The Lecturer's Tale

by James Hynes

The author of Publish and Perish returns with a Faustian tale of the horrors of academe

Nelson Humboldt is a visiting adjunct English lecturer at prestigious Midwest University, until he is unceremoniously fired one autumn morning. Minutes after the axe falls, his right index finger is severed in a freak accident. Doctors manage to reattach the finger, but when the bandages come off, Nelson realizes that he has acquired a strange power--he can force his will onto others with a touch of his finger. And so he obtains an extension on the lease of his university-owned townhouse and picks up two sections of freshman composition, saving his career from utter ruin. But soon these victories seem inconsequential, and Nelson's finger burns for even greater glory. Now the Midas of academia wonders if he can attain what every struggling assistant professor and visiting lecturer covets--tenure.

A pitch-perfect blend of satire and horror, The Lecturer's Tale paints a gruesomely clever portrait of life in academia.

Genres: Fiction, Fantasy, Academia, Horror, Humor, Contemporary, Dark Academia

388 pages, Hardcover

First published January 8, 2001

About the author

James Hynes’ essays and book reviews have appeared in the New York Times, the Washington Post, Boston Review, and Salon.

A native of Michigan, he attended the University of Michigan and the Iowa Writers' Workshop. He has taught fiction writing at the University of Iowa, the University of Michigan, Miami University, Grinnell College, and the University of Texas. He lives in Austin, Texas.

Reviews

[Kathrina · Rating 4 out of 5]

This was probably not the best choice of reading material as I begin the steps towards graduate school; but I'm certainly now more alert. The first chapter is about the best piece of writing I've read in years, and the tale spins out from there in wildly unpredictable ways. Suddenly we're jumping off a cliff and falling up, reminding me of LaValle's Big Machine, beginning with a realistic intro with a dash of fantasy, followed by huge dollops of over-the-top supernatural fireworks. This book almost lost me in the last 100 pages during the Valentine's party, but the climax brought me home. Hynes has thought through every detail of his tale, and begs for close reading. Every allusion is real, every name is on purpose. Are Nelson's daughters named Clara and Abigail referring to Cane and Abel? I'm sure of it. Is the water-stained map of literary England a portent? Of course. There's enough packed in here for a whole semester of literary/queer/gender/street cred/vampire theory, and Hynes tempts you to go that route and then laughs at you, you literary snob, you. Some professional reviewers seem to believe Hynes is backing the straight-white-guy pathos, but I think he's making as much fun of him as he is everyone else. I think you'll agree once you see what happens to this major university English department once it loses its library and is chaired by said straight-white-guy. This book has it all, from scenes of fire and brimstone reminiscent of, well, the Bible and The Name of the Rose: Including Postscriptto domestic tragedy ala Arthur Miller, and the best part is, Hynes invites you to make these allusions, as he unremittingly makes them himself. The more fiction you've read, the more you'll love it; the more theory you've espoused, the more you'll gnash your teeth. It's a wild-ride tale with a not so insubstantial moral comment on the relevance of fiction.

[Renee · Rating 2 out of 5]

I should love this book. The critiques of literary criticism, queer theory, the politics and absurdities of academia, all of that ring very true. There are some lovely imbedded references to literature, primarily the hoary old chestnuts of the canon, with a few nods to the New Canon of Tokenistic Inclusion. It's self-aware and ironic and yet also strangely earnest.

In short, I should be the audience for this book.

And yet. I'll give it "good" primarily because rarely does anyone so accurately send up a Lit department, and I've got my own axes to grind on that score. It has so much to recommend it, so what's wrong? There are plenty of issues: the plot is a pastiche of a handful of very well known, canonical tales, for one. That's not inherently a problem, especially if you hold to the Campbellian view that there are only the few megamyths. But, if you're writing an insider's book, a send-up of the sense and sensibilities of a literature department, you should probably expect that some of your audience will not only get your references, but will in fact get there somewhat ahead of you. If you're going to be snottily superior about your own erudition and cleverness, then you had better dazzle me, and this just doesn't get it done.

That's not the worst of its sins, though. The big issue for me is that the lead character is a douche due several metric tons of comeuppance. And while the author all but transparently tell you that he thinks of old Nelson as a charismatic Gatsby or a Hemingway broken-heart or some other (allegedly) lovable ass and that we should too, the fact that the author has to step forward to tell you that you should love the guy, accept his utter lack of redeeming qualities, and find him "charismatic" should have been a hint to the author and editors that, as written, he's an alienating jerk to read about, and I for one don't root for him even once after about fifty pages in.

