So, what are your favorite campus novels? Novels centered on academics and academia? Here are my suggestions, looking forward to yours.
Lucky Jim by Kingsley Amis is the classic of the genre. I’ve read it, I enjoyed it, although of course it’s of it’s time.
My personal favorite campus novels–which include some of my favorite novels, period–are by British literature prof David Lodge. The best ones are the “campus trilogy. In chronological order, they’re Changing Places, Small World, and Nice Work. It’s a very loose trilogy; you can definitely read any of those books on their own, or read all three out of order. Changing Places is a fish-out-of-water comedy, in which a US literature prof and a British literature prof trade places for an exchange program. Small World is one of the best novels I’ve ever read. It’s a satire of the “literary criticism wars” of the 1980s. Nice Work is a comedy about town-gown relations. The other David Lodge campus novel I really like is Thinks…, which is a comedy/romance about a literature prof and a cognitive scientist.*
All David Lodge books are a mix of comedy, romance, and satire. The satire is always gentle and amused, rather than scathing. Small World is Lodge’s best book, because it’s a brilliant synthesis of comedy, romance, and satire; it was shortlisted for the Booker Prize.
I just got Straight Man for my birthday, and am really looking forward to it. It comes recommended to me, and seems to have been well-reviewed. Sounds like it’s very much in the spirit of David Lodge.
One thing that all these campus novels have in common is that they’re about the humanities, not the sciences (with the partial exception of Thinks…). I don’t know of any novels that could be described as “a campus novel, but with scientists.” Do you? I’ve certainly read plenty of novels featuring scientists (see here, here, and here), but I wouldn’t describe any of them as campus novels.
*The one dud David Lodge campus novel for me is Deaf Sentence. It’s a comedy about a retired prof whose life unravels, in part because he’s losing his hearing. I found it aimless and not that funny.