A Tenured Professor

by John Kenneth Galbraith

When America's most distinguished economist last year turned his observant eye and celebrated brilliance to fiction, the result was hailed by the New York Times as "his wisest and wittiest" novel yet. A respected Harvard professor creates an economic forecasting model identifying speculative folly, enabling him of society's hidden agendas that is at once a morality tale and a comic delight.

Genres: Fiction, Economics, Novels, Humor, Literature, Philosophy

197 pages, Paperback

First published February 21, 1990

About the author

John Kenneth Galbraith was a Canadian-American economist. He was a Keynesian and an institutionalist, a leading proponent of 20th-century American liberalism and democratic socialism. His books on economic topics were bestsellers in the 1950s and 1960s. A prolific author, he produced four dozen books & over a 1000 articles on many subjects. Among his most famous works was his economics trilogy: American Capitalism (1952), The Affluent Society (1958) & The New Industrial State (1967). He taught at Harvard University for many years. He was active in politics, serving in the administrations of Franklin Roosevelt, Harry Truman, John Kennedy, and Lyndon Johnson. He served as US Ambassador to India under John F. Kennedy.

He received the Presidential Medal of Freedom twice: one in 1946 from President Truman, and another in 2000 from President Clinton. He was also awarded the Order of Canada in 1997, and in 2001, the Padma Vibhushan, India's second highest civilian award, for strengthening ties between India and the USA.

Reviews

[Steve Kettmann · Rating 4 out of 5]

This is a remarkable book. I came to it fresh as someone who has not read much JKG and found it's message amazingly timely: It would not be a stretch to say the book predicts the recent financial upheavals. I found the satire deliciously acidic at times and nicely sustained - no one expects JKG to have a full-time novelist's top-to-bottom polish, and he doesn't, but I still found it a delightful read.

[Stefania · Rating 3 out of 5]

Ήταν πολύ ωραίο να ξαναδιαβάζω κάτι σχετικό με την επιστήμη που σπούδασα, κάποιοι δεν παραδέχονται τα οικονομικά ως επιστήμη,εγώ πάλι τα αγάπησα και τα αγαπώ γιατί τα θεωρώ μια διευρυμένη επιστήμη που μπορεί και ενσωματώνει πεδία και άλλων επιστημών και αυτό πάντα το έβρισκα άκρως γοητευτικό. Το βιβλίο μας δίνει την διαχρονική εικόνα των αγορών που παρά τα διαφορετικά στοιχεία τους ανά εποχή έχουν έναν κοινό και πολυπαραγοντικό παρονομαστή. Αν μπορέσεις και ερμηνεύσεις τους παράγοντες του παρονομαστή και την ποσόστωση αυτών ανα εποχή μπορείς να ερμηνεύσεις και ίσως να προβλέψεις τις κινήσεις της αγοράς. Ο οικονομολόγος είναι όπως λέει ο Galbraith ένας μικρός διανοητής. Αυτό που αποτελεί τη προφητεία στο βιβλίο είναι η επερχόμενη στροφή από την παραγωγή και τις επενδύσεις στο πλασματικό χρήμα , κάτι που ίσως οδήγησε στις καταστάσεις που βιώσαμε και βιώνουμε τα τελευταία χρόνια

[Mariana Osorio Schlögl · Rating 1 out of 5]

Not for me.

[Pascale · Rating 3 out of 5]

The first thing I have to say is that the summary of the book on this website, which is copied from the back page of the paperback I own, is totally WRONG: the main character is called MarVin and not MarTin, and more importantly he doesn't initiate "mass hysteria that causes investors to assume that up is the only direction." On the contrary, the premise of the book is that Marvin's wealth derives from his early realization that, time and again, markets will overheat and investors will behave with unwarranted, and ultimately detrimental optimism. With the help of his very shrewd and ambitious wife, Marvin therefore develops a double life: to all appearances, he is just a run-of-the-mill economics professor, but all of his spare time is devoted to identifying stock that is going to crash in value, and shorting it. In this way he accumulates significant gains, which he devotes to promoting various good causes, but not in traditional philanthropic fashion. What Marvin and Marjory want is to effect true change in the world through the use of money. They devise a scheme to force companies to disclose how many female executives they employ. They fund chairs in Peace Studies at West Point and the other major military academies. They buy the securities with ties to South Africa owned by the Harvard trust when the anti-apartheid movement makes it uncomfortable for the university to keep them. As their operations get bigger, they attract attention from the IRS and the FBI. When they acquire a major electricity company and declare that it will scale down its share of products designed for the military, people in power get alarmed and decide to go after them. I am not quite sure what to make of the ending. I got the impression that Marvin had never really cared as much as his wife about their joint experiment in using wealth to achieve worthy goals. When trouble comes, he is quite happy to wind down his activities and return full-time to his academic pursuits, while still supplementing his income with gains on the stock market. Maybe he was never fully sincere in the first place. In any case I found this a witty and thought-provoking piece.

