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The Groves of Academe
Henry Mulcahy, a literature instructor at progressive Jocelyn College, is informed that his appointment will not be continued. Convinced he is disliked by the president of Jocelyn because of his abilities as a teacher and his independence of mass opinion, Mulcahy believes he is being made the victim of a witch-hunt. Plotting vengeance, Mulcahy battles to fight for justice and, in the process, reveals his true ethical nature.
312 pages, Paperback
First published January 1, 1952
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2177 people want to read
About the author
Mary McCarthy
134 books305 followersPeople note American writer Mary Therese McCarthy for her sharp literary criticism and satirical fiction, including the novels
The Groves of Academe
(1952) and
The Group
(1963).
McCarthy studied at Vassar college in Poughkeepsie, New York and graduated in 1933. McCarthy moved to city of New York and incisively wrote as a known contributor to publications such as the Nation, the New Republic, and the New York Review of Books. Her debut novel, The Company She Keeps (1942), initiated her ascent to the most celebrated writers of her generation; the publication of her autobiography Memories of a Catholic Girlhood in 1957 bolstered this reputation.
This literary critic authored more than two dozen books, including the now-classic novel The Group , the New York Times bestseller in 1963.
Librarian Note: There is more than one author in the GoodReads database with this name.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mary_McC...
McCarthy studied at Vassar college in Poughkeepsie, New York and graduated in 1933. McCarthy moved to city of New York and incisively wrote as a known contributor to publications such as the Nation, the New Republic, and the New York Review of Books. Her debut novel, The Company She Keeps (1942), initiated her ascent to the most celebrated writers of her generation; the publication of her autobiography Memories of a Catholic Girlhood in 1957 bolstered this reputation.
This literary critic authored more than two dozen books, including the now-classic novel The Group , the New York Times bestseller in 1963.
Librarian Note: There is more than one author in the GoodReads database with this name.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mary_McC...
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Displaying 1 - 30 of 71 reviews
September 4, 2014
Interesting to wonder why Mary McCarthy's 'Groves' is so little read, while 'Stoner' is re-released to great acclaim seemingly every five years I hear my wife calling, she says, "Gee, why could this book by a woman that's just like that book by a man be less highly rated even though it's just as good and about the same tings: English department at a small regional school that's a little bit quirky and prone to infighting and incompetence. Gee, I wonder why? WHATEVER COULD IT BE, MISOGYNIST?.
Leaving aside routine sexism, which could well play a role, and the fact that Williams only admitted to writing 3 novels, whereas McCarthy wrote a lot about a lot: I suspect the reason is that 'Stoner' is the perfect, self-contained novel. It's about a guy, Stoner, and his college, and although it does take jabs at incompetent English faculty and students, it really is self-sufficient. This is what a lot of people want from their novels.
'Groves,' on the other hand, drags in McCarthyism, imitatio Christi, Joyce scholarship, the merits and demerits of modernism, and the tremendous moral complexities involved with all of this. In other words, Groves demands that you think, constantly, in a way that I, at least, found fairly uncomfortable. Just when I thought I had a good handle on the moral framework of the book, McCarthy compares the 'villain' to Christ, in a good way. Nobody's deeds are easily explicable, but they all seem perfectly realistic. That doesn't mean they're impossible to understand, just that there's a lot more going on than we usually want to think. Heroes and villains, in the right setting, swap roles without changing their behavior; the selfless are revealed as the most selfish and and vice versa.
And just when you think the you've got the point--the fathomless difficulty and complexity of morality!--it turns out that the 'moral' is really a very minor, almost unimportant way of thinking about the world. The closest thing we have to a hero is an ex-communist, now anarchist, poet, named Keogh (named by McCarthy, I assume, for a beloved Irish boxer in Ulysses). He's disgusted by the bickering and time-serving of the University faculty, and does the 'right' thing--in this case, helping the villain--but mainly just wants to get the heck out of the place.
Your beloved moral complexity looks very different to a man who's spent his life on the barricades for justice.
Also, McCarthy's syntax is complex and subtle. Not so long ago, that counted as good writing, and hopefully it soon will again.
I should add that my friend JP told me about this book, and he includes pertinent quotes in his review:
https://www.goodreads.com/review/show...
Leaving aside routine sexism, which could well play a role, and the fact that Williams only admitted to writing 3 novels, whereas McCarthy wrote a lot about a lot: I suspect the reason is that 'Stoner' is the perfect, self-contained novel. It's about a guy, Stoner, and his college, and although it does take jabs at incompetent English faculty and students, it really is self-sufficient. This is what a lot of people want from their novels.