I don't want to spoiler plot, so I won't get into specifics, but the whole mishmash falls apart under its own preciousness and self-congratulation by the third act, and by the end finishing it became the subject of more morbid curiosity than genuine suspense. It starts out an incisive if bitter satire and ends up a paean to the mediocre but entitled middle class white professional man who rages at the world which promised him a kingdom and then told him he had to earn his keep. I can't think of anyone whose poor-little-mes interest me less, or ring more false.

In the final analysis: if you're a lit grad student, academic grunt, or disenchanted humanities major, give it a read at least through the first 100 pages for the gleeful calling-out of the b.s. run amok in literature departments. After that, it's your call.

[Amanda · Rating 3 out of 5]

Part supernatural fantasy and part sharp-edged satire of the world of academic English departments. This may be one of the first campus novels to take on the plight of adjunct and contingent faculty, or at least one of the first that I've read. This passage in particular, a description of the underpaid composition instructors in the basement of the fictional English department, has stuck with me:

"Above the industrial hum rose the steady murmur of lonely women in their thirties and forties, their cubicles lined up like sewing machines in a shirtwaist factory. ... In each cubicle a thin woman in thrift shop couture sat earnestly tutoring some groggy student in a point of grammar or the construction of an argument, and each woman looked up at Nelson as he passed with the hollow-eyed, pitiless gaze of the damned. ... They combined the bitter esprit de corps of assembly-line workers with the literate wit of the overeducated: They were the steerage of the English department, the first to drown if the budget sprang a leak. They were the Morlocks to the Eloi of the eighth floor."

(And let's just say that I know the university that Hynes' fictional university is based on, and while his satire sometimes exaggerates to the point of caricature...at other times, it doesn't exaggerate all that much. I laughed, but I also winced in recognition. Many times over.)

[Alan · Rating 4 out of 5]

The Western Canon is on the run. All those books by Dead White Males, the "male and pale" - those volumes that to some minds define civilization, are beseiged, under attack from every quarter, their territory surrounded and encroached upon by upstarts and pretenders of every stripe. It'd take magic, some (to coin a term) deus ex machina , even to eke out a compromise that allows Shakespeare and Milton and James Hogg (who?) and their august company to retain a little shelf space in the new university. Or so it appears, anyway, from Nelson Humboldt's viewpoint as a university lecturer - former lecturer, really, since he's just been fired from the faculty of prestigious Midwestern University.

And then... the miracle actually happens. A little bit of magic. Nelson's finger is severed in a freak accident on the university Quad, and when it's reattached, he finds that he can use that finger to make people do, and think, what he wants them to.

Hilarity, or something very much like it, ensues. For Nelson's really not very good at deciding what to do with his new power, and his choices lead to some pretty funny consequences for him and for Hynes' cast of characters (and caricatures), all of whom are vividly-drawn (if sometimes a bit lacking in nuance). From the tough-talking department chairperson Tony Pescecane to Linda Proserpina in the Comp. Department, whom Nelson helps quit smoking with disastrous consequences, everyone has a comedic role to play.

Sharp observation of academia and precise, bitter sarcasm infuse this novel, and Hynes' pyrotechnic prose helps things along... his description of the poor part-time English Composition teachers in their basement cubicles (p. 63) is but one example:

A few composition teachers lived in hope: faculty wives making a little extra money; the department's own recent Ph.D.s teaching a year of comp as they played the job market. MFA students treading water as they finished their novels. But most of the comp teachers were divorced moms and single women with cats who taught eight classes a year and earned a thousand dollars per class, who clung to their semester-to-semester contracts with the desperate devotion of anchoresses. They combined the bitter esprit de corps of assembly-line workers with the literate wit of the overeducated. They were the steerage of the English Department, the first to drown if the budget sprang a leak. They were the Morlocks to the Eloi of the eighth floor.

From the Chaucerian title to the H.G. Wells reference above and beyond, Hynes shows an intimate familiarity with these beleaguered works. But Hynes also shows familiarity with, and often a great deal of sympathy towards, the challengers of the canon. Nelson himself experiences a telling epiphany about the arbitrariness and ubiquity of text. And, like his protagonist, Hynes seems to want to honor all literature, not just that which has been ratified by English professors. Hynes' foray into fantasy is not just a literary conceit; it's an admission that hey, maybe those pop-culture genres, those non-European, multi-gendered, transgressive fictions have a point after all. Generous of him, I know.


It takes awhile to get there, and it makes some pretty unsavory detours along the way, but in the end The Lecturer's Tale is a book with serious points to make about literature and inclusiveness. And, don't forget, it's funny too. Not many books can manage both. This is one of 'em.

[Jonathan K (Max Outlier) · Rating 3 out of 5]

An interesting read though I have to say I was completely thrown by how the story ends due to it's sexuality based paranormal/Gothic direction. That said, the mystical thing with the finger might have been the clue, but I honestly did not expect the outcome stated. The characters are interesting though and quite diverse and with some changes it might even have legs for adaptation to screen.

