The Groves of Academe

This ambitious little novel uses a story of a small progressive college in the early 1950¡¯s to make some rather weighty inquiries. It begins when professor Mulcahy receives his letter of dismissal. From this point on, Mulcahy schemes to keep his place. In the process, the reader is treated to many a stimulating dialogue between the learned members of the faculty. The message is one of tolerance and a resigned acceptance of the often contradictory nature of experience. When the book was written, the era of Eugene McCarthy¡¯s ascendancy, this was exactly the message the public needed to hear. Observe the argument against a tyranny of the masses and in favor of something that sounds vaguely like syndicalism. Quote:¡°Teaching, like all the arts, can¡¯t be democratic or subject to referendum; it must be run from within, by an autonomous guild, according to guild standards.¡±¡­Now what are these standards to be? Are they to be administrative or internal? Like the standards of a poem? Within certain limits, isn¡¯t it possible for each teacher to make his own, as a poem makes its own laws?...¡±But a poem¡­justifies itself in the long run by referring back to life¡­.¡± ¡­ ¡°Somebody¡ªI believe Orwell¡ª¡­says that you can¡¯t prove that a poem is good. A piece of news we must keep from the students at all cost or we should all be out of a job.¡± ¡°You can¡¯t prove that a poem is good, but you can know it,¡± said Domna, suddenly, with conviction¡­ ¡°In general, we submit ourselves to the judgment of the poets in these matters; we allow our poets to tell us that Donne is superior to Milton, and here perhaps we are wrong, but we cannot know that we are wrong until we also become poets. Tolstoy was wrong, in my belief, about Shakespeare, but his wrongness has a certain authority; we pause to listen to him because he was a poet. In the same way, it is only we teachers who have earned the right to be listened to on the question of another teacher¡¯s competence, who have earned,¡± she finished, somewhat defiantly, ¡°the right, if you want, to be wrong.¡±The argument can be read as a comment on the blacklisting of artists & intellectuals by Senator McCarthy. McCarthy (the author) however, is too much of an artist to present her indictment in simple terms. You see, Mulcahy, the hero/victim, is a thoroughly unwholesome character. A reader is hard pressed to sympathize with him as he goes about manipulating his colleagues to secure his stated goal of ¡° ¡®Justice for myself as a superior individual.¡¯¡± When Mulcahy voices this appraisal, the reader has seen enough of his disregard for other people to doubt his sanity. Even so, Mulcahy has his virtues. And in professor Bentkoop¡¯s view, they make him a valuable asset to the faculty. Quote:¡°There¡¯s a good deal to be said for Hen on the plus side¡­He¡¯s interested in ontological questions, which are the great binders of diverse humanity¡­What¡¯s needed at Jocelyn or any college is a mind concerned with universa

Sometimes one reads a piece of satire that makes one wish he/she were the work's author. Such is the case with this novel. It is deliciously unsparing of the culture of academia and a delight to anyone who is familiar with that world.

This is a "wickedly funny" satire about the socio-political in-fighting and backstabbing over minor achievements and petty rewards on a college campus. A side-splitter of a book especially for those involved in academia