'Groves,' on the other hand, drags in McCarthyism, imitatio Christi, Joyce scholarship, the merits and demerits of modernism, and the tremendous moral complexities involved with all of this. In other words, Groves demands that you think, constantly, in a way that I, at least, found fairly uncomfortable. Just when I thought I had a good handle on the moral framework of the book, McCarthy compares the 'villain' to Christ, in a good way. Nobody's deeds are easily explicable, but they all seem perfectly realistic. That doesn't mean they're impossible to understand, just that there's a lot more going on than we usually want to think. Heroes and villains, in the right setting, swap roles without changing their behavior; the selfless are revealed as the most selfish and and vice versa.
And just when you think the you've got the point--the fathomless difficulty and complexity of morality!--it turns out that the 'moral' is really a very minor, almost unimportant way of thinking about the world. The closest thing we have to a hero is an ex-communist, now anarchist, poet, named Keogh (named by McCarthy, I assume, for a beloved Irish boxer in Ulysses). He's disgusted by the bickering and time-serving of the University faculty, and does the 'right' thing--in this case, helping the villain--but mainly just wants to get the heck out of the place.
Your beloved moral complexity looks very different to a man who's spent his life on the barricades for justice.
Also, McCarthy's syntax is complex and subtle. Not so long ago, that counted as good writing, and hopefully it soon will again.
I should add that my friend JP told me about this book, and he includes pertinent quotes in his review:
https://www.goodreads.com/review/show...
July 4, 2014
Regarding the faculty:
“Everyone felt called to stipulate, like a lawyer, his own degree of interest in the case, and to distinguish his own area of human solidarity from that of his neighbor, carefully set up boundaries and limits, eminent domain.” “These continuous factional disputes and ideological scandals were a form of spiritual luxury that satisfied the higher cravings for polemic, gossip, and backbiting without taking the baser shape, so noticeable in the larger universities, of personal competition and envy. Here, living was cheap and the salary-range was not great. The headships of departments were nominal, falling, by common consent, to the member with the greatest taste for paper-work. Such competition as there was centered around vying for the better students.”
Regarding the students:
“This very rawness and formlessness in the students made them interesting to teach. Badly prepared, sleepy, and evasive, they could nevertheless be stirred to wonder and pent admiration at the discovery of form and pattern in history or a work of art or a laboratory experiment, though ceding this admiration grudgingly and by degrees” “The better students, in general, adjusted themselves without repining to what the faculty had to offer, pointing out to their juniors that it was better to allow Mr. Van Tour to teach you what he knew than what he didn’t, patently; but the poorer students complained constantly of having to study things in which they were not ‘interested,’ i.e., those who had no real interests and no capacity for absorption but only passing whims with which they quickly grew bored felt genuinely deprived and disenfranchised at having to study a subject which someone else also was studying. They viewed the course of studies as a tray of sweetmeats held before their greedy and yet suspicious eyes and cried out in fury when the tray was whisked away from them, still gluttonously hesitating, or when they were forced to accept a piece that another child had nibbled.”
As these quotes indicate, Mary McCarthy is funny, spot-on, and merciless. Academe hasn't changed that much since 1952, except that in the fictional Jocelyn College of this book, only one of the English professors has a Ph.D. and all of them know Greek.
The story is just good enough to sustain the observations, lists, and analyses. Everyone is a caricature in precisely the ways that human beings in the academic world are caricatures. If it bothers you that the hero isn't "likeable," that's because you haven't noticed that he's not the hero.
Just loved it. McCarthy is terribly underrated.
“Everyone felt called to stipulate, like a lawyer, his own degree of interest in the case, and to distinguish his own area of human solidarity from that of his neighbor, carefully set up boundaries and limits, eminent domain.” “These continuous factional disputes and ideological scandals were a form of spiritual luxury that satisfied the higher cravings for polemic, gossip, and backbiting without taking the baser shape, so noticeable in the larger universities, of personal competition and envy. Here, living was cheap and the salary-range was not great. The headships of departments were nominal, falling, by common consent, to the member with the greatest taste for paper-work. Such competition as there was centered around vying for the better students.”
Regarding the students:
“This very rawness and formlessness in the students made them interesting to teach. Badly prepared, sleepy, and evasive, they could nevertheless be stirred to wonder and pent admiration at the discovery of form and pattern in history or a work of art or a laboratory experiment, though ceding this admiration grudgingly and by degrees” “The better students, in general, adjusted themselves without repining to what the faculty had to offer, pointing out to their juniors that it was better to allow Mr. Van Tour to teach you what he knew than what he didn’t, patently; but the poorer students complained constantly of having to study things in which they were not ‘interested,’ i.e., those who had no real interests and no capacity for absorption but only passing whims with which they quickly grew bored felt genuinely deprived and disenfranchised at having to study a subject which someone else also was studying. They viewed the course of studies as a tray of sweetmeats held before their greedy and yet suspicious eyes and cried out in fury when the tray was whisked away from them, still gluttonously hesitating, or when they were forced to accept a piece that another child had nibbled.”