[Beverly · Rating 2 out of 5]

I eagerly turned to this book after loving Hynes' Next, but I was disappointed. Hynes must have been badly burned in the university, allusion intended if you read the book. In Next, in an offhand way, he portrays academics as the scorpions that I'm sure many are, but in The Lecturer's Tale he goes over the top. So this is a broad satire/farce with elements of a horror story about the absurdity of English Departments in the 1990s. And it was slow reading, full of action but somehow dull, maybe because the action was so predictable until the absurd ending.

A big problem is that I'm not sure about Hynes' ear for academic satire, and this book was full of it. The example that I'm familiar with is Milton. Hynes has his super-star department head having made his reputation on showing that Satan is the real hero of Milton's Biblical epic, Paradise Lost. But this is a very tired old hat argument that no one in any English Department near the turn of the 20th century would be even slightly impressed by.

I read this book all the way to the end, but it was kind of a waste of time.

[Slither · Rating 1 out of 5]

This is a "clever" book. The best way to explain is by example: in college I had a (disliked) housemate who was an English major. He once wrote a poem in which each line referred to a poem discussed in one of his classes, and the lines were in order. So, this poem could only be understood by about a dozen people in the world, who might think it amusing. But it was clever.

The beginning is very amusing to anyone who has some experience with English academics. But then the book falls apart. First, the author tells us what characters feel, even though there is no evidence that they do, in fact, feel that. And then they do random things. Finally, the book descends into nonsense. But, the nonsense corresponds to the literary theories that the characters discussed at the start! Wow, how clever. But not fun to read.

[Marne Wilson · Rating 3 out of 5]

This book gets three stars from me because some parts deserved five stars and some only deserved one. As someone who was getting a master's in English at the turn of the millennium, I can say with authority that Hynes really understands what life in an English department was like at that time. His narrator has many insightful things to say about "the culture wars," as people back then called the academic debate between theorists and traditionalists. (I know people today still use that term, but it means something entirely different now. Or maybe it is the same culture war, only it's spilled out of the ivory tower of academia and into the real world, where it’s no less obnoxious but has more real consequences.)

I also really loved the second chapter, which charts the academic history of the main character, Nelson Humboldt. Like all too many book lovers in that era, he got into literary studies because of his love of reading and writing and then gradually discovered that those interests could only be a detriment to his future as an academic. (I've been there, Nelson, which is why my only academic activity these days is writing Goodreads reviews.)

But on the other hand, as I told my husband approximately 542,000 times during the month it took me to slog through this book, Nelson is nothing but a dweeb, a wuss, and a milquetoast. Granted the power to make people do what he wants with the touch of a finger, Nelson has a clear choice: use the power selfishly, to get exactly what he wants out of life, or altruistically, to make people around him achieve their highest potential and work towards the common good.

Nelson does neither. Instead, he dithers around with no real plan, using his finger for only the dumbest things (like getting 20% off on a new computer) and getting no closer to either of his very modest goals: to keep his job on campus and get tenure for his best friend and officemate Vita. (Even with the ability to make anybody on earth do exactly what he wants just by touching them, these are the only goals he can think of, and he can't even make them happen. See why I think he's a dweeb?)

Even worse, Nelson keeps accidentally harming people with his powers. If he’s touching someone with his finger as they talk, any vague wish he expresses for them will come true. Several times he figures out that he has done this unintentionally, but he makes no effort to reverse the situation, even when he easily could. (C’mon, Nelson, if you’re gonna be a wuss, at least try to be a kind and compassionate one, ok?)

Although he's supposedly the driving force behind all the crazy events happening on campus, Nelson actually does very little to change them, and those "hilarious" things (which often struck me as nothing more than mean-spirited practical jokes) may very well have happened even without his magical abilities. Definitely the big twist ending (which may have seemed satirical 20 years ago but now seems entirely plausible) has nothing to do with him at all. And so this book ended with a dull whimper, and I was very glad to take it back to the library. (If only Nelson Humboldt had arrived with his magical finger to make me do it a few weeks earlier!) (But who are we kidding? He wouldn’t have made the effort.)

[Phyllis · Rating 5 out of 5]

Hilarious! RTC

[Booknblues · Rating 4 out of 5]

“Ah, but a man’s reach should exceed his grasp, Or what’s a heaven for” says Robert Browning and that is how James Hynes” The Lecturer’s Tale begins. This was what Nelson Humboldt’s father believed as a simple high school teacher. Nelson was really trying to outdo his father as a lecturer for Midwestern University in Minnesota, but things were not quite going as planned and his reach had far exceeded his grasp until that day when he was fired and his finger was severed in a freak accident.

