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How I Won a Nobel Prize
An incisive, wickedly funny debut novel about a graduate student who decides to follow her disgraced mentor to a university that gives safe harbor to scholars of ill repute, igniting a crisis of work and a test of her conscience (and marriage)
Helen is one of the best minds of her generation. A young physicist on a path to solve high-temperature superconductivity, which could save the planet, Helen is torn when she discovers her brilliant advisor is involved in a sex scandal. Should she give up on her work with him? Or should she accompany him to a controversial university, founded by a provocateur billionaire, that hosts academics that other schools have thrown out?
Helen decides she must go--her work is too important. She brings along her partner, Hew, who is much less sanguine about living on an island where the disgraced and deplorable get to operate with impunity. Soon enough, Helen finds herself drawn to an iconoclastic older novelist, while Hew stews in an increasingly radical protest movement. Their rift deepens until both confront choices that will reshape their lives--and maybe the world.
Irreverent, generous, anchored in character, and provocative without being polemical, How I Won a Nobel Prize illuminates the compromises we’ll make for progress, what it means to be a good person, and how to win a Nobel Prize. Turns out it’s not that hard--if you can run the numbers.
Helen is one of the best minds of her generation. A young physicist on a path to solve high-temperature superconductivity, which could save the planet, Helen is torn when she discovers her brilliant advisor is involved in a sex scandal. Should she give up on her work with him? Or should she accompany him to a controversial university, founded by a provocateur billionaire, that hosts academics that other schools have thrown out?
Helen decides she must go--her work is too important. She brings along her partner, Hew, who is much less sanguine about living on an island where the disgraced and deplorable get to operate with impunity. Soon enough, Helen finds herself drawn to an iconoclastic older novelist, while Hew stews in an increasingly radical protest movement. Their rift deepens until both confront choices that will reshape their lives--and maybe the world.
Irreverent, generous, anchored in character, and provocative without being polemical, How I Won a Nobel Prize illuminates the compromises we’ll make for progress, what it means to be a good person, and how to win a Nobel Prize. Turns out it’s not that hard--if you can run the numbers.
304 pages, Hardcover
First published September 12, 2023
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Displaying 1 - 30 of 335 reviews
July 14, 2023
I love that more books are being written examining the sense of moral superiority increasingly characterizing the left (that I am, admittedly, a part of). There's a lot to be said about faux outrage, moral purity tests, hypervigilence and the kind delight folks take at seeing a public figure do something "problematic." R. F. Kuang wrote about it in the publishing industry in "Yellowface," and Julius Taranto here takes on academia.
"How I Won a Nobel Prize" is set on a small East Coast island that is home to a university refuge (called RIF) for academics that have been ousted from their institutions. There, professors and researchers with a history of harrassment, sexist and racist comments, can come and do their work in peace. A staunch liberal, Helen is horrified to discover her dissertation advisor is moving to RIF. To finish her PhD, she reluctantly moves to the island with her husband Hew. Initially motivated to ensure other students know she's not "one of them," her worldview starts to shift. Maybe what these men did isn't so bad? Maybe creativity does florish when universities aren't concerned with Title IX and promoting safe environments! This path eventually leads her to a moral crisis that threatens her professional future and her relationship with Hew.
I had high hopes for this book but the execution made it an incredibly difficult read. There are long, rambly inner monologues. No quotation marks are used to indicate dialogue. The world-building is minimal: the idea of RIF was the most interesting part of the story, but descriptions of its inner workings and environment are virtually non-existent. The characters seem more like mouth pieces for various ideological positions than real people. Even though this is a work of fiction, it really didn't read like a novel. More of a philosophical story intended to initiate dialogue.
Thanks Net Galley for the ARC!
"How I Won a Nobel Prize" is set on a small East Coast island that is home to a university refuge (called RIF) for academics that have been ousted from their institutions. There, professors and researchers with a history of harrassment, sexist and racist comments, can come and do their work in peace. A staunch liberal, Helen is horrified to discover her dissertation advisor is moving to RIF. To finish her PhD, she reluctantly moves to the island with her husband Hew. Initially motivated to ensure other students know she's not "one of them," her worldview starts to shift. Maybe what these men did isn't so bad? Maybe creativity does florish when universities aren't concerned with Title IX and promoting safe environments! This path eventually leads her to a moral crisis that threatens her professional future and her relationship with Hew.
I had high hopes for this book but the execution made it an incredibly difficult read. There are long, rambly inner monologues. No quotation marks are used to indicate dialogue. The world-building is minimal: the idea of RIF was the most interesting part of the story, but descriptions of its inner workings and environment are virtually non-existent. The characters seem more like mouth pieces for various ideological positions than real people. Even though this is a work of fiction, it really didn't read like a novel. More of a philosophical story intended to initiate dialogue.
Thanks Net Galley for the ARC!
February 16, 2024
Listened to audiobook
Thought this would be really interesting but I ended up DNF-ing at 20%
The narrator's voice was grating but that wasn't the reason I DNF'd:
Described as funny/clever/witty originality - I didn't hear any of this, just verbal vomit.
Thought this would be really interesting but I ended up DNF-ing at 20%
The narrator's voice was grating but that wasn't the reason I DNF'd:
Described as funny/clever/witty originality - I didn't hear any of this, just verbal vomit.
June 20, 2023
A few words easily come to mind when considering HOW I WON A NOBEL PRIZE--mordant, ecstatic, irreverent, extremely funny. Perhaps it might even be rote to use such adjectives to describe the so-called cancel-culture novel that Taranto has written, about a superbly talented graduate student, Helen, working at the "vanguard of condensed matter physics" who finds herself unceremoniously booted to the Rubin Institute - Plymouth (RIP for short) after her nobel laureate advisor ("a big brilliant queer of the Oxbridge style") finds himself embroiled in a minor sex scandal.
Forgive my surprise, then, when I read this novel and was surprised to find it to also be generous and big-hearted, all of a comedy and a novel of manners and a satire and a romance and a primer on jewishness and theoretical physics and how concepts are always "dying to become metaphors".
Taranto himself sums it best with a description of Hew, the physicist Helen's beleaguered spouse(-ish): "He was a little goofy, very sharp, judgmental but always sly about it." The same could be said of this sparkling debut novel.
Forgive my surprise, then, when I read this novel and was surprised to find it to also be generous and big-hearted, all of a comedy and a novel of manners and a satire and a romance and a primer on jewishness and theoretical physics and how concepts are always "dying to become metaphors".
