Pictures from an Institution (Phoenix Fiction Series)

Rating:
Summary: Disappointing
Review: I was determined to like this book and gave it my best shot, but found I couln't bring myself to finish it. Yes, it's witty, but it's also hopelessly dated. The fifties had come and gone long before I was born, so I confess that many of the cultural references went right over my head. If you are looking for a spoof on academia, you're better off reading David Lodge or Kingsley Amis' Lucky Jim.

Rating:
Summary: Really worth the read
Review: Randall Jarrell's roman a clef about life in a small college, in that it centers upon a Mary McCarthyesque novelist who is herself embarking upon her own roman a clef (very much like THE GROVES OF ACADEME) about the "little people" who also trundle through the small college campus where she is allowed to stride magnificently like a contemptuous giantess. Thus the reader has the double pleasure of seeing her ironic views of the failings of the people around her contextualized by his or her ironic view of her own grosser moral failings. The giddy mise-en-abyme effect of this is tempered at the end, wherein the novel's narrating consciousness (our guide through this academic Wonderland ) must confront whether there is something to find beautiful--and sincerely--in this most artificial and insincere of playworlds. A wonderful work.

Rating:
Summary: An Elegant, Poignant Satire
Review: This concise novel is a scathing satire of academic life. Jarrell is both ascerbic and precise in his commentary upon the intrigues that evolve among professors, administrators, and the amorphous "institution." If you like satire in general, or if you like academic satire in particular, then this is your book. Fans of Lucky Jim (Kingsley Amis), Moo (Jane Smiley), and the university-oriented works of Robertson Davies will love Pictures From an Institution. It is witty, charming, and intelligent.

Rating:
Summary: An Elegant, Poignant Satire
Review: This concise novel is a scathing satire of academic life. Jarrell is both ascerbic and precise in his commentary upon the intrigues that evolve among professors, administrators, and the amorphous "institution." If you like satire in general, or if you like academic satire in particular, then this is your book. Fans of Lucky Jim (Kingsley Amis), Moo (Jane Smiley), and the university-oriented works of Robertson Davies will love Pictures From an Institution. It is witty, charming, and intelligent.