Nelson begins to notice that his reattached finger has certain powers, he feels a burning pain in uncomfortable situation and finds that when he lays his hand on a person and makes a request he is able to convince him to his way of thinking.

Nelson is a sort of bumbling man struggling to survive with a wife and two daughters. He sees himself as a sort of centrist who could resolve the issues between the traditionalist and the post modernist in the Literature Department. His mentor Weissman presents the traditionalist argument to him:
“But here’s the perverse element in our present situation:Since the very idea of a canon is under attack, this puts our postmodern friends in the awkward position of giving with one hand and taking away with the other. Do you see the irony of it, Nelson? It would almost be funny were it not so tragic. Bright impressionable young people are introduced to important books and authors whom they most likely would never have read on their own, only to be told that these books are not to be trusted, that the authors’ motives are impure and political and--what’s the word?---hegemonic. They introduce their students to Jane Austen, say, they invite them to appreciate her ironic wit and the elegant precision of her prose and then--” he waved the knife and fork about--”hey, presto! You were wrong to like her! She’s a racist and an imperialist because she never mentioned the poor oppressed Jamaicans!”

While The Lecturer’s Tale an academician fairy tale, with the wildly stereotypical characters which ring true to anyone who has been enrolled in a college level class can identify with it. I remember an education professor discussing the hegemony of history presented to American high school students. It is a greatly entertaining and humorous read which moves along at a well developed pace and while somewhat predictable it manages to surprise the reader with some of its twists and turns.

[Realini Ionescu · Rating 5 out of 5]

The Lecturer’s Tale by James Hynes is one of the 1,000 Novels Everyone Must Read https://www.theguardian.com/books/200... and more importantly for the purposes of this dig, one of Realini’s Best 100 books of Fiction http://realini.blogspot.ro/

10 out of 10





This opus magnum is monumental, inspired, hilarious, complex – it covers all bases, for you find sophisticated analysis, erudite composition, detective story, hilarity, the absurd theater, and a good dose of horror and supernatural – all types of readers could and maybe should be enthralled, finding for each taste enough to make this a spectacular success and yet, for bizarre reasons, it comes nowhere near the success of the archetypal blockbuster Dan Brown works or Fifty Shades, and it has a ridiculously low number of ratings on goodreads and no Wikipedia page…this could be in part due to the turn the feuilleton takes towards the end, which puzzled the undersigned, who thought this is one of those cases where, if allowed, he would settle for a different ending and take the narrative in a different (nay, the opposite direction) field, where I would have Nelson Humboldt win the game (this is not to say that he is losing, and there is no need for spoiler alerts here) and dispense with the tower and the calamity, making some of the ghouls redundant, but not in the way the battle develops in the finale…



The chef d’oeuvre (it is so magnificent, powerful, hilarious a story, that even when disagreeing with the last episodes, there is no way of denying the mirth brought by eighty percent of the book) takes a sardonic look at life in university, the culture wars that have been intensifying in America, since the Tale had been published (yesterday, there has been a leaking, showing that The Supreme Court will soon decide to more or less ban abortion in the States, in spite of the fact that the public is mostly against this, three of the knaves on the Court have been appointed by a president that had lost the popular vote and confirmed by a Senate that represented a minority, making those of us living in places that had used to admire the workings of the ‘greatest democracy in the world and say like Pescecane, the chair from Midwest, ‘what the fuck’) there have been depressing developments, with the ‘very stable genius’ placed in the most powerful position in the world and increasingly mad charlatans implemented in the leadership of the party that will have the majority in just a few months…

Nelson Humboldt is the Lecturer and hero aka antihero of the story – ironically, he thinks of writing a Study of the Not So Bad, anti-heroes in major American stories, from Harry Armstrong of the Rabbit Run by John Updike fame http://realini.blogspot.com/2016/03/r... to The Sportswriter by Richard Ford http://realini.blogspot.com/2015/10/t... - and he has a very fragile position to begin with, when he is fired by Victoria Victorinix, head of his department, and he is losing a finger, in a freak accident, in front of the university where he had been a lecturer and he is now contemplating the end of this employment there, by the end of the year, this is all happening on Halloween, when he will get some magic powers.

