Customer Reviews

The Groves of Academe

5 star:		(2)
4 star:		(1)
3 star:		(2)
2 star:		(2)
1 star:		(0)

 

 

I am an alum of the small college "Groves" is based on. I am also an academic and great fan of McCarthy's novel "The Group". I should have found "The Groves of Academe" engaging on these three facts alone. Sadly, the book left me cold. As a satire the novel is dissatisfying on several levels -- where we spot the familiar, the recognition is only sad, not humourous; and the plot, even for an academic who can be expected to find campus politics interesting, is deadly dull. If you aren't familiar with McCarthy, start with her far more interesting and accessible "The Group" instead. If you are new to academic satire, start with "The Lecturer's Tale" for a far more entertaining and cunning critique of academic culture.

As an academic, I anticipated liking this book very much. I find the day-to-day petty politics of the university amusing in real life and thought such a satire would be enjoyable. The Groves of Academe, however, proved to be lifeless and long-winded. The protagonist is so entirely unlikeable that I found myself wishing he'd just leave and get it over. None of the other characters were particularly engaging either; they tended to be rather flat stereotypes (e.g. the dried-up spinster), which usually work in a satire, but really needed to be more human to counteract the distaste inspired by Mulcahy.

The setting in the post-war, commie witch-hunt days really turns out to be less important than anticipated. While it provides some interesting strategies for our anti-hero, it could be replaced with any number of "isms" without changing the essential effect.

McCarthy's style is excruciatingly dry and her dialogue is stilted to the point of being stylized. The sheer boredom of plowing through her prose deadens the mind to the point that any satirical effect is largely lost.

The jabs at "progressive" education were mildly entertaining, thus two stars rather than a mere one.

With my interest in the academic genre -- David Lodge is good, light humor, Richard Russo's "Straight Man" was a wonderful, comedic treat -- Amazon directed me to "Groves", where I quickly proceeded to become lost among the trees.

Like Kingsley Amis' "Lucky Jim", a book I found to be absent much appeal, McCarthy offers a highly literate analysis of the travails of a male professor struggling at university after World War II. McCarthy's Henry Mulcahy is strapped by poverty, with a sickly wife and four children, in a temporary teaching position offered, in part, out of a sense of guilt by the college president. Then Mulcahy gets the dreaded and unexpected "non-renewal" letter.

Some aspects of academic life have not changed in fifty years: petty squabbles and politics, the longing for job security, the poor wages of some professors, the need for intrinsic interest in teaching, the complaints about students' habits. But the focus on communism and loyalty oaths as a basis for job insecurity is a distant memory to most people. And Mulcahy's own dishonesty (or grasp of reality) left me confused rather than sympathetic. Rather I found myself attuned to Mulcahy's nemesis, the president.

The story is simple yet the tone of the book put me off. There was more philosophy than conversation, and when academics did speak, they spoke in a fashion most would find hard to expect in conversation. I grew bored. The characters weren't that interesting despite their intelligence, and I found myself speed reading the last thirty pages. And I found myself as displeased with "Groves" as I had been with "Lucky Jim".

Sometimes very literate and well-educated authors don't translate well to my level, to meet my self-admittedly need for a clearer, more linear story and engaging characters.

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

This book gave me the same desire I sometimes have at an art gallery, to touch up someone else's painting; not that it's not a good painting, but if I were painting it...Anyway, this work will amuse those deep in the belly of the academic beast, but knowing that they would be her audience, why did the author spend so much time explaining the minutiae of life at a small college? A reference here and there would have been sharper. If you haven't yet read Kingsley Amis's _Lucky Jim_, start there, and leave this for later.

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 universals and first principles; the students take to them like catnip if they¡¯re given half a chance¡­A student reads an author for his ideas, for his personal metaphysic, what he calls, till you people teach him not to say it, his ¡®philosophy of life.¡¯ He wants to detach from an author a portable philosophy.¡±

I don't think McCarthy would write that if she didn't want a reader to approach her book from that angle. And for that matter, take the following:
Quote:
His talk was, in fact, so clear that the best disposal the Literature faculty could make of it was to assume that they had not understood it, that of the proverbial four levels of meaning that they so stringently enforced on their classes they themselves had seized only on the literal and had failed of the moral, the allegorical, and the anagogical.

There's a whole scene, in chiaroscuro, where Bentkoop & Domna work out the philosophical ramifications of Mulcahy's behavior. Here¡¯s the tail end of the conversation, throughout which, Domna attacks Mulcahy & Bentkoop apologizes for him.

Quote:
¡°This abrogation of judgment you practice is an insult to man¡¯s dignity. Everybody has the right to be judged and to judge in his turn. This ¡®understanding you accord Henry is dangerous, both to him and to you. God is our judge, you will tell me. But there is no God. God is man.¡± The blasphemous words rang out; the windows rattled; but John seemed unaffected. ¡°God is man, Domna, if you wish,¡± he said gravely. ¡°But He is not men.¡±
Domna suddenly looked tired. ¡°No,¡± she admitted. ¡°I suppose in a certain way I am on your side. If I presume to judge Henry, I don¡¯t presume to punish him. That is not my affair. She sighed. ¡°And yet I can¡¯t help but feel that I¡¯m implicated in a frightful swindle.¡±

This passage can be interpreted from a variety of angles. Morally, a middle ground between condemnation & forgiveness is reached. The ethical heart of the matter is located in the individual¡ªnot in any institutions, dogmas, or formulas. Any human being can judge another, precisely because of their shared humanity. The ¡°first principles¡± mentioned before are the basis for such judgments, not the formulations--political, intellectual, or religious¡ªof ¡°men.¡± The foremost of these principles is dignity. It¡¯s beneath the dignity of man (forgive the gender bias) to surrender the power of judgment to any outside force. But it is also beneath the dignity of man to punish the accused. The allegorical angle can be extracted painlessly. Between the McCarthyites on the one side & the Communists on the other, the dignity of the common man was hard pressed in the 1950¡¯s (as it is nowadays between the neocons & the fundamentalists) As for the anagogical angle, just replace the ¡°dignity of man¡± with ¡°God in man¡± and there you have it.

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.