Taranto himself sums it best with a description of Hew, the physicist Helen's beleaguered spouse(-ish): "He was a little goofy, very sharp, judgmental but always sly about it." The same could be said of this sparkling debut novel.
May 19, 2023
This book was a very hard read for me, on many different levels.
The lack of punctuation, in regards to conversation, was maddening at times. I'd have to reread things to make sure I understood how it fit.
To be frank, I'm not smart enough to read a book like this. The sheer amount of words I had to look up is embarrassing. I consider myself fairly well read but when it came to this book, nope, not even close.
The subject matter made me feel a little like I was in a real-life version of "The Big Bang Theory" as the same terminology is used in that show.
Helen & Hew were not an ideal couple and maybe that's why they worked, at least in the end. Reading their relationship was beyond frustrating. They seemed not to care about each other for most of the time, especially at the Institute.
I feel like I can't give an accurate star rating to a book I can't come close to really understanding but I know I need to given the nature of this advanced copy.
The lack of punctuation, in regards to conversation, was maddening at times. I'd have to reread things to make sure I understood how it fit.
To be frank, I'm not smart enough to read a book like this. The sheer amount of words I had to look up is embarrassing. I consider myself fairly well read but when it came to this book, nope, not even close.
The subject matter made me feel a little like I was in a real-life version of "The Big Bang Theory" as the same terminology is used in that show.
Helen & Hew were not an ideal couple and maybe that's why they worked, at least in the end. Reading their relationship was beyond frustrating. They seemed not to care about each other for most of the time, especially at the Institute.
I feel like I can't give an accurate star rating to a book I can't come close to really understanding but I know I need to given the nature of this advanced copy.
December 29, 2024
Nick Gillespie on the Reason Roundtable podcast recommended this book. It sounded like an interesting premise (and it is), but I don't think I enjoyed it as much as he did. Not that it's poorly written. It does have an interesting moral to tell about Utopias, even libertarian ones. If you want to escape to alternative, non-woke, no cancelling allowed environment, this is good read to illustrate that humans are still messy, and no matter how we try, no one extreme way to organize a society at scale is likely endure.
February 19, 2024
This debut novel by Julius Taranto is satire du jour - it’s an irreverent, clever piece of satire that explores MeToo, cancel culture, the old boys’ club and “wokeism”.
It’s a deft piece of work in the sense that the author inhabits different perspectives effortlessly and with humour, and it manages to entertain and challenge your brain. It left me reflecting on modern discourse in a way that no other novel has done for a long time.
Helen is a physics doctoral student working on high temperature superconductivity and about to make an important scientific breakthrough when the professor she works (Percy Smoot) with sleeps with a student and finds himself cancelled. Smoot is exiled to the Rubin Institute on Plymouth Island (RIP) off the coast of Connecticut, an elite institution founded specifically for the purpose of housing the elite who have been cancelled. RIP is a haven from cancel culture, considering itself a place to escape from diversity quotas and political correctness. The only problem is that Helen and her husband Hew are left-leaning liberals whose ideal of hell is a libertarian university dubbed as “Rape Island”.
Helen begins to put her concerns about RIP aside to focus on her scientific work but Hew becomes increasingly embroiled in a left wing anarchist movement that wants to take down RIP and its founder. You’ll have to read the book to see how it all plays out but it’s a clever and engrossing read.
I feel like this will be a Marmite book - it’s heavy on theoretical physics at times and I didn’t always like how Taranto wrote his female protagonist, but it’s original, straight faced and yet farcical, and oh so topical. 4/5⭐️
*Many thanks to Picador for the arc via @netgalley. As always, this is an honest review.
It’s a deft piece of work in the sense that the author inhabits different perspectives effortlessly and with humour, and it manages to entertain and challenge your brain. It left me reflecting on modern discourse in a way that no other novel has done for a long time.
Helen is a physics doctoral student working on high temperature superconductivity and about to make an important scientific breakthrough when the professor she works (Percy Smoot) with sleeps with a student and finds himself cancelled. Smoot is exiled to the Rubin Institute on Plymouth Island (RIP) off the coast of Connecticut, an elite institution founded specifically for the purpose of housing the elite who have been cancelled. RIP is a haven from cancel culture, considering itself a place to escape from diversity quotas and political correctness. The only problem is that Helen and her husband Hew are left-leaning liberals whose ideal of hell is a libertarian university dubbed as “Rape Island”.
Helen begins to put her concerns about RIP aside to focus on her scientific work but Hew becomes increasingly embroiled in a left wing anarchist movement that wants to take down RIP and its founder. You’ll have to read the book to see how it all plays out but it’s a clever and engrossing read.
I feel like this will be a Marmite book - it’s heavy on theoretical physics at times and I didn’t always like how Taranto wrote his female protagonist, but it’s original, straight faced and yet farcical, and oh so topical. 4/5⭐️
*Many thanks to Picador for the arc via @netgalley. As always, this is an honest review.
March 25, 2025
Book was self-important and tried too hard to make a point, which is probably why it still fell short. Felt like it was trying to be more like Birnam Wood but was nowhere near as good.
February 16, 2024
I found this book problematic.
Julius Taranto chooses to write as a woman, and from here, many issues arise.
‘How I Won a Nobel Prize’ is Taranto’s encyclopaedia entry of all the ways in which men can have their status and privilege removed within the academic sphere (racism, virtual or actual sexual harassment, abuse in all its forms, assault, rape). And he rehomes all of these malefactors on their own ‘university island’.
Yet his protagonist Helen (an educated married woman) is still enticed into sexual promiscuity when she goes to live among them; Taranto, therefore, effectively revoking their cancellation.
As a post-doc myself, I’m not reviewing from outside of this novel’s contextual world, still I cannot reconcile the kind of female character Taranto describes at the start of the novel opting voluntarily to live with what’s basically a free-ride, validatory slap-on-the-back-with-a-knowing-wink clan of offenders. The whole tone of the novel is ‘poking fun at’ the deposition of these Great White Males due to improper conduct.
At its worst, Taranto has his female protagonist mutate into one of them. At one point she remarks: ‘I let myself be as big a c**t as I could without creating an incident.’ It’s bilious. As other reviewers say, it’s nonsensical. And I just cannot stomach the use of the C-U-next-Tuesday.
Macmillan Audio’s hard-pressed narrator Lauren Fortgang certainly attempts to inject a tone of cynicism into her vocal performance as she voices some of the more absurd and offensive parts of Helen’s inner monologues, but, in my view, ultimately fails.