They put the finger on, and soon we see the Lecturer gaining the advantages brought by the magic wand, in this case, the severed and re-attached index finger, so when he touches somebody (in some cases, when enraged, he takes a few foes by the throat) and tells them something, he becomes Chili Palmer from Get Shorty by Elmore Leonard http://realini.blogspot.com/2020/04/g... he ‘is the one telling you the way it is’ and massive transformations will occur…



Ostracized, ignored and destined to disappear into the void, he enters the limelight, once he pushes around with his Magic Finger, and albeit he is repentant towards the end, I do not see why - it is a joke, but seeing that the situation was desperate, he had had to act and if it did not have to be that extreme, aiming for the very top, his wife, Bridget, and daughters Clara and Abigail, had been in danger of evacuation and destitution…they had a jalopy car, lived in crammed conditions (for the USA anyway) and faced many limitations, and under the circumstances, few would have been less greedy, most would have aimed for the top job and yes, almost anybody is better than a crazy, primitive president, that looks likely to be re-elected in two years nevertheless and maybe he has a magic limb, to win ‘bigly’ with such a low IQ and zero EQ, the ultimate ad for dictators, Chinese and other, that point to him and say look at democracy in action…

Nelson would like to make peace between the two camps that are clashing on campus and in the civilized world then and now, with Victoria, Vita and a few others in the feminist corps, while the white males would try and push back, limiting progress and advances – there is a man that is not part of this, the hilarious Stephen Michael Stephen, an African American professor that has so much to do, that he gets no sleep and thus he falls in a trance in the elevator and anywhere else…he has taken to showing long films to students, so that he can take a nap while they watch and occasionally, at splendidly chosen moments, he wakes up and utters lines from Lawrence of Arabia ‘so long as the Arabs fight, they will be a little people…yes, Effendi…to Aqaba’-



The Lecturer’s Tale is brilliant in its mix of quotes from films – there are others, including from Monty Python, ‘nobody expects the Spanish Inquisition’- and Shakespeare, we have a contest where the chair Anthony Pescecane duels with Martin Weissman, each identifying the quote of the other, the play, act – the former is also a caricature and a show of clairvoyance, fro this is where things could go in America and around the world, with an emphasis on practical issues, to the elimination of others, Tony, as he would be known to celebrities (he has autographs from so many, including Marlon Brando, with ‘make me an offer I can’t refuse’) wants the street talk to dominate and he talks like a Michael Corleone, fuck this and that, and more grievously, he acts in that manner, interested in power only…

Anonymous letters are sent, with anti- Semitic and anti-gay messaging, thus The Coogan is expelled, with help from The Lecturer, who is promised three more years at the university, if he rejects the Irish Poet and teacher, only it will be proved that somebody else was sending the missives and tensions and fights will ensue – sometimes physical, but they are mostly battles of minds and strategy – gradually, the protagonist wins power and he is helped by the supernatural power he had gained with the outré accident, with which he eliminates candidates for tenure, making room for his friend Vita – who has a theory on the ‘lesbian phallus’ and proves more complicated than she/he already had been – eventually, Nelson descends into debauchery, cheats on his wife, maneuvers so that he can get not only tenure, but more and more power, nearly kills a homeless man, humiliates quite a few competitors and the whole thing has a Big Bang evolution…captivating, astounding, challenging, magic…

[Coyle · Rating 4 out of 5]

I'm not entirely sure how to review this book, mostly because I'm not entirely sure what I thought about it. I guess the best way to go about it will be to outline things I'm more certain about, and then move into things I'm much less certain about:
Strengths: Hynes is an excellent writer with a great sense of humor and a way with dialogue. He also clearly has a solid grasp on the state of academia (at least in the English departments) in the late 1990s. Additionally, he seems to know his primary sources (or at least has a good quote book), ranging from Shakespeare and Marlow to the much more obscure James Hogg.
Weaknesses: The plot is a bit, well, random. I think. Maybe he's drawing parallels with bits of literature I'm not familiar with, but it kind-of seems that one thing happens, and then another, with no real connection between any of them.

Things I'm less certain about:
I think my biggest uncertainty about the book is its theme. (Minor spoiler alert) The overall theme of the book is that the old way of doing scholarship (reading the canonical texts) and the new way of doing scholarship (criticizing the canonical texts, to the point where the texts aren't even read anymore, and the critic becomes more important than the text being criticized) are completely incompatible. The lead character (one hates to call him a "protagonist") has the goal of uniting the two ways of doing scholarship, but only ends up destroying academia all together. Herein, I think, lies the difficulty. The idea that tradition and novelty are mutually exclusive is a difficult one for me to swallow (maybe that's just latent idealism).
Another problem I have is the portrayal of the state of scholarship in the academy. I don't disagree that things are rough, and that academia is a stupid hierarchy, but this book goes to a satiric extreme. Which of course is the job of satire, but still...

Overall, an enjoyable and thought-provoking book, though I'm not sure that the thoughts it provokes are always quite the right ones.

Also, I'm glad I finished reading this after applying for jobs. If I hadn't, I might have been discouraged about academia all together.

