Word: novelizations
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Dates: during 1980-1989
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...novel's start, Artie's only friend is Shane, a hippie-druggie from Brown. But he is unreliable, floating in and out of Artie's life unpredictably...
...twelve men who this stuffy room fill,/Two I'd like to screw, three I'd like to kill," she tells him in the note that serves as the overture to the relationship. Unfortunately, the line is the best thing about the affairs, if not the novel. The rest of the novel is primarily occupied with the two's inability to cope with themselves and each other...
...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...
With its caricatured characters, the relentless chronicling of Artie an Angela's relationship--from inception to ride-off-in-the-sunset ending--Arts and Sciences is at best uninspired and only mildly amusing. And though it may quote Greek and allude to Keats, Mallon's novel remains a mainstream work. Let it float...