Campus Fiction

[Sindhu]

I'm a great fan of Campus Fiction, but apart from the earlier Zuleika Dobson and Lucky Jim, the only contemporary authors I've been able to find in that genre are David Lodge and Malcolm Bradbury, whose books I must have reread a dozen times. Can any one suggest any other authors?

[AbdoRinbo]

What exactly is 'campus fiction'?

[Sindhu]

Novels which are set in University Campuses. Zuleika Dobson was in Oxford and Lucky Jim in a provincial University. David Lodge and Bradbury explore all the possibilities, with settings on campuses on either side of the Atlantic, exchange programmes, adult education clases, seminars, publishing, the lot. And the results are usually hilarious.

[den]

Ah! this helps... ;)


Novels which are set in University Campuses. Zuleika Dobson was in Oxford and Lucky Jim in a provincial University. David Lodge and Bradbury explore all the possibilities, with settings on campuses on either side of the Atlantic, exchange programmes, adult education clases, seminars, publishing, the lot. And the results are usually hilarious.

[Sindhu]

So, does anyone have any authors/titles to suggest? ;)

[sloegin]

I haven't read it, but the only thing that comes to mind is Been Down So Long It Looks Like Up to Me by Richard Farina. It is supposed to be good.

[AbdoRinbo]

That one is supposed to be amazing! Thomas Pynchon went to Cornell with Richard Farina and wrote the forward to his one and only novel. He was an idol to Pynchon.

[sloegin]

I know. Here (http://www.pynchon.pomona.edu/uncollected/farina.html) it (the intro) is if you have not read it.

[Sindhu]

Thanks! I hadn't read this one and the intro was very interesting. I'll certainly be on the lookout for this.

[Sindhu]

Not exactly Campus "fiction' but in my search for something remotely resembling that I picked up A Literary History of Cambridge. Utterly fascinating - if you like anecdotes and history combined, this is a must read! Now if I could get something similar for Oxford ....

[sloegin]

I haven't read this. Search said something about Judas College in Oxford. Zuleika Dobson by Max Beerbohm

[Sindhu]

I had mentioned Zuleika Dobson at the beginnng of this thread. It's pretty good.

[sloegin]

Opps. :(

[Sindhu]

Please! No oopsing- I'm terrified in case that might put you off from doing some more searching for me! ;)

[sloegin]

Pale Fire, by Nabokov could loosely be in this genre. The ego driven main character is a professor. Besides all that, it is a highly original format.

[Sindhu]

Just checked out a couple of reviews of Pale Fire- looks highly promising. Thanks! You reminded me of another Nabokov title I loved and which I regard as Camus fiction to some extent - Pnin

[sloegin]

I like Nabokov, he's an odd duck. Here (http://search.barnesandnoble.com/booksearch/results.asp?CAT=69&CAT=718797&userid=2XDLHAUJ5X&Se archBooks.x=36&SearchBooks.y=13) are some search results. You get to moil through them. :D

[Sindhu]

Absolutely marvellous link- thanks!

[Zooey]

Would Fitzgerald's This Side of Paradise qualify? A large part of it takes place at Princeton.

It's a pretty good book anyways, even if it's not exactly what you're looking for.:D

[Sindhu]

Certainly worth checking out - Thanks!

[i'mauntallie]

I think I read this in high school so not sure if it's considered grown-up literature, but "a separate peace" was set on a college campus, right?

[PeterL]

The best in that sub-genre is Conjure Wife" by Fritz Leiber. It's a great read regardless of subgenre. An interesting novel of that subgenre that wouldn't appear to be such is "Mind-Players" by Pat Cadigan. It is a very fictionalized account of one semester at UMass Amherst in the early 1970's, back in the days when people swallowed madcaps.

[Rekhasumedha]

I'm a great fan of Campus Fiction, but apart from the earlier Zuleika Dobson and Lucky Jim, the only contemporary authors I've been able to find in that genre are David Lodge and Malcolm Bradbury, whose books I must have reread a dozen times. Can any one suggest any other authors?

Your comment about campus fiction interests me.
How about the Indian Campus novels? Have you noticed anything different in the Indian version of Campus novels?

By the way what is your mothertongue? Just to know if there are any campus novels in your mothertongue too.
Atom and the Serpent by Prema Nandakumar
In Times of Siege by Gita Hariharan
or No Onion Nor Garlic - Srividya Natarajan
Five Point someone by Chetan Bhagat
Just naming a few noteworthy ones. There are atleast 10 more I have read.

How about describing Bachelor of Arts as partially campus novel?

[Rekhasumedha]

Did you read Mediocre but Arrogant (MBA) by Abhijit Bhaduri?

[Evaril]

On Beauty by Zadie Smith

[Bitterfly]

I love campus literature!!

Tom Wolfe's I am Charlotte Simmons takes place on a university campus. It's easy to read but you don't feel like you've wasted your time.
Some beginning scenes of Brideshead Revisited and Decline and Fall (Evelyn Waugh - great books!) happen at Oxford, as does Philip Larkin's Jill. I seem to remember that Iain Pears's An instance of the fingerpost does too.
AS Byatt's Possession takes place in the academic world, but I don't know if it could really be described as campus literature.
And lots of early twentieth-century German literature takes place in and around universities.

[Scheherazade]

Donna Tartt's Secret History

http://www.online-literature.com/forums/showthread.php?t=37415

[k.brignell]

I have just read The Secret History by Donna Tartt and found it quite wonderfull, i highly recommend this. :D

[Tsuyoiko]

The Rule Of Four by Ian Caldwell and Dustin Thomason.

This novel is set on Princeton campus, and has a lot of detail about campus life. It's in a similar genre to Dan Brown, but not so badly written. Not exactly high literature, but I enjoyed it.

[Whifflingpin]

Giles Goat Boy - John Barth

[curlyqlink]

Blue Angel by Francine Prose. It is very funny, and a damn fine novel too. Comparable in both respects with Lucky Jim.

[mrsethi]

The other novels under the genre 'Campus Fiction' are:

1. Eating People is Wrong by Malcom Bradbury
2. The Masters by C.P.Snow
3. Jill by Philip Larkin

M.R.Sethi