[Marsha · Rating 3 out of 5]

Bursting at the seams with literary pedantry and pulsing with the bitterness of every thwarted novelist who ever wound up teaching bored and disaffected students, Mr. Hynes wittily skewers academia while pointing out what draws students and professors of classical and modern literature to its stagnant marshes. In a world where tenure is as coveted as the gold at the end of the rainbow (and seemingly as elusive), where faculty battle it out using Shakespearean slang and politically incorrect racial slurs, where gender construction, reconstruction and deconstruction muddle every argument, where pressure comes from public and private life, Hynes outlines just how one man can crack at the seams while dancing on a shrinking ice floe.

Mr. Hynes seems to have done his homework as no stone of vain scholarly pursuits is left unturned. He makes fun of the literature while making references to it that any well-read lit student will understand. His book makes you want to go out and read these famous and not-so-famous writers, if only to understand some of the pithier passages. (That both enhances the book and detracts from its pleasures as the reader’s mind spins away from the literature and wonders what the gag is.)

However, fantastical moments like a (wo)man disrobing in a bell tower with a weird silvery sprite creature get bogged down with philosophical rhetoric that reads like a dissertation by an overzealous English Lit student. Many passages in the book are like that; emotion gets buried under meaningless scholarly dribble. The whole moral aspect of Mr. Humboldt’s magic finger gets lost in a morass of collegiate gabble that only gets cleared up and swept away by an abrupt ending that left this reader a trifle dissatisfied. More matter with less art, as the Bard would write, would have suited this book better.

[Susan from MD · Rating 4 out of 5]

I finished The Lecturer's Tale today and really enjoyed it. It was very funny - definitely not a serious book about academic life!

The main character, Nelson Humboldt, is a lecturer in the English department at a small university. In the story, his life is pretty miserable, culminating on being fired and severing a finger on the same day. But all is not lost for Nelson, as his relationships with colleagues change over subsequent months.

The faculty and the "system" portrayed in the book are really parodies of actual faculties and academic departments. The personalities and behaviors over the course of the book become so over-the-top that the reader either tosses the book aside or has to jump on board the crazy train ... because it only gets more outrageous as the book goes on.

All of the academic archetypes are here - the power-hungry professors who don't mind grinding colleagues into the dust, the theorists, the more applied discipline advocates, the classically oriented old guys, the more radical academicians who want nothing to do with the old classics, the under-performing and insecure junior faculty, and so on. It really is quite a ride.

Again, though, this book starts off being believable, then meanders into over-the-top and finally ends up in fantasy land - be prepared!

[Justin · Rating 3 out of 5]

I've read this twice - once about halfway through my phd program, all in one stretch, on a flight from Houston to Yekaterinburg, Russia; the second time last week, 7-8 years later, as I approach my penultimate annual review before the university that employs me renders its tenure judgment. Both times I found it entertaining, though the cramp-inducing laughter I remember from that endless flight east didn't manifest when I re-read it recently. This time, though, I found the impact of the jokes watered down by the inaccuracies of academic life as portrayed by Hynes. Having read numerous "academic novels" over the years, I've come to realize that the best satire is that which is also the most accurate; Hynes has too many shots at satirical straw-men that stretch the point beyond a level of effectiveness.

Even with this, the book is a solid effort through the first 2/3 of the volume The final 1/3 reads like a wheel rotating faster and faster until it spins off its own axle. Without giving too much away, the damning moment turns out to be the Valentine's Day party the members of the department attend; everything after that is just another shovelful of dirt as the book digs itself deeper into an absurdly gothic train-wreck, the worst parts being a toss-up between a terrible passage taking place in the tower and a superficially moralistic take on privatized higher education.

[Johnathan Alesso · Rating 4 out of 5]

This unusual, wandering tale of the darkest side of university politics is a challenging, yet rewarding read. The smoldering, shadowy undertones match the scheming, amoral characters as they resort to the most primitive means to secure themselves tenure. The old joke about back-stabbing in a university English department is brought to full and literal life in these pages.

The main character, an irresolute, morally ambiguous, middle-aged professor of a Minnesota university uses an unexpected magical gift to rearrange departmental politics. His general life ennui is pierced by a surprise termination, after which he accidentally cut off his finger. Mysterious powers emerge from the accident, and he begin to bend people to his will in pursuit of conflicting personal and altruistic ambitions.

The prose has a haunting, ethereal quality to it that hooked me in what would otherwise be an overly lengthy, overly complicated plot. I enjoyed the changing atmospheres of the Minnesota seasons, and their fitting backdrop for the drudgery of university underemployment.

I highly recommend to anyone with a sarcastic take on academia.

[Christopher Rose · Rating 4 out of 5]

I’m a big fan of campus novels, the best being Russo’s Straight Man. Hynes’ The Lecturer Tale comes in at a distant second. That’s not saying anything bad about Hynes—it is just that Straight Man is that good.

