Publish and Perish: Three Tales of Tenure and Terror [Hardcover]

James Hynes (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: June 1997

In "Queen of the Jungle, " young academics Paul and Elizabeth appear to enjoy a comfortable, tenure-track marriage, commuting between their jobs on either side of the Midwest. When Paul begins an affair with a graduate student, Elizabeth's cat Charlotte deviously arranges revenge for her absent owner and teaches Paul a lesson about infidelity that can't be learned at any university. "99" is the story of Gregory Eyck, a cultural anthropologist whose conference on the death of Captain Cook fails miserably and threatens his career. Eyck accepts an assignment in England with the BBC and travels to a mysterious town near Stonehenge where he finds himself an unwitting participant/observer in a bizarre druidic ritual. And in "Casting the Runes, " a junior history professor named Victoria Dunning finds that she must defend not only her postmodernist ideology but also her very life from the greed and sorcery of an older, senior professor.

Editorial Reviews

Amazon.com Review

A typical line from Publish and Perish is the final thought of a character who's about to die in an oh-so-dreadful fashion: "This can't be happening to me. I've got tenure." Horror and humor together are always delightful, but rarely is the combination executed with such gleeful panache as in the three novellas that make up Publish and Perish. The humor is at the expense of American academics, from struggling postdocs to crusty full professors. The characters spout silly jargon, wrestle with their writing problems, preen their tender egos, and skewer their colleagues. Most are likeable: their vanity is so human, it's almost touching. But the horror isn't played for laughs; it's ruthless and chilling, in the tradition of Edgar A. Poe and M. R. James. As one New York Times reviewer writes, "Publish and Perish is an odd and exhilarating experience--the playfulness of post-modernism at its best somehow celebrating the urgent, earnest suspense of old-fashioned, cliff-hanging narrative."

From Library Journal

Three satirical novellas of academe serve up justice with a supernatural twist. In "Queen of the Jungle," a graduate student whose tenure-track wife commutes to Iowa from Chicago finds that their cat reacts badly to his affair with another student, exacting a fitting revenge. In "99," a disgraced anthropologist gets involved in a deadly druidic ceremony in England and wonders how such things could happen to "someone with tenure." "Casting the Runes" describes a young assistant professor in history who successfully fights a demonic senior professor only to find herself attracted to the occult. Hynes, a TV critic, novelist (Wild Colonial Boy, LJ 3/15/90), and professor himself, has a keen eye and ear for the absurd. Like Jane Smiley, he delights in skewering pomposity. He also deftly pokes fun at those who know little of the dangers in and beyond the ivory tower. Great entertainment.?Roland C. Person, Southern Illinois Univ. Lib., Carbondale
Copyright 1997 Reed Business Information, Inc.

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Product Details

• Hardcover: 338 pages
• Publisher: Picador USA; 1st Picador USA ed edition (June 1997)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0312156286
• ISBN-13: 978-0312156282
• Product Dimensions: 8.7 x 5.9 x 1.2 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1.2 pounds
• Average Customer Review: 3.6 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (35 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #2,204,106 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

7 of 8 people found the following review helpful:

3.0 out of 5 stars Mix(ed bag) of humor, terror, and academic life, January 1, 2002

By 

Peter Lorenzi (Maryland, USA) - See all my reviews

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This review is from: Publish and Perish: Three Tales of Tenure and Terror (Paperback)

Hynes offers up an at-times macabre blend of witchcraft, paranoia, and petty campus politics in three short stories/novellas. My conclusions are equally mixed.

As one with no special love for cats, for me the first story was frustratingly driven by an irksome feline, although producing more comic relief than terror. The second story, very much an homage to Edgar Allen Poe (and acknowledged by the author to be based on another, earlier short story), became transparent early on, stripping the story of surprise and leaving the rest of the story to reveal the grisly details. The third work, remarkably woven into the first two, a la David Lodge, was the best of the three, although witchcraft had more to do with the results than any academic talent or story.

Characters are well drawn and the context provides a realistic setting for the work: offices, conferences, professors' lodging, and campus landmarks. Hynes obviously has spent a lot of time on campus.

Universities provide fertile ground for stories. Professors use their skills, especially in the humanities, to build their resumes and to poke fun at the foibles of academic life. And, given that there seems to be more time absorbed by sex and sordid affairs than by teaching or doing any research, writing anything at all must seem miraculous to the reader. But rare be the campus treatise that captures the life of an academic. "Luck Jim", "Groves of Academe" and others have been popular but quite unrealistically overdrawn. Richard Russo's deft "Straight Man" is the best and funniest university novel I've read. As an academic myself, the concept of "Perish" had a dark appeal and, while I read it quickly, I felt more relieved than rejuvenated at the end.

12 of 15 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars If Poe Had a PhD., October 16, 2002

By 

Virginia Lore "rumtussle" (Seattle, WA United States) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: Publish and Perish: Three Tales of Tenure and Terror (Paperback)

If Edgar Allen Poe were a junior faculty member in a highly political department, this might be the kind of collection he'd write. James Hynes takes the old adage "publish or perish" to its most extreme and literal conclusion in these three novellas. In all three stories, a character's quest for academic credibility puts him or her in peril. Also in all three stories, the postmodern juts up against traditional academia, sometimes with gruesome results.

This is a fast read, perfect for the chilly nights of late fall when the wind howls `round the window frames and your motivation to grade those midterm finals is waning. And unless someone at work is actively planning your death, it'll make you feel better about your own department politics, whatever they may be.

8 of 10 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars Fun and Creative, August 28, 1997

By 

R. Kunath (Illinois, USA) - See all my reviews
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This review is from: Publish and Perish: Three Tales of Tenure and Terror (Hardcover)

I've read the first and the last of the stories in this volume, and both have their pleasures. In some ways I am fascinated by the way Hynes has been very imitative (his academic satire is cut very much from the David Lodge cloth and his spooky stuff comes straight from Poe and M.R. James), but, by combining imitations of two usually separate genres, he has produced something quite original. Anyone who has been to grad school in the humanities or social sciences since the early '80's will have a lot of fun with this book. But don't neglect to read the real "Casting the Runes" by M.R. James, one of the great ghost stories, which contains some sly academic humor too