It’s such a shame that this is my first listen to Fortgang’s narration; it’s evident that she’s a voice talent with flair, wit, and versatility (just take a glance at her prodigious career on Goodreads!). Her lyricism is wasted on this brash and misguided debut.
‘How I Won a Nobel Prize’ audiobook was released on 15 Feb. My thanks are due to Macmillan Audio UK for providing me with a pre-release copy of the digital audiobook for review.
Julius Taranto chooses to write as a woman, and from here, many issues arise.
‘How I Won a Nobel Prize’ is Taranto’s encyclopaedia entry of all the ways in which men can have their status and privilege removed within the academic sphere (racism, virtual or actual sexual harassment, abuse in all its forms, assault, rape). And he rehomes all of these malefactors on their own ‘university island’.
Yet his protagonist Helen (an educated married woman) is still enticed into sexual promiscuity when she goes to live among them; Taranto, therefore, effectively revoking their cancellation.
As a post-doc myself, I’m not reviewing from outside of this novel’s contextual world, still I cannot reconcile the kind of female character Taranto describes at the start of the novel opting voluntarily to live with what’s basically a free-ride, validatory slap-on-the-back-with-a-knowing-wink clan of offenders. The whole tone of the novel is ‘poking fun at’ the deposition of these Great White Males due to improper conduct.
At its worst, Taranto has his female protagonist mutate into one of them. At one point she remarks: ‘I let myself be as big a c**t as I could without creating an incident.’ It’s bilious. As other reviewers say, it’s nonsensical. And I just cannot stomach the use of the C-U-next-Tuesday.
Macmillan Audio’s hard-pressed narrator Lauren Fortgang certainly attempts to inject a tone of cynicism into her vocal performance as she voices some of the more absurd and offensive parts of Helen’s inner monologues, but, in my view, ultimately fails.
It’s such a shame that this is my first listen to Fortgang’s narration; it’s evident that she’s a voice talent with flair, wit, and versatility (just take a glance at her prodigious career on Goodreads!). Her lyricism is wasted on this brash and misguided debut.
‘How I Won a Nobel Prize’ audiobook was released on 15 Feb. My thanks are due to Macmillan Audio UK for providing me with a pre-release copy of the digital audiobook for review.
June 11, 2023
“How I Won a Nobel Prize” is a hilarious send up of cancel culture and its reactionaries. I laughed out loud at jokes about anarchists, vegans, and billionaire blowhards. Nearly every chapter is filled to the brim with clever observations. It's one of the funniest books I've read since Portnoy's Complaint.
The novel is not only funny, but a really fun, fast read. I couldn't wait to finish my work day so I could spend more time hanging out with the characters. Helen, the protagonist, is analytical, altruistic, and human. The book has propulsive pacing and clear visuals that make for a strong sense of place.
Taranto does an excellent job writing both sides of the "cancel culture" debate with nuance. He knows how to write a full cast to represent all ideological points of view. After finishing the novel, I immediately wanted to dive back in with a long conversation.
The novel is not only funny, but a really fun, fast read. I couldn't wait to finish my work day so I could spend more time hanging out with the characters. Helen, the protagonist, is analytical, altruistic, and human. The book has propulsive pacing and clear visuals that make for a strong sense of place.
Taranto does an excellent job writing both sides of the "cancel culture" debate with nuance. He knows how to write a full cast to represent all ideological points of view. After finishing the novel, I immediately wanted to dive back in with a long conversation.
November 7, 2023
I received a copy of the audiobook via Netgalley in exchange for an honest review. And that's how recommend consuming this story: listen to the incredibly narrated audiobook and optionally sight read the text, at least if like me, you are not into physics and self-indulgent writing styles go over your head.
There's a lot to respect in this book. It's funny yet thought-provoking, especially in its nuanced discussion on "cancel culture" and the failings of both right-wing and left-wing parties in their approaches to morality and accountability. But reading this felt a lot like my experience with many Oscar-nominated films that lean more on the artistic than the commercial side: I get what it's trying to do and I admire the approach, but it didn't work for me entertainment-wise. I didn't find myself attached to the characters, I thought the dialogue was long-winded at times, and it didn't necessarily help that there are a lot of programming references here—something that I don't like in my entertainment as a software engineer who doesn't like to be reminded of work during my off-hours.
That said, I recommend this to those who want a more humorous version of the film Tár or to those who were left wanting more after reading R. F. Kuang's Yellowface.
There's a lot to respect in this book. It's funny yet thought-provoking, especially in its nuanced discussion on "cancel culture" and the failings of both right-wing and left-wing parties in their approaches to morality and accountability. But reading this felt a lot like my experience with many Oscar-nominated films that lean more on the artistic than the commercial side: I get what it's trying to do and I admire the approach, but it didn't work for me entertainment-wise. I didn't find myself attached to the characters, I thought the dialogue was long-winded at times, and it didn't necessarily help that there are a lot of programming references here—something that I don't like in my entertainment as a software engineer who doesn't like to be reminded of work during my off-hours.
That said, I recommend this to those who want a more humorous version of the film Tár or to those who were left wanting more after reading R. F. Kuang's Yellowface.
June 9, 2024
shut the fuck up sometimes bro
October 4, 2023
What my stars mean:
5 — Loved it and will unfriend you if you didn’t at least enjoy it.
4 — Quite enjoyed it and would recommend it to a friend.
3 — Didn’t like it myself, but can understand why other readers might.
2 — Didn’t like it, and can’t imagine anyone I know who would.
1 — Would rather stick a fork in my eye than read anything else by this author
5 — Loved it and will unfriend you if you didn’t at least enjoy it.
4 — Quite enjoyed it and would recommend it to a friend.
3 — Didn’t like it myself, but can understand why other readers might.
2 — Didn’t like it, and can’t imagine anyone I know who would.
1 — Would rather stick a fork in my eye than read anything else by this author
November 29, 2023
3.5
Enjoyable, lively and provocative. I liked this and it is funny in places, if a bit uneven.
Enjoyable, lively and provocative. I liked this and it is funny in places, if a bit uneven.
December 15, 2025
1 ⭐️
I really struggled to get through this one. Advertised as a ‘funny page-turner’, it was neither funny nor a page-turner. The characters felt bland, and the story kept gesturing toward some grand critique about cancel culture and self-righteousness, but I finished the book still wondering what it was actually trying to say.
I really struggled to get through this one. Advertised as a ‘funny page-turner’, it was neither funny nor a page-turner. The characters felt bland, and the story kept gesturing toward some grand critique about cancel culture and self-righteousness, but I finished the book still wondering what it was actually trying to say.
