Customer Reviews

Blue Angel: A Novel (P.S.)

5 star:		(44)
4 star:		(38)
3 star:		(23)
2 star:		(21)
1 star:		(16)

 

 

I'd never read Francine Prose, but I'll definitely look up her backlist. Her writing is smooth and easy and immediately hypnotic. Also, the novel's premise is hilarious: here is a respected woman writer and academic, writing a book that oh, so delicately skewers the fervent feminists, the sexual harrassment hysterics, and the panderers to politically correctness that infest the average college campus. Now THAT's brave. Doesn't she know she can lose tenure for this?

So why the 3-star rating? The first three-fourths of the book were terrific -- but it seems that, in the end, it topples under the weight of its own conceit. You suspect where Prose is going from the get-go (familiar with the Marlene Dietrich film "The Blue Angel?"), and she goes there in style. The characters are quickly but fully fleshed out, especially anti-heroine Angela Argo. But just when you're REALLY interested in these people, all the actors file on stage for the end you knew was coming and the book is over. Why the heck did Angela do what she did? We don't know. Maybe if I were an academic -- if I was more familiar with campus politics -- I'd think the satire was worth the price of admission. It's those who live in Prose's world who will get the most out of this book.

This is not a book I would dismiss out of hand; nor would I pass it over based on a customer review. Read it for yourself.

In June, I attended a David Sedaris reading, part of his latest book tour. At the end, he held up Francine Prose's "Blue Angel" and said it was the funniest book he's read in a long time. So, knowing his work, I went into this novel expecting laugh out loud hilariousness. This novel is so much more though. Prose writes with such a clever hand that you don't often laugh out loud, but chuckle inside at her deft use of language and humor and wordplay. I loved the characters, especially Swenson, his wife Sherrie, and of course, the Angela, the Blue Angel herself. If you've ever taken a college creative writing class, you'll appreciate the numerous scenes where student stories are workshopped. Francine Prose captures college life and student attitudes perfectly. This novel made me want to read other Prose books.

Here is the rare literary novel I simply couldn't put down. Why? Was it the sordid little story with the sexy details? Probably didn't hurt, but I don't think so. I think it's Prose's sense of humor, her insights into common human foibles, her keen analysis of the complexities of political correctness, and above all, her superb storytelling ability and easy-to-read style.

I laughed out loud reading the faculty dinner party scene. And even though I could see how the characters would evolve and where the story would have to go sooner or later, I was never less than captivated. Only the very end was unsatisfying. Unfortunately, I'm forced to confess my desire for a more complete ending that ties up all the loose ends. But, please, don't let that dissuade you. (I only wanted to know what would happen to all the characters. Perhaps a sequel will come some day, though I doubt it.) Ultimately, you'll just love this book.

Blue Angel is a wicked satire that pokes fun at academia, creative writing programs, writing in general and the ego of the artist...and that's just the beginning. There's something to offend everyone--in almost every sentence. And yet it's impossible not to admit that in every biting line and observation there is some grain of truth, and that is what makes this book so riotously funny.

This page-turner packs quite a punch. It is the story of a college creative-writing professor struggling with his attraction toward one of his students. He is happily married, but can't seem to shake his desire for this young, jittery, tattooed and punkish girl with enough facial piercings to make her head look like a disco ball. Meanwhile, he is trying to cope with a disenfranchised daughter, a class full of would-be writers, and a college environment that is growing increasingly wary of sexual misconduct and gender warfare.

In Blue Angel, Francine Prose skewers campus politics and this country's return to the sexual mores of the Victorian Era. Her writing is authentic, unaffected, and sharp, and she manages to do what so many other writers cannot... tell a compulsively readable story that has depth, meaning, and insight. For a deeper understanding of the story, look for Prose's many telling references to other authors and novels (Chekhov, Lolita, Jane Eyre)... none of these references are without implication.

I have noticed that a number of people who have written about this book here did not like the book, particularly the ending. It is important to remember, however, that the best of satires do not leave readers feeling satisfied. They leave us feeling frustrated and dissatisfied, not only for the characters, but for the reality that these characters represent. This book is no exception. It is easy to see why nearly every newspaper and magazine in this country has taken its turn praising Blue Angel to the high heavens, and why this book was a National Book Award Finalist. I am very much looking forward to reading more of Francine Prose's work.

Literature has entered the age of the antihero. Modern works that feature bona fide heroes are damned to mainstream, or if they are sufficiently lacking in big words, they may have a place in the Young Adult section. Today the only licensed guide for true literature is via the antihero. It turns out that while the antihero is an excellent chap for pointing out society's blemishes, he is pretty shabby at resolving them. For all of you reviewers who complained about the third act, this may be why it left you feeling unsatisfied. Showcasing those who right wrongs has become the preserve of the biographer.