As these quotes indicate, Mary McCarthy is funny, spot-on, and merciless. Academe hasn't changed that much since 1952, except that in the fictional Jocelyn College of this book, only one of the English professors has a Ph.D. and all of them know Greek.
The story is just good enough to sustain the observations, lists, and analyses. Everyone is a caricature in precisely the ways that human beings in the academic world are caricatures. If it bothers you that the hero isn't "likeable," that's because you haven't noticed that he's not the hero.
Just loved it. McCarthy is terribly underrated.
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September 19, 2022I just love the kind of wry, clever writing that was Mary McCarthy’s stock in trade. I might have highlighted more passages in this book than in any other I’ve read. I also looked up more words than in any other—if I may say so, I have an above-average vocabulary (particularly passive vocabulary), but McCarthy still sent me scurrying to the dictionary not infrequently. Often these were words whose meaning I could deduce from their Latin roots but whose particular forms I had not seen before, like “dubiety” and “descried.” Others just had me stumped, like “blague,” “morganatic,” and “orgones.” McCarthy’s erudition is nothing to sneeze at.
The thing is that the stuff in McCarthy that I don’t get--whether it’s advanced vocabulary, deep-cut references to Greek or Christian mythology, or references to such popular intellectual grist of her time as poetry or light philosophy-- it doesn’t make me feel stupid, the way certain modernists make my head hurt to read. McCarthy, rather, makes me feel aspirational, as though as long as I highlight each of these words and come back to them later, and go read Edith Hamilton a little more carefully, and go learn a little Jesuit philosophy, I too might be as smart as Mary McCarthy one day, or at least smart enough to understand everything she says. Her showing off inspires me, somehow.
Anyway, what about the book? This book, the platonic form of the academic satire genre, is a lot of fun, particularly as a companion piece to Randall Jarrell’s Pictures from an Institution, which I also thoroughly enjoyed without thoroughly understanding. Both the college of Jarrell’s book and McCarthy’s Jocelyn College are said to be loosely based on Sarah Lawrence, where both writers taught for a time. But while Jarrell’s book is a collection of vignettes without much connective tissue (the “pictures” of the title), The Groves of Academe has something more of a plot. This revolves around the firing and rehiring of one Henry Mulcahy, a literature professor, Joyce expert, possible former Communist, and manipulator extraordinaire. When, at the book’s opening, Mulcahy receives word from the college president that his contract is not to be renewed, he begins a series of maneuvers to work the internecine politics of the faculty into manipulating the president into rehiring him. As the vantage point moves from faculty member to faculty member—are these characters or archetypes? It’s not clear, but it doesn’t much matter—you see how everyone’s perspective is a little warped by his or her own prejudices, principles, and ambitions. A young instructor named Domna Rejnev is the most buffeted about, a staunch friend and supporter of Mulcahy until she comes to see how much he has manipulated her in particular, taking advantage of her naïveté and idealism. These qualities have no place in the political gamesmanship of an academic faculty, it would seem; those who suffer from them are quickly ground into mincemeat.
The book’s climax occurs at a poetry conference taking place on the campus, which tells you something of the kind of book it is, and also gives McCarthy a chance to sling some mud at non-academic intellectuals, lest you think the professors and administrators are the only ones in her crosshairs here. This is where another of McCarthy's stalwart theme comes into play: the tendency of the political left to eat itself. The “was he or wasn’t he” around Mulcahy’s possible membership in the Communist party causes a lot of hand-wringing. The Jocelyn faculty—particularly its president, Maynard Hoar—prides itself on intellectual freedom and open-mindedness. It can’t condemn a faculty member for any views he might hold. But in the time of the novel (published in 1952 at the height of the McCarthy era) Maynard Hoar has a very fine line to tread; he can’t be perceived as firing Mulcahy for his politics, but he also can’t be perceived as having actual card-carrying Communists in his faculty, supposedly indoctrinating students into their anti-American beliefs. So much of the thematic content of the book centers on whether it matters what faculty believe, and whether they actually have the power to indoctrinate students into anything at all. Sound familiar?