[Karla Huebner]

I'm unsure how I ended up with this novel, which evidently I've had for years unread, but I thought I'd give it a try while in bed with some sort of nasty virus (flu?). It's charming and funny, and, having been written about American economics of the 1980s, proves astonishingly relevant today. I suppose a reader would have to be my age or older to recognize the various references--I know next to nothing about economics but recognized most of what/who was being satirized. In brief, this is the tale of a liberal Harvard econ professor who takes the advice not to do anything noticeable to save the world until after tenure. Thus, he does all of his scholarly work on the refrigeration industry, but develops a system to make money on the stock market by in essence betting against other people's irrationally high expectations. (The one thing I was not clear on in terms of economics was how he did that, as I'm not sure how you would do "short sales" in stock.) He and his fellow-economist wife become fabulously wealthy and attempt to use their income for peace and social justice, but of course ultimately run into snags with the SEC, which assumes great wealth must be the result of illegal dealings.

A fast and enjoyable read. And one quotation that, much more than references to Dan Rather, Ed Meese, and Ivan Boesky, shows the novel is over 20 years old: "Without quite knowing it, Marvin and Marjie had crossed the great divide, that which separates benign and agreeable liberalism, of which all politicians are known to be tolerant, from action, which often means serious and highly unwelcome trouble."

[Mark Ehlers · Rating 2 out of 5]

I am a long-standing fan of John Kenneth Galbraith and have read the majority of his books on economics and political economy. I was hopeful that this would be an enjoyable read and diversion from his non-fiction writing. But alas, his foray into fiction was not successful. The book had its moments, but is not worth the time. But I highly recommend all of Galbraith's classics, including The Affluent Society, Economics and the Public Purpose, Money: Whence it Came, Where it Went, and The Great Crash 1929, among others.

[Eric_W · Rating 4 out of 5]

This quote about sums it up: "Tenure was originally invented to protect radical professors, those who challenged the accepted order. But we don't have such people anymore at the universities, and the reason is tenure. When time comes to grant it nowadays, the radicals get screened out. That's its principal function. It's a very good system, really -- keeps academic life at a decent level of tranquillity."

[Joanne]

Packed up Kitty Galbraith's papers recently and her son gave us each a copy of his father's only novel

[Liberis · Rating 3 out of 5]

Ομολογώ ότι ανήκω σε μια γενιά που δε διδαχτήκαμε ποτέ οικονομικά και συνεπώς οτιδήποτε εμπλέκει την οικονομία με δυσκολεύει. Το ίδιο συνέβη και εδώ. Παρότι το γράψιμο και φυσικά η μετάφραση έτρεχαν, πολλά σημεία παρέμειναν για μένα προσωπικά δυσνόητα αλλά αυτό δε με έκανε να πηδήξω σελίδες, όπως κάποιες φορές μπορεί εκ του πονηρού να κάνω. Ο Galbraith εδώ όχι μόνο προσφέρει την. Άνοδο και την πτώση ενός golden boy αλλά αποτελεί και μια εγκυκλοπαίδεια οικονομικής σκέψης, που ξεκαθαρίζει από τις αναλυτικές υποσημειώσεις. Θεωρώ την θεωρητική οικονομική μου ανεπάρκεια ως το μόνο εμπόδιο στην απόλαυση της ανάγνωσης.

[Harith A · Rating 2 out of 5]

A valiant spirit animates this fable about the professional discipline of economics, and its orientation. But it’s not an easy read: Galbraith is on this evidence a braver economist than he is a deft novelist. This book has succeeded in making me want to read Galbraith’s more technical works. I couldn’t recommend this to anyone not already interested in Galbraith himself. In its form this book reminds me of Yanis Varoufikanis’s Another Now: less a dramatic novel, and more an imaginative description of what a different course of action might look like. In that limited regard it also succeeds.

[Kerry · Rating 3 out of 5]

Hard to picture a current economist having a successful, secondary career as a novelist like JK Galbraith did in his heyday. This was a fun read and makes me want to seek out his other novels.
Poking fun at the wild optimism of markets in the 1980s, the book could have easily been written in response the several boom and bust periods in the subsequent decades.

[Jocelie · Rating 4 out of 5]

Hilarious (but Brahminly understated) send-up of capitalism, Harvard, liberals, conservatives, the military-industrial complex, Congress— and again Harvard.
A lovely short novel (by John Kenneth Galbraith!) with serious intent — gently and humorously laid out — and that assumes our intelligence.

