The Handmaid of Desire [Hardcover]

John L'Heureux (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: September 1996

A laugh-out-loud, merciless novel about the petty ambitions of academics and the self-congratulatory, self-referential, and self-absorbed intellectuals offers politically incorrect views of contemporary manners, power, lust, babies, and money. 20,000 first printing.

Editorial Reviews

Amazon.com Review

John L'Heureux, who teaches creative writing at Stanford University, mines the ego-ridden and priority-skewed hallways of academia for the characters of his latest novel, which pokes a satirical finger at the lot of literature academics. The book is set in the English department of an unnamed California university. Among the many skewers that he sticks faculty members with is his categorization of them into two types, fools and Turks. Yet not all is lost when in sweeps a brilliant theorist and novelist who attempts--often successfully--to open some eyes, turn some heads, and, ultimately, change some behaviors.

From Publishers Weekly

The absurdities of academe are a springboard for L'Heureux's 15th book, a wacky tale of lust, intellectual pretension, petty jealousy and divine intervention in the English department at a distinguished, but unnamed, Northern California University. When Olga Kominska, an enigmatic visiting professor, arrives to teach a seminar on Foucault and to begin work on her next novel, she encounters a department riven by sexual affairs, frustrated ambitions and bitter rivalries between young theorists and old formalists. Zachary Kurtz, the Machiavellian young Turk who lured Olga to the university, is plotting to overthrow the department of English and erect in its place a department of Theory and Discourse, where all texts will be studied "with absolute indifference to the author's reputation or the Western canon or the nature of writing itself." Yet the balance of power he seeks is in jeopardy: the ascendant chairman, Robbie Richter, who is Kurtz's pet, has a nervous breakdown; Tortorisi, a maladroit homunculus whom Kurtz despises, is writing a scathing roman a clef about the department; Peter Peeks, a lithe, vacuous surfer who swears that "Foucault is a god" is on the make among the faculty; and virtually every young professor on staff is desperate for a baby. Olga faces such challenges with a novelist's aplomb. Mary Poppins-like, swooping down from on high with a preternatural charm that makes her everyone's confidante, she sets out to answer the prayers of her colleagues; the results, of course, are drolly disastrous. L'Heureux (The Shrine at Altamira), who teaches English at Stanford, offers a witty new spin on Foucault's notion of the death of the author. Yet his tone throughout is one of arch silliness, and his interest in character is coldly satirical, lending this book a smugness that makes it far less engaging than the academic spoofs by David Lodge or Jane Smiley to which it will no doubt be compared.
Copyright 1996 Reed Business Information, Inc.

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Product Details

• Hardcover: 264 pages
• Publisher: Soho Press; 1st edition (September 1996)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 1569470731
• ISBN-13: 978-1569470732
• Product Dimensions: 8.4 x 5.8 x 1.1 inches
• Shipping Weight: 14.4 ounces
• Average Customer Review: 3.3 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (12 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #2,804,346 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

13 of 15 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars L'Heureux picks up where Camille Paglia leaves off., March 1, 1999

By A Customer

This review is from: Handmaid of Desire (Paperback)

I roared at Olga Kominska's gnomic observations, as well as her ability to coax nudity of body or soul from pretentious masters of the hidden agenda. She needs no more than "Constant Comment" (!) tea, stale cookies, and the sort of insight into human nature that French theory merely hopes to deliver. Her ironic refrain of "up to a point" seems only to crescendo with repetition--one of many reasons why I credit L'Heureux with talent of a high order.

"Handmaid" is a subtle work whose admirable tension between thematic sophistication and stylistic economy might be thrown away on some--perhaps those too privileged to laugh at their own caricature. Moreover, even as he satirizes it, L'Heureux makes wickedly clever use of Postmodernist theory, weaving the tangled perspectives it seeks to deconstruct into the very fabric of his plot. Form and content crystallize into a razor-edged commentary on the closet elitism, myopia, and self-deception of the "literary" herd.

1 of 1 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars Supercalifragilisticexpialidocious, August 8, 2008

By 

Keyah (Atlanta, GA USA) - See all my reviews

This review is from: The Handmaid of Desire (Hardcover)

I am one of the "fools". Well, that's the only sympathetic group in this novel, and they are marginalized. With personal experience of a college French department where the dominant element would gladly push out that pesky language and literature and style itself The Department of Theory and Discourse, I admit that much of my delight in this satire comes from the in jokes.

However, there is another dimension here that appeals to any reader interested in the task of writing fiction, which L'Heureux (how do you pronounce this happy name in American, anyway?) deconstructs even as he sends up Deconstruction. Who can resist the parallel of Olga, in her role as Author, to Mary Poppins? She alights on the scene, opens her carpetbag of tricks, manipulates her unsuspecting charges and, having changed everything, disappears into the air.

1 of 1 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars A writer just might manipulate lives for fiction., February 26, 1997

By A Customer

This review is from: The Handmaid of Desire (Hardcover)

To appreciate, L'Heureux's novel let yourself deconstruct the intentions of the narrative. On the surface, this sordid story answers the question why most English MAs don't proceed to earn Ph.Ds. Anybody who has spent a year in a graduate English department can relate to the foolish politics as an outsider or a victim. For those who dwelled in a more nurturing environment, here's some relief. Be patient with the cynicism, cruelty and an underlying opinion that sexual intercourse is something special as an adolescent will attest. The names of literary critics drop like pellets under a swarm of gerbils -- still play along. L'Heureux's latest novel is something more than a personal vendetta -- It's literature verite, how novels are made