at work sort of thing, went to the library  and a librarian comes up and is like, “Can I help you find anything?” And he's like, “Yeah, actually.  I just finished a book that I really, really liked and I'm hoping to find something similar.” And so she's like, “What was the book you just read?” And he said, “The Secret History.” Her knees buckled. Like, she did like a gasp!

KIM: I do remember this. She was like, “This is the best day.” 

KIM: She had an ecstatic moment, and she put her hands on her knees,  she was so excited.

KIM: Yeah. Oh, that's adorable.

KIM: So that said, let's dive into some other books  in which there's a university setting, and specifically professors. 

AMY: Yes, there are actually a LOT of books out there featuring characters who are professors. but since this is a mini episode, we're just going to stick with  a few that spring to mind and,  the first one I'll mention just because. Okay. It's Fresh in My Brain is Lucky Jim by Kingsley It had been on my reading list for a really long time, I kept putting it off for some reason, and I,  wonder if maybe I was confusing it with Lord Jim by Joseph Conrad, 

KIM: Totally different, but absolutely. I could see where you… that’s so easy to confuse.

AMY: Yeah. And I think I have read Lord Jim, so I knew it wasn’t that book…but I still had those vibes from it, so I didn’t want to read it. But anyway, I think the death of Amis’s son, Martin Amis got me to dive in, and I found it so wildly entertaining! I was laughing out loud. You’ve read this one, right Kim?

KIM: Yeah, it’s so fun. It’s about a junior-level medieval history professor, James Dixon, at some unnamed university in England. He has zero job security and he’s trying to get his scholarly writing published, and everything he does to try to advance himself kind of blows up in his face. But we get to follow his romantic travails as well. I haven't read that in a long time, but I just remember laughing hysterically too. It's so great. I need to reread it.

AMY: I feel like it should be subtitled “Curb Your Enthusiasm at College,” because he is a dead ringer for Larry David! His behavior is so cringey and inappropriate. Like, not cringey in a sexual way, but he does the wrong thing. He’s hilarious. His job requires him to suck up to people, but he’s so jaded, privately. He’s always ducking behind pillars and things to try to avoid having to interact with people he doesn’t like. He hates his students, even. He’s constantly drinking too much. The anecdote that comes to mind the most is the story of him accidentally burning a hole in the sheet when he is staying over as a guest at his boss's house, and like, the lengths that he goes to to try to cover up the cigarette burn in the sheet. That will forever live in my memory.

KIM: Yeah, it's unlucky because all these things happen to him, but he keeps getting away with everything terrible that he does.

AMY: Right! That’s what makes him “Lucky” Jim.

KIM: Yep, yep.

AMY: Um, Christopher Hitchens called this the funniest book of the second half of the 20th century. I mean, I don't know if I'd go that far, but I was surprised that I was laughing as much as I was because I didn't expect it to be that funny. There's actually a few film adaptations of this book too,  including one from 2003 that I might like to see because it stars Helen McRory, the late Helen McRory, Keely Hawes, whom we love, and Penelope Wilton, who is from Downton Abbey. They play all of the key female characters from the book.

KIM: We got to bring back a movie night for that one. That sounds so fun.

AMY: Okay, so can you think of any prof-related books?

KIM: Okay, so one of my favorite authors is Michael Chabon. I love him. In one of his early books, Wonder Boys from 1995 (I think maybe it was his second book out….) It’s kind of a fictional Kitchen Confidential, almost, about college writing programs. The professor is like this pot-smoking guy, Grady Tripp. I think he’s in his forties. He was a literary wunderkind but is stalled on his fourth novel, and he just keeps writing and writing and writing. It’s like this massive tome that’s never ending. But he’s kind of lovable, in a weird way, too, even though he’s a jerk trying to stay forever young. Have you read it?

AMY: No, When I think Wonder Boys… Michael Chabon,  What's the one about the… maybe I'm getting the title wrong…

KIM: Kavalier and Clay.

AMY: Yes, that’s what I was thinking of. 

KIM: Yeah, this is totally different. And there’s a movie adaptation, too. It’s from 2000. It’s got Michael Douglas, Tobey Maguire, Robert Downey, and Frances McDormand. I’m sure you heard of the movie. I mean, it has such a big cast.

AMY: When you say he’s a “loveable jerk,” that reminds me of Jim from Lucky Jim.

KIM: It’s definitely similar vibes.

AMY: Yeah, A little bit different vibe, but also a male professor that I'm going to talk about next is the  hero of the novel, Stoner. 