The thing is that the stuff in McCarthy that I don’t get--whether it’s advanced vocabulary, deep-cut references to Greek or Christian mythology, or references to such popular intellectual grist of her time as poetry or light philosophy-- it doesn’t make me feel stupid, the way certain modernists make my head hurt to read. McCarthy, rather, makes me feel aspirational, as though as long as I highlight each of these words and come back to them later, and go read Edith Hamilton a little more carefully, and go learn a little Jesuit philosophy, I too might be as smart as Mary McCarthy one day, or at least smart enough to understand everything she says. Her showing off inspires me, somehow.
Anyway, what about the book? This book, the platonic form of the academic satire genre, is a lot of fun, particularly as a companion piece to Randall Jarrell’s Pictures from an Institution, which I also thoroughly enjoyed without thoroughly understanding. Both the college of Jarrell’s book and McCarthy’s Jocelyn College are said to be loosely based on Sarah Lawrence, where both writers taught for a time. But while Jarrell’s book is a collection of vignettes without much connective tissue (the “pictures” of the title), The Groves of Academe has something more of a plot. This revolves around the firing and rehiring of one Henry Mulcahy, a literature professor, Joyce expert, possible former Communist, and manipulator extraordinaire. When, at the book’s opening, Mulcahy receives word from the college president that his contract is not to be renewed, he begins a series of maneuvers to work the internecine politics of the faculty into manipulating the president into rehiring him. As the vantage point moves from faculty member to faculty member—are these characters or archetypes? It’s not clear, but it doesn’t much matter—you see how everyone’s perspective is a little warped by his or her own prejudices, principles, and ambitions. A young instructor named Domna Rejnev is the most buffeted about, a staunch friend and supporter of Mulcahy until she comes to see how much he has manipulated her in particular, taking advantage of her naïveté and idealism. These qualities have no place in the political gamesmanship of an academic faculty, it would seem; those who suffer from them are quickly ground into mincemeat.
The book’s climax occurs at a poetry conference taking place on the campus, which tells you something of the kind of book it is, and also gives McCarthy a chance to sling some mud at non-academic intellectuals, lest you think the professors and administrators are the only ones in her crosshairs here. This is where another of McCarthy's stalwart theme comes into play: the tendency of the political left to eat itself. The “was he or wasn’t he” around Mulcahy’s possible membership in the Communist party causes a lot of hand-wringing. The Jocelyn faculty—particularly its president, Maynard Hoar—prides itself on intellectual freedom and open-mindedness. It can’t condemn a faculty member for any views he might hold. But in the time of the novel (published in 1952 at the height of the McCarthy era) Maynard Hoar has a very fine line to tread; he can’t be perceived as firing Mulcahy for his politics, but he also can’t be perceived as having actual card-carrying Communists in his faculty, supposedly indoctrinating students into their anti-American beliefs. So much of the thematic content of the book centers on whether it matters what faculty believe, and whether they actually have the power to indoctrinate students into anything at all. Sound familiar?
March 25, 2022
My least favorite McCarthy so far. The reading of this novel was but series of misconceptions, failed predictions about the narrative course. There’s something to commend in that sort of plotting. I did read much of this in airports and then today when I’ve discovered I’m infected again. Sigh.
Groves regards a struggling academic at a time of HUAC and loyalty oaths. I had this nebbish chap pegged as a Pnin but then he wasn’t. It is what everyone else reveals that makes intriguing. I particularly enjoyed the conclusion threading Cattalus into university politics with satirical skewers on display on every page.
Groves regards a struggling academic at a time of HUAC and loyalty oaths. I had this nebbish chap pegged as a Pnin but then he wasn’t. It is what everyone else reveals that makes intriguing. I particularly enjoyed the conclusion threading Cattalus into university politics with satirical skewers on display on every page.
February 24, 2025
A very well written book that I hated to enjoy. I don’t know if I should find this book excellent or bad. It is certainly something. Potentially the best written gossip, but alas, it is entirely gossip. The characters are all spiteful and selfish, the plot is minimal. In the end you are left wondering why you bother caring which character is in the right. They are all in the wrong. It seems only the president realizes that in the end, but still I was unsatisfied that the ending revolved around him and Bentkoop instead of Mulcahy or Rejnev. I don’t know. I just don’t know.
March 29, 2024
Been meaning to read this for like 15 years, and I enjoyed it - think Pnin meets Stoner
November 11, 2011
Another campus novel of the several I read this fall. (You Deserve Nothing; The Secret History) I wonder if Donna Tartt read Mary McCarthy. One difference from Tartt's book is that in The Groves of Academe the professors and President of Jocelyn College are the focus of the novel rather than the students. A similarity is that in both books the colleges are small and progressive though the stories are 30 years apart in time.