[Silvio111 · Rating 3 out of 5]

I have abandoned this book because the writing style and the subject matter are extremely tedious.

Perhaps the author, being an eminent economist himself, felt he could enliven the topic by using the foil of his dry (or perhaps just dour) wit, but it did not work with me.

[Vera · Rating 5 out of 5]

I enjoyed every page. Erudite, witty, irreverent and insightful. I also learned a great deal about the stock market, investment and the forces that actually - rather than nominally or theoretically - drive capitalism.

[Jonathan Gruber · Rating 3 out of 5]

interesting inside baseball book about academia and the illogic of financial markets. I thought it was fine but couldn't really recommend it to non-economists!

[Ananya Ganesh · Rating 4 out of 5]

i love that his wife just runs off to cuba in the end

[David · Rating 2 out of 5]

It was ok, a novel by a famous economist about an economics professor at Harvard, and the antics that ensue when he perfects a method of anticipating the direction of stock prices, gets wildly rich using it, and then along with his wife and an eccentric friend uses the wealth to play political hardball on behalf of left-wing causes. Lots of Cambridge, MA-o-centric scene setting and mildly amusing shots at academic/university culture.

I picked this up at a university book swap, and it's a quick read, so my investment was minimal. Probably otherwise I wouldn't have bothered, as I usually do not have the patience or interest to read novels.

[Peter · Rating 1 out of 5]

Identity Alert: I was a young Harvard economics professor in an office adjacent to John Kenneth Galbraith. This book is Galbraith’s cynical shot at the academy in general, and Harvard in particular, and perhaps at himself in particular. A Harvard professor develops a way to accurately predict the stock market, leading to investigation by the SEC of the possibility that he has engaged in insider trading by using his own self-developed methods. If you are an economist, especially a Harvard economist, you might find this amusing; I am, and I didn’t. It simply drips with Galbraith!

[Eugenia · Rating 3 out of 5]

This must have been very funny when it was written, but reading it now, after its most outrageous predictions about "irrationality" in the stock market and our inability to legislate PACs have come to pass, it's uncannily prescient but not amusing. The fact that it's so smart makes me want to read some of his economic tomes. It's a shame he died before the current "behavioral economics" revolution.

[Rick · Rating 2 out of 5]

Published in 1990, this book is not "timeless." I should have known how dated it would be when I read the following in the preface: "As this book goes to press, the President and the Congress of the United States are contemplating reform as regards Political Action Committees, the PACs. Whatever the outcome, the solution here offered is preferred." Let's just say that Galbraith's "solution" did not prevail.

[William Orr · Rating 4 out of 5]

Galbraith always said capitalism was an extraordinarily flexible system. It assumes its critics and absorbs its enemies. When people are making lots of money, they are not disposed to changing the system.

This book also pokes fun at politicians, Harvard, journalists, and academics in general. Rereading was fun.

[Nan Williams · Rating 3 out of 5]

Very cute. Satirical. Enjoyable. Quick romp through Harvard and through US economics of the 80s.

My only real question is how come this was a new [hardback] book at my public library when it was published 25 years ago. I looked to see if it had been re-published, but didn't see where it had.

It reminded me a lot of one of my favorites, "The Rosie Project," but wasn't nearly so good.

[Ci · Rating 3 out of 5]

This book foresaw the coming of behavioral investing. Very cleverly written although the marriage relationship of the main characters are just sketches; it seems that the author wanted to do something about it, but in the end gave up and left it in its unfinished form.

[Erin · Rating 4 out of 5]

Surprisingly funny and brutally honest look at wealth and power among the American elite during the Reagan era that (unfortunately) could have been written today. And you do NOT need knowledge of economics nor academia to appreciate Galbraith's satirical genius.

[Mary-Ann · Rating 4 out of 5]

A short satire written by the noted Keynesian economist Galbraith that pokes fun at two of my favorite topics for lampooning: academic snobbery and investment folly. You can tell Galbraith isn't a novelist at heart, but he manages to keep the plot moving anyhow.

[gaudeo · Rating 2 out of 5]

Academic satire. Mildly funny. A great book for economics fans, especially those with ties to academia.

[Janet · Rating 3 out of 5]

This book had been on my list forever. Economics, politics and finance are not my favorite topics. But what an interesting story of the greedy protecting their flanks.

[Thor · Rating 2 out of 5]

Great start and premise. I enjoyed the tone and the characters. But to truly enjoy this book, one must need to also enjoy economics and finance, neither of which are my cup of tea.

[Lindsay · Rating 3 out of 5]

Really liked the one-liners about academia. Did not understand most of the economics lingo.

[Sarah · Rating 4 out of 5]

Reminded me of a Christopher Buckley book.. smart, sarcastic commentary of academia that is still completely relevant today.