KIM: That is one of my favorites.  It's the one that was rediscovered, basically, and brought back into print by New York Review Books.

AMY: Okay. Yeah, and I think I borrowed this from you.

KIM: I’ve loaned it out so many times, I've had to buy it, like, four or five times.

AMY: Oh my god. 

KIM: It’s, like, one of the books that I pass out. Now, I think everyone's read it, but initially, like, people were kind of rediscovering it, I was, like, handing it out, like, candy.

AMY: Yeah, that's funny. I hope I wasn't the one that hung onto it. I know I wasn't because I don't keep books.

KIM: Yeah. You always give the good books back.

AMY: I first heard about it, though, in an interview with Natasha Lyonne, the actress. She mentioned it, and then I thought it sounded interesting and I said something to you about it and you were like, oh, I own it. It was published in 1965. The author's name is John Edward Williams. 

KIM: He wrote several, I think three other novels that are all totally different and they're amazing. Butcher's Crossing, there's one I believe, I think it's about Caesar, and then I can't remember what, there's like a sci-fi one that he wrote,   

AMY: It reminds me a little bit of, like a Thomas Wolfe novel, like You Can't Go Home Again or Look Homeward, Angel or one of those.  The vibe is similar,  but basically it's a sad story.

KIM: Everything goes wrong with him and unlike Lucky Jim, the bad things that happen just keep getting worse. I mean, he starts out with such hope and promise as an English major and then professor, but It just doesn't go well, but it's so beautifully written about the frustrations of life. They just eat away at him. I mean, the subtitle of this book should be why you should never become a humanities professor because it's just, it's, it's too hard. Yeah. It's so hard

AMY: And it's funny, because his parents want him to study something practical. I think they're the ones that want him to study agriculture, but he wants to be an English major and that's reminding me of how many English majors start college with their parents being like, “Nooooo!!!!” 

KIM: Yeah. Yeah. My parents were always like, “Well, she can go to law school afterward.”

AMY: The English major’s defense!

KIM: Exactly. Yeah. “Oh yeah, sure, Mom and Dad. Yeah. We'll look at it again in four years.”

AMY: I think my dad kept out of it, but I remember my mom kind of trying to nudge me toward engineering, which is  a lot of the people in my family are engineers. Everybody's super smart. If that had happened, there'd be many a bridge on the verge of collapse out there had I taken her up on it. 

KIM: I think you could have done it, but you would have been the most, like, creative, poetical engineer, but I feel like you do have that strong analytical ability.

AMY: Hmm. Maybe. 

KIM: You don’t see it?

AMY: No. Anyway, alright,  let's find a different book to talk about.

KIM: Okay, so I wanted to throw in TWO Charlotte Bronte novels based on her real life experiences teaching at boarding schools in Brussels. While teaching in Belgium, Charlotte fell in love with a married man who ran the first school where she was both enrolled and taught English for her keep, Constantin Heger. (I don’t know if I’m pronouncing that right), but the first book she wrote actually came out posthumously. It was called The Professor, but in the second book, Villette, Lucy Snow is the main character and she falls in love with the professor, Monsieur Paul Emmanuel, and it's a widely held belief that the character of Emmanuel in Villette is closely based on the real life man, Heger.

AMY: Oh, yeah. It kind of lines up closely. I have not read The Professor, though.

KIM: Yeah. That’s about a male professor’s adventures in work and love while teaching in Brussels. So it definitely goes with our theme today.

AMY: Okay,  so another one  I wanted to mention just because I read it probably in the last five years or so was Philip Roth's The Human Stain, which is set at an eastern (I don't know if it's a fictional) college. I can't remember. Um, that novel came out in 2000, but it's still very timely because it's about a professor whose job is on the line after he makes a remark in the classroom that is interpreted as racially insensitive.

Philip Roth wrote in The New Yorker that the book was inspired by a very similar incident that happened to a friend of his who was a professor at Princeton.

KIM: I think I read the article, but not the book. Um, and I believe there might be a movie.

AMY: There is. Anthony Hopkins. Nicole Kidman. It's kind of weird… Anthony Hopkins is weird casting for it, once you read the book and know the whole story. I don't think he would… I don't think you would want to cast him…

KIM: Yeah, well now they wouldn't cast it like that. 

AMY: Right. Okay. So then in terms of “lost ladies” of lit, I think there's another one that neither of us have read, Kim. It's by Dorothy Sayers. It's called Gaudy Night. And it's part of her Lord Peter Wimsey detective novels. 