February 29, 2024
A savagely witty campus satire. Helen is a PhD candidate who specializes in simulating quantum mechanics and is attempting to solve the hot topic of electrical superconductivity. Unfortunately, when her supervisor is embroiled in a sexual harassment complaint, she is forced to leave the university with him and decamp to the Rubin Institute, a notorious haven for cancelled professors. Situated on an island, with a telescope pointed directly at Yale University, the school consists of a single giant phallus-shaped skyscraper suggestively called the Endowment. Its teachers have all been ostracized from their previous universities, whether for inappropriate sexual relations or for their egregious and provocative opinions, or even for hate speech. But at the Rubin Institute there is no admin, no rules, no teaching, and these cancelled professors wander around free to think or say anything they want. It is a campus dominated by men who celebrate their aggressive contrarianism as a liberal virtue, masking their obvious misogyny and predatory manipulativeness.
Helen is less concerned about her situation than her husband, Hew, who, being a sensitive feminist and Me-Too ally, struggles to reconcile his politics with his predicament. How can he be an enlightened, liberal man while living inside and benefitting from this sexist corporation? Helen, however, the hyper-rationalist, over-calculating scientist sees herself beyond politics and has no interest in the big ideological dramas and campus activism around her. She just wants to pursue her research, publish and graduate, blithely unaware of the insidious realities of the academy—no intellectual is truly independent from institutional politics. How I Won a Nobel Prize has little to do with scientific research and accolades but rather is a comic critique of the hubris and bravura of scientists who think they are above and outside the culture wars.
Helen is less concerned about her situation than her husband, Hew, who, being a sensitive feminist and Me-Too ally, struggles to reconcile his politics with his predicament. How can he be an enlightened, liberal man while living inside and benefitting from this sexist corporation? Helen, however, the hyper-rationalist, over-calculating scientist sees herself beyond politics and has no interest in the big ideological dramas and campus activism around her. She just wants to pursue her research, publish and graduate, blithely unaware of the insidious realities of the academy—no intellectual is truly independent from institutional politics. How I Won a Nobel Prize has little to do with scientific research and accolades but rather is a comic critique of the hubris and bravura of scientists who think they are above and outside the culture wars.
April 18, 2024
i am in fact obsessed with this book. the critical lens on academia, the unreliable and unlikable narrator, the hilarious relationship with Hugh, thinking about all the professors I align with academics I've interacted with, and thinking about the tunnel vision of obsession + research. can bad people do good things, at what point does moral superiority become violent, and all the questions around knowledge power and personhood.
September 25, 2023
Def written by a Yale law grad
Want to read
September 19, 2023Copy received! Thanks to Little Brown!!
January 31, 2025
You could tell a man wrote it
November 22, 2023
The premise of How I Won a Nobel Prize is intriguing - an educational institute is set up for cancelled academics, and our narrator is on the brink of a world-changing discovery - but the execution was disappointing.
The characters fell flat and often felt like cheap caricatures. For a novel with such a technical focus, the lack of punctuation for dialogue was baffling - combine that with a too-heavy focus on physics and I'm lost.
While there are some strong themes here, this just didn't hit the mark for me. How I Won a Nobel Prize wants to be a satirical commentary on cancel culture and academia, but felt more like a book constantly trying to prove it's smarter than you.
Thank you to NetGalley and the publisher for the e-arc in exchange for an honest review!
The characters fell flat and often felt like cheap caricatures. For a novel with such a technical focus, the lack of punctuation for dialogue was baffling - combine that with a too-heavy focus on physics and I'm lost.
While there are some strong themes here, this just didn't hit the mark for me. How I Won a Nobel Prize wants to be a satirical commentary on cancel culture and academia, but felt more like a book constantly trying to prove it's smarter than you.
Thank you to NetGalley and the publisher for the e-arc in exchange for an honest review!
August 18, 2025
Interesting concepts. Just wasn’t a topic I was really drawn to. I do have a handful of friends who would love this and devour it!
November 8, 2024
This novel has been received as one of the few that addresses modern "cancel culture" head on. I'm not sure if this is true. Unfortunately, I can't be bothered to do the due diligence on this question at this time. However, it seems to me that a great deal of modern fiction today is interested in "cancel culture" or related, mostly online psychosocial phenomena, e.g. Fake Accounts by Lauren Oyler, Wellness by Nathan Hill, or No One Is Talking About This by Patricia Lockwood (Additionally, publishing itself, especially in certain genres, has been a pitched cancelation battleground). How I Won a Nobel Prize, however, appears to be one of the more explicit examinations of this online culture moment. It also examines the somewhat real-world landscape of this culture in extremity in an appropriate setting (the ivory tower). These aspects are likely double-edged, serving as both strengths and weaknesses.
On one hand, it is amusing to observe Taranto poke fun at the mores and typical behavior associated with the two dominant sociopolitical ideologies (for simplification purposes we can just call them Left and Right for this review). The idealism, egotism, callousness, bigotry, and chauvinism of the Right is panned, especially by the set pieces and plot machinations. Taranto casts the modern Right's worst qualities as reactive, reactionary, and juvenile. The priggishness, radicalism, and narcissism of the Left is admonished. It is mostly cast as annoying, but is also revealed as dangerous and counter-productive.
I particularly enjoyed the conceit of our ambivalent but ambitious protagonist and her aggressively left-wing husband marooned at the Rubin Institute - Plymouth (RIP), RIP is an elite research institute of the Right insulated from the attacks of the Left by the ungodly wealth of its founder, BW. One, it provides a striking contrast with reality. The lack of such an institute in the real-world provokes a great deal of thought. Why is the academy monolithic? What is the actual fallout of the cultural purification of these institutions? Personally, I read the near total box-out of the Right in the academy by the Left as an illustration of just how far and how fast our institutions have charged leftward in our modern era. I'm not sure Taranto intended this point, but it bleeds through nonetheless. Two, it forces readers to think about the consequences of cancellation. The victims of cancellation become de facto allies. Subsequently, the Left ends up expanding the ranks of the Right, populating it with creative and intellectual figures. This also reshapes what the Right actually is, but from a hardball perspective on politics and power, this is extraneous to real wins and losses. Three, the population of RIP itself serves as a taxonomy of cancellation: the unjustly disgraced, the justly disgraced, the misfits and taboo-violators, and those who fail to accept their cancellation whatever its merit. Taranto could have explored this with greater detail to illustrate the coherence and inconsistency of cancellation and perhaps identified that the latent variable explaining the purpose and mechanisms of cancellation, especially the identification of prospective cancellees. I'd argue the same variables underneath the cancellation phenomenon are those underneath the ideological purity of our institutions.