The novel, TLT, follows a lecturer after his three year contract is up at a major institution. As he is about to be kicked out of married housing, a freak accident causes him to lose a finger, and when it is reattached, he discovers that he has the ability to impose his will (assuming he touches the person with his finger). What follows is a story that navigates all aspects of the university life (and English departments more specifically): division of labor, the way literature positions are more prominent than composition, departmental politics, theory vs literature, discussion of canon, bureaucracy of power, gender and academia, and, most importantly in my estimation, the perils of deconstruction.

I recommend this book to campus novel lovers and anyone with a passing interest in English studies.

[Jeff · Rating 3 out of 5]

This one had a lot of heart. I love reading stories about English professors and the state of academia today. I respect the author's courage on calling out (and doing so much more than once) the effects of modern feminism on education and academic workplaces (if not all workplaces); and just the ignorant, greedy, and all around unnecessary games that "adults" will play with each other.

It's all there. But the problem with this book is that the author also has no problem getting randomly lost in his own thoughts, introducing characters that have no relevance to the plot and takes his reader into the ever growing and confusing cyclone with him. It's too bad, as this was all radiating with potential, but only delivering a good story and sociological truths only at select intervals that were to few and far between.

[Jasmine · Rating 1 out of 5]

It was like Hynes was trying to write a gothic novel, an academic novel, and a treatise against the theory-focused academy, but found that he didn't have enough material for all of them, so he combined them. Any interesting parts seemed like he was just trying too hard to be funny or to conform to the stock characters/scenes/etc. that are "expected" in the genres he chose. I found this to be a remarkably terrible book.

[Kari Mathias · Rating 2 out of 5]

Hynes is a very talented writer, and I actually enjoyed most of the book. However, the book takes a turn for the crazy near the end, opening a lot of new plot holes that never get resolved. It left a bad taste in my mouth, and made me feel very uncomfortable. Maybe black comedy just isn't my thing, but I thought it was very odd. I wouldn't read it again.

[Bill FromPA · Rating 4 out of 5]

A terrific campus novel, funny and sharply satirical. Its Protean inventiveness justifies its length. I felt that I had to shave one star from my rating because the climax is just too shaggy, a mixture of blow 'em up Hollywood action excess and the off the wall symbolism of The Man Who Was Thursday: A Nightmare. In undertaking a campus novel with heavy Gothic and supernatural elements, the author committed himself to something of a high-wire act that was almost sure to break down at some point, and sure enough it did, though what a wild and delightful ride it is up to that point. Hynes explicitly refers to James Hogg, the subject of the protagonist's unpublished submissions, throughout the book, but I was more strongly reminded of The Monk, with the theme of a gift of supernatural power for which the wielder pays at the end.

[Noits · Rating 3 out of 5]

Well I thoroughly enjoyed this witty satirical pastiche of a campus novel until … it got surreal. The conclusion stretched credulity to breaking point and had me rolling my eyes. I feel it would have been a far better novel had the author not gone tripping on some outlandish plot twist and had followed a more organic course that stuck more closely to reality. Of course, there is plenty of room to “justify” or “rationalise” this portion of the plot but for me it just felt far too contrived and soured what, up to this point, had been a four star read. The book is also slightly too long and could have benefitted from a tighter edit.

I do like Hynes’ take on academia and he is eruditely funny (if you know you know) and his wee nods to literature throughout were highly entertaining.

[Chris Waterford · Rating 2 out of 5]

I loved "Next" and "Publish and Perish" but this book was very disappointing. The singular theme, having a magical power, was okay and probably would have been suited by a short story. However this theme was swamped by Academic mumbo-jumbo which was as impenetrable as a thick forest---which should not have been cut down to publish this. Two stars for the writing quality.
5/10

[Tom Anichini · Rating 1 out of 5]

The first 3/4 of the book did not earn the suspension of disbelief required for the remaining 1/4.

Which is too bad, because I really enjoyed the writing. But excellent writing did not earn or excuse the abrupt pivot to horror .

The switch was so abrupt it was jarring, as if the publisher had accidentally spliced together works by two different writers.

[Clayson Shumway · Rating 4 out of 5]

I'm not sure I've ever read a book where I oscillated between loving it and hating it as much as this one. The middle section was riding high and absolute poetry, but the ending seemed to leave something lacking. I am just being a hater though, because I'm not sure how I would have preferred the story to end.

[Drake Puryear · Rating 2 out of 5]

I think this book may be more enjoyed by someone who has more literary appreciation and knowledge than I but still at the end I’m left speechless in a “what the heck actually happened” and not in a positive tone. I really don’t know what to think of it but here’s to hoping someone finds greater appreciation of it than I can.

