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

James Hynes (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: April 15, 1998

A New York Times Notable Book of the Year
A Publisher's Weekly Best Book of the Year

Combining the wit of David Lodge with Poe's delicious sense of the macabre, these are three witty, spooky novellas of satire set in academia—a world where Derrida rules, love is a "complicated ideological position," and poetic justice is served with an ideological twist.

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." --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.

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. --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.

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Product Details

• Paperback: 338 pages
• Publisher: Picador; First Edition edition (April 15, 1998)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0312186967
• ISBN-13: 978-0312186968
• Product Dimensions: 8.4 x 5.5 x 0.9 inches
• Shipping Weight: 11.2 ounces (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 3.6 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (36 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #343,300 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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Most Helpful Customer Reviews

6 of 6 people found the following review helpful

3.0 out of 5 stars Fun, spooky, intelligent, and disposable October 3, 2006

By Jason Mierek

Format:Paperback

Publish and Perish comprises three creepy novellas, all involving professional academics with roots in the University of the Midwest in Hamilton Groves, MN. Each tale is a spooky satire on the cut-throat intrigues that characterize contemporary academe. "Queen of the Jungle" deals with the unusual fallout from a career-driven commuter marriage, including marital infidelity, feline incontinence, and gypsy mysteries, but it does so without providing one likable character. "99" (which begins on page 99---talk about good typesetting!) relates the misadventures of one Gregory Eyck, an arrogant and downwarly mobile cultural anthropologist (with tenure!) who inadvertantly ends up doing fieldwork on neo-pagan sacrifice---from the inside. Though the story was fun, it was definitely derivative of the classic novel and film "The Wicker Man." The last, longest, and arguably best story, "Casting the Runes," is based upon names and ideas in the M.R. James ghost story of the same name. In it a young postmodern historian fights not only for tenure, but for her very life, against an eldritch elder professor who will stop at nothing to maintain his career. All in all a fun, spooky, intelligent, but disposable read.

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

Format: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

Format: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