KIM: Oh, yeah, I started Gaudy Night during lunch yesterday at Bottega Louie!

AMY: Wow!

KIM: I took it with me and started reading it, and I love it. I'm totally into it.

AMY: You know me, I'm not into mysteries at all…

KIM: Oh, then… it's a very traditional mystery. but it's got the fun vibe.

It’s set at Oxford. I mean…

AMY: Yeah, so this installment, Gaudy Night, it's basically about  a series of crimes that are taking place.  It's kind of an all girls, an all women's college…?

KIM: Shrewsbury college at Oxford.

AMY: Okay, okay. And there's some incidents of obscene graffiti and vandalism and a series of “poison pen” messages that are turning up, and so Harriet Vane is this character who is the love interest of Lord Peter Wimsey… she's a mystery writer, and so the college knows that she maybe could help figure out whodunit. And then she recruits Lord Peter Wimsey to come help her.

AMY: Right. I mean, this is just a basic mystery novel and I'm reading it on my phone and my Kindle app, and I've already  underlined or highlighted so many passages, because there's so many interesting, like, philosophical thoughts, observations about people, observations about being in a rarefied environment that are so good. I feel like you would love it.

AMY: Okay, so yeah, if there's a little bit more to it beyond just the playing out the plot…

KIM: Yeah, I think that's what you'd love about it. It's almost like the mystery so far is incidental, but I mean, it's also set at the old girl's school, which we love those things too. And that's also a hotbed for bad behavior, right?

AMY: Apparently! This idea of all the obscene vandalism that's taking place on the campus, it's making me think of, did you ever watch that Netflix show “American Vandal?”

KIM: No.

AMY: Oh my god, Kim. I hesitate to even recommend it on this podcast because it is filthy, filthy, but it is so funny. It's like a spoof of a true crime podcast  like “Serial” or something like that. And it's these high school kids that are trying to solve a mystery that's going on at their high school in like true crime documentary fashion. And it's really, really funny. It got canceled after two seasons, 

KIM: Okay. 

AMY: It’s worth watching

KIM: You know what? This reminds me of (totally not related) but, um, when we watched the British “Office” together and we were so obsessed with watching it..

AMY: Speaking of British television, the BBC did a miniseries  of Gaudy Nights, this Dorothy Sayers mystery. 

KIM: Oh, after I read it I want to watch it.

AMY: It’s all on YouTube, and we can link to it in our show notes. A young Harriet Walter plays Harriet Vane.

KIM: Who's Harriet Walter? Remind me of…

AMY: Harriet Walter is the mom from “Succession,” and she's

the mom from “Ted Lasso,” Rebecca's mom.  We love her. She was in Sense and Sensibility. She played the bitchy…

KIM: Yeah, yeah, yeah. 

AMY: Um, one more campus novel I wanted to point out is Mary McCarthy's Groves of Academe. We all know Mary McCarthy from The Group. That's her 1963 novel. Um, this one came out in 1952, and it's considered one of the first novels in this campus genre. This kind of idea of a campus novel. She was one of the first. It's a satire of her time teaching at Bard and Sarah Lawrence. The school in this book is called Jocelyn College. So she fictionalizes it. Um, but yeah, and then I guess, you know, The Group isn't really set on a college campus. It kind of begins on a college campus.

KIM: Right. It's like the afterlives after they graduate. 

AMY: And we are going to be. Doing an episode on The Group.

KIM: Yeah, I'm so excited we're doing a Mary McCarthy episode.

AMY: If you want to be all caught up to speed with that, you can start reading the group  you haven't already. In terms of other comic novels about college, we should probably check out A Campus Trilogy by David Lodge. The titles in this trilogy are Changing Places, Small World, and Work, and they were published in the mid 1970s and mid 1980s, and they all sound very “Lucky Jim”-like. Based on what I've read about them, I think we would really like them. 

Okay. All right. I'm interested. Adding it to the long, long list of books.

AMY: Yeah.  I'm sure you listeners know many more, so reach out and let us know what YOUR favorite novels that feature college faculty as characters. Email us, give us a shout-out on social media, or head over to our Facebook forum to post ones we ought to have included in this episode. 

KIM: And we’ll be back next week! Our theme song was written and performed by Jennie Malone and our logo was designed by Harriet Grant. Lost ladies of lit is produced by Amy Helmes and Kim Askew.