On the other hand, I think Taranto's examination of cancel culture is unsatisfactory. The novel could have been a lot more amusing and provocative, but the real miss was approaching cancellation peripherally. Taranto is apparently uninterested in the psychology of the canceller or the cancellee. The protagonist, Helen, is not subject to any particular social ostracization. She is criticized by her husband, Hew, for sacrificing her values (values that are mostly just assumed by default rather than in evidence) for ambition. Hew himself is a largely a blackbox. We fail to understand why he cares so much about the causes of the Left. We only access cancellation vicariously, and the costs of cancellation are mostly understood as private penalties to social status and private prestige. It is actually Helen's thesis advisor, Perry Smoot, who is our nearest cancellee (an intentional one that is) along with the rest of the RIP staff, including a Leo Lens, a Philip Roth stand-in.
Much of the emotional trajectory of the novel progresses with Helen's research as she navigates the tension that living at RIP creates with her husband and the confusion of her emotional/intellectual affair with Lens, who is also her father's favorite novelist. The relationship with Lens is almost utterly unnecessary. It mostly creates an opportunity for Taranto to work through his complicated feelings about Roth and to pay homage to Roth's work. For any reader unfamiliar with Roth, I'm not sure the Helen-Leo scenes will be particularly meaningful.
As the novel progresses, it is evident that Taranto is less interested in the sociological phenomenon of cancellation or the psychology of the culture wars. Rather, he is interested in trying to write about the psychology of work and the tension between being an intellectual and being an advocate or activist. This questions already has a fairly definitive answer. It is simply that these distinctions are lost in a sophisticated and fragmented media landscape and associated discourse. We can thank the philosophers who pioneered the scientific method for answering this for us. This doesn't absolve us from asking political questions about the consequences of scientific research but such questions are ultimately immaterial to the pursuit of truth. When political commitments are prioritized, the pursuit of truth is marginalized. We've seen many important institutions unfortunately make this tradeoff with alacrity. It would have benefitted the novel for Taranto to explore this more critically rather than just the tension created by the location of the protagonist's work and her/her husband's politics. In fact, the only thing that activates Helen's political sentiments is the final theft of her work, which even then these sentiment are bound up with her personal ambitious/vocation. Moreover, the central betrayal experienced by Helen is a pedestrian experience for any institutional scientists. A research institution is always the owner of intellectual property produced at its institution. Since almost all of our institutions are of the Left and comprised of people of the Left, this is an internecine conflict. The novel portrays this as a conflict between the Left and Right, which is quite manifestly is not.
Perhaps this review reads as mostly criticism. I don't intend this. I like this type of novel. I like the effort that Taranto made. I would read many more novels of this ilk. Taranto's writing style was engaging and accessible too. In fact, of the modern culture novels I've read, this one was on the more entertaining sides. And I personally did appreciate the exploration of Roth.
A longer and more polished review can be found on Substack
On one hand, it is amusing to observe Taranto poke fun at the mores and typical behavior associated with the two dominant sociopolitical ideologies (for simplification purposes we can just call them Left and Right for this review). The idealism, egotism, callousness, bigotry, and chauvinism of the Right is panned, especially by the set pieces and plot machinations. Taranto casts the modern Right's worst qualities as reactive, reactionary, and juvenile. The priggishness, radicalism, and narcissism of the Left is admonished. It is mostly cast as annoying, but is also revealed as dangerous and counter-productive.
I particularly enjoyed the conceit of our ambivalent but ambitious protagonist and her aggressively left-wing husband marooned at the Rubin Institute - Plymouth (RIP), RIP is an elite research institute of the Right insulated from the attacks of the Left by the ungodly wealth of its founder, BW. One, it provides a striking contrast with reality. The lack of such an institute in the real-world provokes a great deal of thought. Why is the academy monolithic? What is the actual fallout of the cultural purification of these institutions? Personally, I read the near total box-out of the Right in the academy by the Left as an illustration of just how far and how fast our institutions have charged leftward in our modern era. I'm not sure Taranto intended this point, but it bleeds through nonetheless. Two, it forces readers to think about the consequences of cancellation. The victims of cancellation become de facto allies. Subsequently, the Left ends up expanding the ranks of the Right, populating it with creative and intellectual figures. This also reshapes what the Right actually is, but from a hardball perspective on politics and power, this is extraneous to real wins and losses. Three, the population of RIP itself serves as a taxonomy of cancellation: the unjustly disgraced, the justly disgraced, the misfits and taboo-violators, and those who fail to accept their cancellation whatever its merit. Taranto could have explored this with greater detail to illustrate the coherence and inconsistency of cancellation and perhaps identified that the latent variable explaining the purpose and mechanisms of cancellation, especially the identification of prospective cancellees. I'd argue the same variables underneath the cancellation phenomenon are those underneath the ideological purity of our institutions.
On the other hand, I think Taranto's examination of cancel culture is unsatisfactory. The novel could have been a lot more amusing and provocative, but the real miss was approaching cancellation peripherally. Taranto is apparently uninterested in the psychology of the canceller or the cancellee. The protagonist, Helen, is not subject to any particular social ostracization. She is criticized by her husband, Hew, for sacrificing her values (values that are mostly just assumed by default rather than in evidence) for ambition. Hew himself is a largely a blackbox. We fail to understand why he cares so much about the causes of the Left. We only access cancellation vicariously, and the costs of cancellation are mostly understood as private penalties to social status and private prestige. It is actually Helen's thesis advisor, Perry Smoot, who is our nearest cancellee (an intentional one that is) along with the rest of the RIP staff, including a Leo Lens, a Philip Roth stand-in.
Much of the emotional trajectory of the novel progresses with Helen's research as she navigates the tension that living at RIP creates with her husband and the confusion of her emotional/intellectual affair with Lens, who is also her father's favorite novelist. The relationship with Lens is almost utterly unnecessary. It mostly creates an opportunity for Taranto to work through his complicated feelings about Roth and to pay homage to Roth's work. For any reader unfamiliar with Roth, I'm not sure the Helen-Leo scenes will be particularly meaningful.
