{"id":3036,"date":"2008-10-10T09:55:23","date_gmt":"2008-10-10T09:55:23","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/scienceblogs.com\/principles\/2008\/10\/10\/college-novels\/"},"modified":"2008-10-10T09:55:23","modified_gmt":"2008-10-10T09:55:23","slug":"college-novels","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/chadorzel.com\/principles\/2008\/10\/10\/college-novels\/","title":{"rendered":"College Novels"},"content":{"rendered":"

Over at Tor.com, Jo Walton has a post titled “College as magic garden: Why Pamela Dean’s Tam Lin is a book you’ll either love or hate”<\/a>. Tam Lin<\/cite>, for those who don’t know it, is a version of the old ballad<\/a> set at a liberal arts college in the upper Midwest (I believe it’s based on Carleton, but I’m not sure). Jo’s got a good description of it in her post.<\/p>\n

You might be surprised to learn that I come down on the “hate” side regarding this particular book. It’s not that the portrayal of the small liberal arts college environment is off, or anything– quite the opposite. It does a wonderful job of evoking the college experience of a subset of people who annoyed the hell out of me when I was at a small college. I always kind of wanted to smack them in real life, and I definitely want to smack them in the book.<\/p>\n

This raises the general question of College Novels, though, and as I’m kind of burned out at the moment, I figure this is a good topic to throw open to the audience:<\/p>\n

\n

What are your favorite College Novels?<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n

I’ve got two that I’d like to plug.<\/p>\n

<\/p>\n

The first, sticking with the fantasy-novel-in-a-college-setting thing is Matt Ruff’s<\/a> Fool on the Hill<\/cite>. It’s set at a version of Cornell, which doesn’t hurt, and it’s a good deal more direct than Tam Lin<\/cite>. It’s also about people who are a little closer to the people I knew and liked in college.<\/p>\n

In some ways, it’s a bit of a mess– it was his first novel, I beleive– but I liked it a good deal more than Tam Lin<\/cite>.<\/p>\n

The other is Joe College<\/cite> by Tom Perrotta, a novel about a poor kid going to Yale. This one’s a mainstream novel, so the courts of Faerie don’t show up, but it’s a dead-on portrayal of life at an elite college or university. The setting is a few years before my time, but I swear I can just about recognize everyone in it.<\/p>\n

It also does a terrific job with a wide range of class issues. It’s not too heavy-handed about it, but it’s got some great material on the gap between rich and poor in America.<\/p>\n

So, those are my favorite College Novels. Anyone else have suggestions?<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Over at Tor.com, Jo Walton has a post titled “College as magic garden: Why Pamela Dean’s Tam Lin is a book you’ll either love or hate”. Tam Lin, for those who don’t know it, is a version of the old ballad set at a liberal arts college in the upper Midwest (I believe it’s based… Continue reading College Novels<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"1","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[18],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-3036","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-books","entry"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/chadorzel.com\/principles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3036","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/chadorzel.com\/principles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/chadorzel.com\/principles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/chadorzel.com\/principles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/chadorzel.com\/principles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=3036"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"http:\/\/chadorzel.com\/principles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3036\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/chadorzel.com\/principles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=3036"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/chadorzel.com\/principles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=3036"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/chadorzel.com\/principles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=3036"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}