[wally · Rating 5 out of 5]

this is the second from hynes for me...some sort of satire of the academic world. verily. did the casual walk-through of a few reviews...wanted to see/read the salient points...the potential of this one sounds hinky-doobie, like as portrayed on the cover, this deal with the fingergtip sparkling to life...some sort of midas-touch deal...hmmmm.

there's two thingies from others on white pages to start out...a quote from james ogg, the private memoirs and confessions of a justified sinner...a quote that is painful to the eyes, almost as painful as the quote from chaucer's, "the pardoner's tale"...that ends thus: "thou art so fals and so unkynde, allas?"

ha ha ha ha!

then we got a contents page that provides dear reader with: contents

part one: a man's reach.

chapter 1. all hallow's eve
2. curriculum vitae
3 the curse of fu manchu
4. nelson in the underworld
5. the seminar luncheon
6. professor weissmann explains

but i'm getting ahead of myself...i shall return...

chapter one, a man's reach, a quote from robert browning, "ah, but a man's reach should exceed his grasp, or what's a heaven for"...thing called "andrea del sarto"...sounds like a woman about her business. hey?

begins:

"crossing the quad on a halloween friday, as the clock in the library tower tolled thirteen under a windy, dramatic sky, nelson humboldt lost his right index finger in a freak accident. someone called his name three times out of the midday press of students, and as he turned to answer, nelson stumbled over a young woman stooping to the pavement behind him. falling backward, he threw his hand out to catch himself, and his finger was severed by the whirring spokes of a passing bicycle."

this is too weird...one of those full-on deja vu moments...as in the last story i read, Sudden Prey from John Sandford concerns itself w/the relocation of a thumb, a right thumb of a farmgirl who would be lost without her right thumb. no? isn't this like, the ultimate strangeness? i mean, two lost digits in a day? course, that calls to mind the lobstrosities...from The Drawing of the Three by Stephen King...dadda-chick...dadda-chum? dastardly.

update, finished a bit ago, 30 may 12, wednesday...8:49 p.m. e.s.t. still daylight out and will be for another hour?...or so

yeah, so at times a funky story...this, mostly coming toward the end, so read on read on....the story, silly.

what i find interesting is this idea expressed, perhaps by...who was it? what was it? vita?...perhaps by vita...this idea that i will express as a sort of wheel, or a snowball, rolling downhill, but in vita's example, the motivation was...rage...perhaps. rage...perhaps. but then you take that idea, rage, greater and greater rage...was it rage?...but you take that same sort of thing and apply it to....ummm...literary theory.

it's like each succeeding....whatever...needs to outdo the scene that went before...ever reaching toward a greater and greater climax...and that's where this weirdness comes in...this scene in the bell tower...

earlier....say like getting into the story about 25% give or take...i was wondering where the academic satire was located....the final chapter by the way is titled chapter one i am born...copperfield, but you already knew that... so yeah, i was wondering why this was called satire...not satire as i am more familiar with...Harry Crews....Jonathan Swift...but it does get there...all those dry academics and such....or i am not awake...as one professor spends the story, asleep....okay...so maybe that was a bit harsh...the satire was there early on...did it go away?

so...good read. sorry....i don't have the chapter headings here...got up to chapter 6 up above and so on so forth.

okay...back to page one..."a man's reach"....a line repeated through much of the story, or at least, through the first 1/2..."ah, but a man's reach should exceed his grasp, or what's a heaven for?" from robert browning....

then...a line toward the end...."the letter killeth but the spirit liveth?"....something from the bible, 2nd corinthians...

so there are these various factions all endeavoring to persevere...to one up the other...each trying to attain their own personal heaven...at the emasculation of the other...no matter what other...simply the other that does not agree...

how'd the line go? 'the zombies after all had been taught not to denigrate the different...' all these paradoxes seems like

this is a story that raises more questions for me than answers...hence...a good read, one that i will likely return to again.

[James S. · Rating 2 out of 5]

I was strongly on board until the part where Nelson learns his that his finger can control other people. Where's the drama or suspense if all he needs to do to improve his situation is touch someone? Got to page 75.

[Megan Doney · Rating 2 out of 5]

I found parts of this hysterically funny; as an English professor I'm privy to some of the in-jokes about critical theory. Plot-wise, it dissolved, though-and I don't think it's going to hold up well in time.
If you want a magical realist campus novel, go for Fool on the Hill by Matt Ruff.

[Natalie · Rating 3 out of 5]

What a crazy book. I liked the names of the characters and the discussions of theory, especially gender identity-but just what in the world? I tried to read it as a mystery but maybe in doing so I missed the farcical fun that others mentioned in their reviews.