As the novel progresses, it is evident that Taranto is less interested in the sociological phenomenon of cancellation or the psychology of the culture wars. Rather, he is interested in trying to write about the psychology of work and the tension between being an intellectual and being an advocate or activist. This questions already has a fairly definitive answer. It is simply that these distinctions are lost in a sophisticated and fragmented media landscape and associated discourse. We can thank the philosophers who pioneered the scientific method for answering this for us. This doesn't absolve us from asking political questions about the consequences of scientific research but such questions are ultimately immaterial to the pursuit of truth. When political commitments are prioritized, the pursuit of truth is marginalized. We've seen many important institutions unfortunately make this tradeoff with alacrity. It would have benefitted the novel for Taranto to explore this more critically rather than just the tension created by the location of the protagonist's work and her/her husband's politics. In fact, the only thing that activates Helen's political sentiments is the final theft of her work, which even then these sentiment are bound up with her personal ambitious/vocation. Moreover, the central betrayal experienced by Helen is a pedestrian experience for any institutional scientists. A research institution is always the owner of intellectual property produced at its institution. Since almost all of our institutions are of the Left and comprised of people of the Left, this is an internecine conflict. The novel portrays this as a conflict between the Left and Right, which is quite manifestly is not.
Perhaps this review reads as mostly criticism. I don't intend this. I like this type of novel. I like the effort that Taranto made. I would read many more novels of this ilk. Taranto's writing style was engaging and accessible too. In fact, of the modern culture novels I've read, this one was on the more entertaining sides. And I personally did appreciate the exploration of Roth.
A longer and more polished review can be found on Substack
May 14, 2024
Wanted to love this book more than I actually did. Amazing premise. I wish I’d thought of it. So funny sometimes. But it was kind of inconsistent for me - the distinctive voice and tone worked sometimes and grated other times. Some plot points felt too unbelievable while others kept me on the edge of my seat. I want Taranto to start writing satirical short stories I think that would be huge. A rare instance of a Pomona man I’m willing to support. Maybe more like a 3.5 if we’re doing that.
July 4, 2023
Hilarious with emotional depth. I’m going to try this method to win a Nobel Prize, I’ll let you know how it goes.
Edit: You have to know science to win a Nobel Prize in physics, but at least I have this book
Edit: You have to know science to win a Nobel Prize in physics, but at least I have this book
October 19, 2023
This is one of the best books that I have read in a good, long while. So interesting, excellent pacing- I couldn't put it down!
Insightful and thought provoking commentary on our current political climate.
Do yourself a favor and read this book!
Insightful and thought provoking commentary on our current political climate.
Do yourself a favor and read this book!
August 22, 2023
My Interest
Having spent much of the last 15 years in Academia, this one caught my eye on #Netgalley. A Nobel Prize! Well, well…. And, it is supposed to be “wickedly funny.” Ok, I’ll listen.
The Story
“…change doesn’t happen so much as it accumulates.”
“Why must politics always be the main theme? We are meant to be in a haven from so-called woke oppression but the constant controversy is more taxing than wokeness ever was”
Helen, a physicist (this is the summer of physicist with Oppenheimer in the theaters and now this book…. yet another book I’m reading mentions a relative who was a physicist) drags husband Hugh off to a sort of Island of Misfit Toy Academics–“Cancel U” as it is euphemistically known. A “no rules, just right” place for canceled academics and a few politicians, writers, etc., funded by a politically incorrect zillionaire with overtones of an ex-POTUS and a guy with a fixation on one letter, if you catch my drift. (If, being in the halls of the Christian Academe I missed an obvious parallel to a real place, please leave me a comment, ok?).
She and Hugh have been woke since before it was even waking up. They are an “open device” couple who share all their passwords so there are no secret phone friendships or anything similar. They often ignore each others’ “digital presence” and want “privacy” in their heads. Yeah. Are they vegan? hahhaha, Do you really have to ask?
Anyway, Helen is a genius with physics while Hugh attends “actions” (protests). When rich old B.W. recruits her for “The Institute” she goes to work with Perry (or is it Harry–I SWEAR the reader said both) who is a legend, but got ‘canceled’ for a same-sex relationship with an undergraduate. While Hugh is in their apartment “metronome-ing” (that’s an actual quote) to a recorded music, Helen and Perry are doing something amazing with physics–at a level that should, in time, see them grasp a Nobel Prize from the hands of Grumpy King himself, Carl XVI Gustaf in Stockholm.
Meanwhile, back at the ranch in the midst of regality as Hugh stresses over “predatory Capitalism,” Helen has a weird almost epiphany. What if people don’t have to be canceled completely–what if you can still admire the good things they’ve done while not forgetting the bad? And, about this time BW takes out a page in the Wall Street Journal offering free education to a couple of neo-N— ish young people–all to promote the exchange of ideas etc., etc. etc. Only you just know he doesn’t really mean it, right?
When things go too far one night puke-ing-ly-earnest, but adorable Hugh decides to grow a pair (sort of) and deal with stuff going down upstairs. Helen? She gets some home truths from BW that causes it all.
My Thoughts
I liked the way Julius Taranto periodically zapped reader (no spoilers–you’ll now it when you read it). That was different and fun. The humor–it wasn’t all that funny. There is so much you can really bust a gut laughing at in academia today, that this only hit the top level of bombast and cringe. It never dug deeper than the surface for humor.
We were supposed to admire Hugh, I think. I guess I may have as many trust issues with guys who think of lentils as a staple as I do with guys who wear MAGA hats. Give me the men in the middle of the political spectrum, please. Helen–I took off a lot for all the dull-as-dirt science discourse. Physics? Really? We’re Americans. We flunk or skip science. But having her be a physicist let her go the Island/Institute and set up the story, so, ok–that worked. The editor, though, should have stepped in and axed about 75% of the science babble. Without the cool special effects in Oppenheimer, physics is dull. Helen’s predictable diatribe on environment (we get it–it’s all our fault) and that women should be taught about #metoo from a standpoint of defending ourselves physically is old news.
Like many another law school grad though, Julius Taranto can spin a story. I’d definitely read something else by him–this was his debut novel. NPR will be all over it, I’m sure. Like Lee Cole’s Groundskeeping earlier this year, I responded to this due to the writing–it was well written, just not “wickedly funny” as promised.
My Verdict
3.0
I couldn’t give it a higher rating due to all the dull science chit-chat
How I Won a Nobel Prize by Julius Taranto, publishes September 12
Having spent much of the last 15 years in Academia, this one caught my eye on #Netgalley. A Nobel Prize! Well, well…. And, it is supposed to be “wickedly funny.” Ok, I’ll listen.