Meet Swenson Swenson, Ms. Prose's Nabokovian style antihero who, though willing to joust with the sexual conceits of university life, only spurs his charger down the lists at a tepid ho-hum trot and ends up forfeiting horse, armor, and title. Battered, but none the wiser, he walks off the last page a pauper with no means of support, no squire, no page, and probably still mired in writer's block.

I believe SS's flaw is in his habit of real-time editing his social interactions. He obsesses over what others may think of his most trivial statements and actions. Come to think of it, this behavior probably accounts for why he's been unable to complete his third novel for the last twenty years. He is so uptight about how others regard him (though in reality it may be how he regards himself) he could pass for British.

The story's villainess, An-GEL-a, a pity that the tip of the tongue only requires two not three steps off the palate, was suspected of being a pathological liar by SS. This was wrong. She was a sociopath. Lying is only one of the many tools used by sociopaths. When confronted by their crimes, liars can be made to feel badly about their behavior. Angela suffered no such compunctions. Interesting how the little vixen was so willing to sell her `innocence' for literary gain, only to become the poster girl for the sexual harassment harpies--nice touch.

Though Ms. Prose's intent was to skewer the sexual harassment crowd such as they existed on American campuses ca. 2000, I think she did an even better job skewering the publishing industry. Look at the diabolical act Angela had to commit to get her book published. A student, her talent unknown but to herself, she knew she was facing the impossible. And look at the despicable self-serving character of Len Currie, SS's big city editor. SS is, or was, an author of some renown, he hadn't bothered his editor in many years, and now he wants to pitch a student whom he believes can really write. Instead, Currie ignores SS's obvious credibility and remarks that student writers are beneath him. I found myself detesting the editor even more than I did, Lauren Healy, the leader of the local femme-Nazis. [Word of the day: `misandry', meaning hatred of males, handy opposite of misogyny. Everyone knows what misogyny means--comes up often in cocktail conversations--but you need a really big dictionary to find misandry.]

All in all, this was a book with a mission, which is to say Ms. Prose didn't write it to be entertaining. If you were disappointed in the outcome, ask yourself how you felt when you read the last page. Were you angry? Ready to take up the lance in righteous indignation? Then Ms. Prose accomplished her mission.

--Ejner Fulsang, author of "A Knavish Piece of Work", Aarhus Publishing, 2006

This book begins well. It's well written, often funny, and the characters initally seem fully drawn. Swenson remains a good character. But by the end the experience of reading it deteriorated to true pain.

I suspect that anyone who's spent time around a writing program, whether regular college classes or a shorter workshop, has engaged in fantasies of writing about the experience. You're confronted with such a rich cast -- blocked writers, pretentious writers, wannabe writers, blocked pretentious wannabe writers. What you need is a plot. Francine Prose has run into exactly that problem. She has come up with a good setting (small, obscure New England liberal arts college), a good main character (writing teacher who got his job based on a well-reviewed novel that he hasn't managed to follow up on), and several good supporting characters. His wife has promise, the poetry teacher is, in her few real scenes, interesting and realistic, and several of his students are fabulous. Their writing is awful, their comments on classmates' writing banal, and yet they are individual and never flat or cartoonish.

Unfortunately, and it's a big unfortunately, the second-biggest character in the book, Angela Argo, prize writing student, is completely opaque, and while this opacity seems intended to drive the story, in the end it completely undermines it. I don't approve of spoiling book endings, but it's hard to comment on this book without implying much about the end, which is hardly worth protecting in any case. Through most of the book, Angela seems like an adoring student, with your normal student crush and insecurities. The character of the writing student who may be a habitual liar would seem to have been well enough done in Wonder Boys, and that aspect of Angela therefore seems cliched, but there's still enough material to make her a useful character. Her crush reveals itself frequently but is nothing out of the ordinary. She's a teenager -- a smart, talented one who's willing to speak her mind even if it angers her classmates, but a teenager.

Well, it turns out the CIA should have agents with such talent for deception and long-term planning. Because her purpose and point of view is never explained, all we are left with is the idea that Angela was plotting Swenson's downfall all along. She SEEMED like an insecure but talented teenager with a crush on her teacher, but really she was out to get him for no apparent reason and she accomplished his ruination and humiliation with great efficiency and skill. If this book is going to hold together, I need to hear more about Angela. Was she planning it all along? Did she just improvise really well? Does she have a single genuine moment in the book? Who is she? Why does she act as she does? Just a wee little glimpse of any of that would be SO helpful.

