Word: mallons
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...academic pressure has not stopped scholars from leading a double life, scholar by day and novelist by night. Now Thomas Mallon has returned to the scene of Segal's crime, Arts and Sciences, his first fictional work, tells the story of a young man's passage into adulthood in Cambridge, Mass...
...Mallon attempts to relieve the tedium of his stereotypical plot by creating exaggerated characters who often seem more ridiculous than humorous. Mallon's penchant for defying convention, if even in the most conventional of ways, is evident in his intentional mangling of the names of Harvard buildings. Sever Hall is reincarnated as Cleaver, and Warren House is transposed to Warble House...
...Mallon delights in his disregard for the facts. In a disclaimer he writes, "Just as the people herein never existed, and the incidents described didn't happen, all sorts of Harvard rules, buldings and curricula, along with other bits of reality, have been tampered with and rearranged in order to accommodate this novel's fictive whims and entirely harmless purpose...
That is not to say that Mallon's novel lacks pretension--it doesn't Mallon is an academic by profession and it shows. Few pages are without allusions. Art's love for Keats has earned him the nickname "Urn Man," and Mallon peppers his novel with frequent allusions to the romantic poet. The book starts with a description of Artie's Greek homework, later quoted, and the text has the requisite invocations of Matthew Arnold, Shakespeare and Joyce. Moreover, Mallon throws in details about contemporary political events, such as Pattie Hearst's kidnapping...
Which raises the question as to whether Mallon should be writing fiction at all. In Segal's case, his work made bestseller lists, whatever its literary merits. But Mallon will not achieve similar popularity. And though he should not be shamed out of academia for his fictional foray, he should consider whether he wants to taint his critical reputation by writing schlock...