Pictures from an Institution (Phoenix Fiction) (Paperback)

~ (Author) "Half the campus was designed by Bottom the Weaver, half by Ludwig Mies van der Rohe; Benton had been endowed with one to begin with,..." (more)
Key Phrases: Miss Batterson, President Robbins, Miss Rasmussen (more...)

Editorial Reviews

Amazon.com Review

Randall Jarrell's only novel features a Bryn Mawr-like women's college in which whispers and verbal shivs and sycophancy rule. "Half the campus was designed by Bottom the Weaver, half by Ludwig Mies van der Rohe; Benton had been endowed with one to begin with, and had smiled and sweated and spoken for the other." The institution's star-struck head is a Clintonesque young man particularly adept at raising money in Hollywood and who "wanted you to like him, he wanted everybody to like him--it was part of being a president; but talking all the time was too." Unfortunately, his new creative-writing hire only likes him the first time they meet. Thenceforth, she not only stirs things up but skewers them as well.

When the book was first published in 1954, most considered Gertrude Johnson to be a none-too-veiled portrait of Mary McCarthy. (The Partisan Review, for instance, failed to run a planned excerpt for fear of litigation.) "As a writer Gertrude had one fault more radical than all the rest: she did not know--or rather, did not believe--what it was like to be a human being. She was one, intermittently, but while she wasn't she did not remember what it had felt like to be one; and her worse self distrusted her better too thoroughly to give it much share, ever, in what she said or wrote." Pictures from an Institution is a superb series of poisonous portraits, set pieces, and endlessly quotable put-downs. One reads it less for plot than sharp satire, of which Jarrell is the master.

Review

"The father of the modern campus novel, and the wittiest of them all. Extraordinary to think that 'political correctness' was so deliciously dissected 50 years ago."-Noel Malcolm, Sunday Telegraph

"Move over Dorothy Parker. Pictures . . . is less a novel than a series of poisonous portraits, set pieces, and endlessly quotable put-downs. Read it less for plot than sharp satire, Jarrell's forte."-Mary Welp

"I'm greatly impressed by the real fun, the incisive satire, the closeness of observation, and in the end by a kind of sympathy and human warmth. It's a remarkable book."-Robert Penn Warren --This text refers to the Kindle Edition edition.

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Product Details

• Paperback: 286 pages
• Publisher: University Of Chicago Press (April 15, 1986)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0226393747
• ISBN-13: 978-0226393742
• Product Dimensions: 7.8 x 5.6 x 0.6 inches
• Shipping Weight: 11.2 ounces
• Average Customer Review: 4.0 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (5 customer reviews)
• Amazon.com Sales Rank: #181,623 in Books (See Bestsellers in Books)

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Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

18 of 20 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Really worth the read, November 15, 2001

By	Jay Dickson (Portland, OR) - See all my reviews (TOP 500 REVIEWER)

Randall Jarrell's roman a clef about life in a small college, in that it centers upon a Mary McCarthyesque novelist who is herself embarking upon her own roman a clef (very much like THE GROVES OF ACADEME) about the "little people" who also trundle through the small college campus where she is allowed to stride magnificently like a contemptuous giantess. Thus the reader has the double pleasure of seeing her ironic views of the failings of the people around her contextualized by his or her ironic view of her own grosser moral failings. The giddy mise-en-abyme effect of this is tempered at the end, wherein the novel's narrating consciousness (our guide through this academic Wonderland ) must confront whether there is something to find beautiful--and sincerely--in this most artificial and insincere of playworlds. A wonderful work.

3 of 3 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars The Supreme Academic Novel, December 18, 2006

By	Stanley H. Nemeth (Garden Grove, CA United States) - See all my reviews (TOP 1000 REVIEWER)    (REAL NAME)

Author Randall Jarrell's brilliantly witty, prophetic novel from the middle of the last century shows in their bud many of the absurd developments which have come to full flower in current American academe. Endless Tolerance, Creativity, and Diversity are already the buzzwords par excellence at fictional Benton College of the 1950's. Accordingly , Jarrell presents us with an art department whose members are so open minded (i.e. reluctant to judge between good and bad) that "if someone dipped a porcupine in chocolate and called it modern, they'd swallow it." Similarly, a creative writing department replete with published authors brought in to teach students more ambitious than talented flourishes at Benton. One such student, Sylvia Moomaw, has written a story of which she's singularly proud. It involves a bug which wakes up in bed to find itself turned into a man. "Influenced by Kafka," she shyly acknowledges, when talking about her "artistry" to the skeptical central character, Sydney. Finally, Benton College is especially self-congratulatory over its efforts at outreach, seeking token representatives for Diversity's purposes, even from an area as remote and unpromising as Tierra del Fuego, lest anyone be excluded. If artists generally see in advance of the rest of us, this novel may be adduced as evidence for the point.

2 of 2 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Fall out of your chair, roaring funny!, June 15, 2006

By	Alexandra Ottaway - See all my reviews (REAL NAME)

I laughed out loud through the entire thing! People on the street would stop me and ask what was so funny. Randall Jarrell, a poet, and Mary McCarthy were on the Bard College campus at the same time in the '50's, when McCarthy was a writer in residence for a year. Jarrell shadows her cold-hearted fiction-gathering techniques, as she observes the Bard faculty in action(this is during the 1950's) for a book she wrote called The Groves of Academe. My piano teacher thought it was a mean-spirited view of McCarthy, but Jarell was a cose friend of hers; it's somewhat of a loving portrait. PS: Groves of Academe was also very good. Pictures is a "Making Of".