The Story
“…change doesn’t happen so much as it accumulates.”
“Why must politics always be the main theme? We are meant to be in a haven from so-called woke oppression but the constant controversy is more taxing than wokeness ever was”
Helen, a physicist (this is the summer of physicist with Oppenheimer in the theaters and now this book…. yet another book I’m reading mentions a relative who was a physicist) drags husband Hugh off to a sort of Island of Misfit Toy Academics–“Cancel U” as it is euphemistically known. A “no rules, just right” place for canceled academics and a few politicians, writers, etc., funded by a politically incorrect zillionaire with overtones of an ex-POTUS and a guy with a fixation on one letter, if you catch my drift. (If, being in the halls of the Christian Academe I missed an obvious parallel to a real place, please leave me a comment, ok?).
She and Hugh have been woke since before it was even waking up. They are an “open device” couple who share all their passwords so there are no secret phone friendships or anything similar. They often ignore each others’ “digital presence” and want “privacy” in their heads. Yeah. Are they vegan? hahhaha, Do you really have to ask?
Anyway, Helen is a genius with physics while Hugh attends “actions” (protests). When rich old B.W. recruits her for “The Institute” she goes to work with Perry (or is it Harry–I SWEAR the reader said both) who is a legend, but got ‘canceled’ for a same-sex relationship with an undergraduate. While Hugh is in their apartment “metronome-ing” (that’s an actual quote) to a recorded music, Helen and Perry are doing something amazing with physics–at a level that should, in time, see them grasp a Nobel Prize from the hands of Grumpy King himself, Carl XVI Gustaf in Stockholm.
Meanwhile, back at the ranch in the midst of regality as Hugh stresses over “predatory Capitalism,” Helen has a weird almost epiphany. What if people don’t have to be canceled completely–what if you can still admire the good things they’ve done while not forgetting the bad? And, about this time BW takes out a page in the Wall Street Journal offering free education to a couple of neo-N— ish young people–all to promote the exchange of ideas etc., etc. etc. Only you just know he doesn’t really mean it, right?
When things go too far one night puke-ing-ly-earnest, but adorable Hugh decides to grow a pair (sort of) and deal with stuff going down upstairs. Helen? She gets some home truths from BW that causes it all.
My Thoughts
I liked the way Julius Taranto periodically zapped reader (no spoilers–you’ll now it when you read it). That was different and fun. The humor–it wasn’t all that funny. There is so much you can really bust a gut laughing at in academia today, that this only hit the top level of bombast and cringe. It never dug deeper than the surface for humor.
We were supposed to admire Hugh, I think. I guess I may have as many trust issues with guys who think of lentils as a staple as I do with guys who wear MAGA hats. Give me the men in the middle of the political spectrum, please. Helen–I took off a lot for all the dull-as-dirt science discourse. Physics? Really? We’re Americans. We flunk or skip science. But having her be a physicist let her go the Island/Institute and set up the story, so, ok–that worked. The editor, though, should have stepped in and axed about 75% of the science babble. Without the cool special effects in Oppenheimer, physics is dull. Helen’s predictable diatribe on environment (we get it–it’s all our fault) and that women should be taught about #metoo from a standpoint of defending ourselves physically is old news.
Like many another law school grad though, Julius Taranto can spin a story. I’d definitely read something else by him–this was his debut novel. NPR will be all over it, I’m sure. Like Lee Cole’s Groundskeeping earlier this year, I responded to this due to the writing–it was well written, just not “wickedly funny” as promised.
My Verdict
3.0
I couldn’t give it a higher rating due to all the dull science chit-chat
How I Won a Nobel Prize by Julius Taranto, publishes September 12
February 19, 2024
Higher than three but not high enough for four stars. As a novel of ideas, it raises provocative theories...about superconductivity, an A.I.-driven spin off of effective altruism called dynamic equity, and how the divide between rational pragmatism and political activism exists among many intellectuals. Taranto, having attended Pomona College and Yale Law, certainly knows the academic milieu, at least where today's privileged progressives thrive. And, he excels at channeling the inner voice, the rhythm of speculation and action, that distinguishes protagonist Helen.
The problem is that the plot proves too predictable. The title of course gets one's attention, but it also deflates the culmination of this physicist's climb to fame and gain. Knowing that Helen is a winner, that in unnecessary foreshadowing the fate of her partner Hew and her own success that the climactic events remain unsurprising, takes the momentum out of the events. Yet Helen remains an appealingly flawed, self-conscious, awkward teller of her story, so the reader cuts her a lot of slack. But her character gets entangled with a schlubby Nobel Laureate, an if-George-Soros-was-libertarian philanthropist-mogul, and a Saul Bellow (name-checked) meets Philip Roth (unmentioned) novelist. All three could have qualified for a co-starring place, yet having them all encircling Helen, due to the nature of their institution, makes her head spin, and the reader's identification with three such world-expert movers and shakers, that the verisimilitude doesn't sustain itself.
They assume leading roles in certain chapters and in supporting roles for many others. One misses the three when they're not on stage. Helen's mate gets drawn subtly, but the red herring of why he's preoccupied, and the prickly counterpart he is to hard-edged if grudgingly hospitable inside Helen drains a lot of his own time in the spotlight of its drama. Even if it's a realistic depiction, although I've no experience to go on, of how two talented techies might conduct a frazzled relationship. So, Taranto has promise. He reminds me of Christopher Beha, taking seriously the satirical background, having a bit of fun with his creations, but not shying away from existential questions in our secularist, assimilation age.
The problem is that the plot proves too predictable. The title of course gets one's attention, but it also deflates the culmination of this physicist's climb to fame and gain. Knowing that Helen is a winner, that in unnecessary foreshadowing the fate of her partner Hew and her own success that the climactic events remain unsurprising, takes the momentum out of the events. Yet Helen remains an appealingly flawed, self-conscious, awkward teller of her story, so the reader cuts her a lot of slack. But her character gets entangled with a schlubby Nobel Laureate, an if-George-Soros-was-libertarian philanthropist-mogul, and a Saul Bellow (name-checked) meets Philip Roth (unmentioned) novelist. All three could have qualified for a co-starring place, yet having them all encircling Helen, due to the nature of their institution, makes her head spin, and the reader's identification with three such world-expert movers and shakers, that the verisimilitude doesn't sustain itself.