Her motivation is not the only thing that falls by the wayside in this book. There's a brief foray into the possibility, or probability, that she has had a career in phone sex, but it's never revealed if she has or has just implied it falsely. Swenson's troubled relationship with his own college-age daughter appears and disappears, and ultimately goes nowhere in any narrative sense. Finally, Prose lays the groundwork for a decent satire of academic politics, but that too deteriorates into a rather predictable Camille Paglia-style portrayal of politically correct witchhunts for sexual misconduct. It's not just offensively untrue, it's plain boring.

This book is one of the funniest and smartest books I've ever read. This novel, sort of an update on Lolita, centers on a writer / college professor named Swenson who begins to have feelings for one of his female students.

Prose really understands how the male mind thinks and makes Swenson intelligent, kind, foolish, and self-destructive all-at-once.

One of the true highlights of this novel is Prose's attention to detail--from writing about New York restaurants to college libraries. Prose is at her best when detailing college fiction classes where students' written stories and subsequent commentaries are both funny and painfully true. Highly recommended novel.

This book was fairly big on the NPR circuit a few years ago - garnering plenty of great reviews here on Amazon as well - but it took me a while to pick up a copy from my local used book store (I should have gotten it here instead, for much less). It took me even longer to finally get around to reading it, but I'm glad that I have.

Wow . . .

I'm no burgeoning academic, thus finding myself uncertain about labelling poor Swenson's tale of attraction and destruction a satire. Perhaps on some level it is . . . but his characterization as an aging professor and frustrated writer is too finely drawn, too close to home, to be considered anything but straight, intelligent fiction. By intelligent, I mean that no easy answers are given, though they all seem to be hidden there in Francine's delicious prose.

I tore through this book like a bag of potato chips, unable to put it down. . . feeling myself drawn to Angela just as our pathetic hero was. He's captivated by her words first - and torn by his own inability to get past the blank page - and his fragile ego is stroked by her interest in him. This man loves his wife, but the attraction to such a student is obvious, inexorable. It takes a while for it to become physical, and then pathetic. All the while, the reader is nearly screaming at him to open his eyes.

He should have known, of course.

The encounter in the park with both Angela and Matt, the boy who may have defiled his daughter . . . and Angela, returning a copy of Deitrich's movie to the video store . . .

It's all there, somewhere, but Prose doesn't hand us the answer. Was Angela just a talented pawn in Matt's revenge? Was Swenson's own daughter part of it? Was Swenson much more guilty than even he can recall, following the line of Matt's allegations about his daughter in the final chapter?

Hmmmm . . .

But Prose doesn't say. I read the ending (and select passages) many times after I finished the book, and I know it's all there. I was so ticked off when Angela didn't get her comeuppance . . . when Swenson is ruined . . . but is he? Or does he deserve it? Is he the pathetic hero, or the villain receiving a just end?

I give nothing away, dear reader, just as the author gives nothing away. Take it as a satire, a warning, or just an incredible work of fiction - but Francine Prose will make you work for this one.

Set in a small, liberal arts college in out-of-the way upper New England, Blue Angel is a penetrating look at the petty politics and policies of the faculty and administration of such institutions and the perils that await a faculty member who violates standards of correctness in interpersonal relations with students regardless of rationale or circumstances.

Ted Swenson, conducting a seminar on creative writing, is a middle-aged, fairly happily married professor and novelist with a long case of writer's block. He is completely surprised when student Angela Argo with her punk motif exhibits a lot of raw writing talent. Maybe it is his own failures that make him receptive to Angela's insistent requests for assessment and reassurance of her work, but he frequently sees her after class and in his office and exchanges phone messages. Swenson is both wary of and drawn to Angela. He is puzzled by the similarity of the characters in Angela's novel and his own life. It is the supposedly guileless Angela that drives their relationship to a point that Swenson sees coming but is unable to stop.

Prose, through her descriptions and conversations, captures so well the subtleties of campus life, the various characters one might find there, and the difficulties and potholes of academic life. Swenson is complexly and favorably portrayed, but it seems almost inevitable that his disillusionment with academic life, along with his writing failures, will lead to his pursuing some course of action that will be cast as a transgression. The puritanical excess and distortion of Swenson's administrative hearing is frighteningly captured with its pretense of open-minded investigation; it is devastating commentary on the petty, witch hunting capacity of seemingly highly educated, thoughtful people.

Some find the book to be comedic or satirical. Perhaps - but the book is disturbing. Prose has given us all a lot to think about concerning the contradictions of an institution allegedly existing for the free exchange of ideas, even opportunities for growth, but which in actuality catalogues past sins and fanatically rushes to judgment, while destroying careers and lives.