They assume leading roles in certain chapters and in supporting roles for many others. One misses the three when they're not on stage. Helen's mate gets drawn subtly, but the red herring of why he's preoccupied, and the prickly counterpart he is to hard-edged if grudgingly hospitable inside Helen drains a lot of his own time in the spotlight of its drama. Even if it's a realistic depiction, although I've no experience to go on, of how two talented techies might conduct a frazzled relationship. So, Taranto has promise. He reminds me of Christopher Beha, taking seriously the satirical background, having a bit of fun with his creations, but not shying away from existential questions in our secularist, assimilation age.
January 30, 2024
“There’s not much outside ourselves to prevent us from doing our worst.”
I really really enjoyed this and am so happy I decided to read it after I saw it on @LipglossMAFFIA’s book list.
It follows a PhD student who has to follow her disgraced (sexual misconduct) professor and supervisor to “rape island” — a university where any intellectual who has been cancelled can go to for haven if deemed worthy by its billionaire founder and benefactor.
While a lot of the academic jargon went over my head, its core plot and discussions on ethics and morality were fantastic. It was also very funny and the narrator was *chef’s kiss*.
I think it's a smart and bold book because the author tries and manages to make arguments for three separate parties on the discussion of “being cancelled”. It also heavily asks if the end justifies the means. He makes an argument for the people who find cancel culture preposterous, for those whose disposition is to be neutral on all political matters despite being pulled in different directions, and finally for those who are all for cancelling anyone who misuses their power or influence and require that they get the maximum punishment for their crimes. It depicts well ideological extremism and what happens when people are compelled to put their actions where their ideas are. It's also the second book I've read so far this year that asks both the MC and the reader about their complicity in the face of injustice and I was pretty rattled. 😂
There was a romance “subplot” that seemed to come out of nowhere but it was just so subtly executed that I soon realised I’d been made to warm up to and finally root for it and I really enjoyed it.
Finally, I really liked “The Endowment” and its allegorical meaning. Every time that phallic building was mentioned, it honestly made me laugh.
I really really enjoyed this and am so happy I decided to read it after I saw it on @LipglossMAFFIA’s book list.
It follows a PhD student who has to follow her disgraced (sexual misconduct) professor and supervisor to “rape island” — a university where any intellectual who has been cancelled can go to for haven if deemed worthy by its billionaire founder and benefactor.
While a lot of the academic jargon went over my head, its core plot and discussions on ethics and morality were fantastic. It was also very funny and the narrator was *chef’s kiss*.
I think it's a smart and bold book because the author tries and manages to make arguments for three separate parties on the discussion of “being cancelled”. It also heavily asks if the end justifies the means. He makes an argument for the people who find cancel culture preposterous, for those whose disposition is to be neutral on all political matters despite being pulled in different directions, and finally for those who are all for cancelling anyone who misuses their power or influence and require that they get the maximum punishment for their crimes. It depicts well ideological extremism and what happens when people are compelled to put their actions where their ideas are. It's also the second book I've read so far this year that asks both the MC and the reader about their complicity in the face of injustice and I was pretty rattled. 😂
There was a romance “subplot” that seemed to come out of nowhere but it was just so subtly executed that I soon realised I’d been made to warm up to and finally root for it and I really enjoyed it.
Finally, I really liked “The Endowment” and its allegorical meaning. Every time that phallic building was mentioned, it honestly made me laugh.
December 31, 2023
I’m not going to pretend that I understood all the physics, or that this was a book that I breezed through, but neither of those things should stop you from picking this up. I listened to the audio book, which, given the nature of some of the technical content, was probably much less effort than having to read a physical copy, which I think I might have found a little dry in places.
Lauren Fortgang does a wonderful job with the narration, striking exactly the right tone for Helen of academic indifference to/intolerance for, anything that distracts her from her scientific quest; the small matter of solving global warming.
Despite her noble and arguably altruistic objective, Helen’s morals are reassuringly fallible. This story exposes them unashamedly as we discover what she is (and isn’t) prepared to do in pursuit of her goal: a Nobel prize. She’s a fascinating character, and she’s not the only one in this cast. At times she’s battling the patriarchy whilst at others she’s colluding with it.
This story is full of moral and ethical questions and to what extent the end justifies the means. Many of the characters are hypocritical, their behaviour contradictory and often selfish.
It makes for a unique and entertaining perspective on what happens when money, power and academia collide.
I really enjoyed it!
Thank you to Netgalley and Macmillan UK Audio for the opportunity to listen to an ARC. How I Won a Nobel Prize publishes on 15 Feb 2024.
Lauren Fortgang does a wonderful job with the narration, striking exactly the right tone for Helen of academic indifference to/intolerance for, anything that distracts her from her scientific quest; the small matter of solving global warming.
Despite her noble and arguably altruistic objective, Helen’s morals are reassuringly fallible. This story exposes them unashamedly as we discover what she is (and isn’t) prepared to do in pursuit of her goal: a Nobel prize. She’s a fascinating character, and she’s not the only one in this cast. At times she’s battling the patriarchy whilst at others she’s colluding with it.
This story is full of moral and ethical questions and to what extent the end justifies the means. Many of the characters are hypocritical, their behaviour contradictory and often selfish.
It makes for a unique and entertaining perspective on what happens when money, power and academia collide.
I really enjoyed it!
Thank you to Netgalley and Macmillan UK Audio for the opportunity to listen to an ARC. How I Won a Nobel Prize publishes on 15 Feb 2024.
December 20, 2024
Sharp, funny, and incredibly thought provoking.
This is both a glorification of and a referendum on academia, and the combination works so much better than you might think, and that juxtaposition says a lot about both problems and triumphs in this sphere in general.
This has a slightly farcical element to it which works really well for the material and is well written enough to avoid a slide into absurdism.
The author lost me a bit with the anarchy/destruction business at the end of this, largely because all books of this sort seem to end the way, and that makes it both a shopworn conclusion and one that never felt like the right way to go in the first place. For me that’s the only reason this was a four rather than five star book, and I hope we hear more from Taranto on topics like this in the future.
*I received an ARC of this book in exchange for an honest review.*
This is both a glorification of and a referendum on academia, and the combination works so much better than you might think, and that juxtaposition says a lot about both problems and triumphs in this sphere in general.
This has a slightly farcical element to it which works really well for the material and is well written enough to avoid a slide into absurdism.
The author lost me a bit with the anarchy/destruction business at the end of this, largely because all books of this sort seem to end the way, and that makes it both a shopworn conclusion and one that never felt like the right way to go in the first place. For me that’s the only reason this was a four rather than five star book, and I hope we hear more from Taranto on topics like this in the future.
*I received an ARC of this book in exchange for an honest review.*
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