Henry Mulcahy, middle-aged, unsuccessful, overburdened, renegade literature instructor, gets a letter from President Maynard Hoar informing him that his appointment will not be confirmed in the next academic year. Henry has a wife and four children living with him in substandard conditions. They are permanently in debt and his wife has had health issues since the birth of their last child.
In desperation, he cooks up a plot based on exaggerations of his wife's condition and an untruthful account of his political past. He intimates these "facts" to one of his students and to a young, beautiful, Russian colleague in his department. The student is responsible for a viral rumor line and Domna Rejnev becomes his accomplice, tirelessly gathering faculty support for Mulcahy. The gist is that by means of pity and political pressure, President Hoar will be forced to keep Mulcahy. Hoar is a published opponent of the current loyalty oath and Mulcahy claims to have been a communist in his youth.
It is all quite complex to read about in 2011. As much as I have come across about the anti-communist witch hunts in the fiction of the early 1950s, I felt that I would have caught on faster if I had been reading the newspapers in those years. More than that, the political implications aside, the entire novel is a continuous spoof on colleges, progressive education, the claustrophobic infighting and personality conflicts on a small campus, topped off by a hilarious send up on poets.
Mary McCarthy is a perceptive, intellectually rigorous writer and assumes that her readers are on a similar level. She is also a savage satirist given to mocking pretensions and dearly held ideas. Once I got my head around the various views and vested interests of the characters, I was amused, intrigued and a victim of the suspense inherent in her story. Most hilarious of all, after all the drama is over, nothing really has changed. Life goes on at Jocelyn College.
This is McCarthy's third novel. She achieved bestseller status with her fifth, The Group, in 1962 and made her name through political journalism. I think her novels were almost too brilliant and intellectual for the male dominated publishing world of the 1940s and 1950s. I love fiction written by dazzlingly intelligent women. If only they could run the world.
November 15, 2009
*whistles* Goodness, what a scathing literary commentary on liberal arts schools. It says something about McCarthy's ability to discern the archetypes humans tend to inhabit that while reading Chapter IV: 'Ancient History,' I could have sworn I was reading about my own college, now, not a fictional college in 1952. She has nailed the aspirations of liberal arts schools, the petty politics, the process of mellowing (or radicalizing) that comes with age, the physical feel of such a campus - and it makes for an incredibly amusing read. It's a morality play, of sorts - the protagonist is a horrible, horrible man, full of pretension and gall and bare-faced lies, so much so that he often begins to believe his own interpretation of himself as a superior sort of man - and I love that the moral actors are women (although not all women are moral in the novel), and that poetry is the means by which the building crisis of the book is finally expressed.
For all its timelessness, it's also a product of the McCarthy era, of a pre-Civil RIghts America, of a time when anti-Semitism ran rife in plain sight, and McCarthy is as unforgiving in skewering the way self-avowed liberals are still prejudiced creatures as she is in damning her protagonist through his foibles. A wonderful piece of prose, for all that it created real moments of discomfort in me!
For all its timelessness, it's also a product of the McCarthy era, of a pre-Civil RIghts America, of a time when anti-Semitism ran rife in plain sight, and McCarthy is as unforgiving in skewering the way self-avowed liberals are still prejudiced creatures as she is in damning her protagonist through his foibles. A wonderful piece of prose, for all that it created real moments of discomfort in me!
November 8, 2009
I went great guns with this book for the first 50-60 pages or so as a passenger on a road trip last weekend. Then I put it down and after that it was a real pain to pick back up and continue with the same level of enthusiasm.
I thought it would be good to read after finishing Owen Johnson's Stover at Yale - Stover was an undergraduate beginning his first year at Yale, and the protagonist of McCarthy's book was Henry Mulcahey, a professor at a progressive college. Stover spent the majority of his time trying to figure out where and how on campus he would fit, while Mulcahey discovers in the first chapter of his story that he has been denied reappointment in the academic field. Stover's society were other undergraduates - his classmates, his girlfriends, secret campus societies such as Skull and Bones; Mulcahey's society is comprised of his fellow academics - his peer professors and president of the college mostly, but also a touch of interaction with his wife.
McCarthy's story is a satire on the whole academic field, and anyone who has spent time with professors can see the connection even today. Professors can be, and often are, just as catty, gossipy, and out for blood as the students they teach. But the story itself is also rather cold, not all that humorous, and honestly a little on the Big Yawn side. I actually enjoyed the discussions of literature and philosophy, and the philosophy of literature, but when having to try to understand Mulcahey's own choices and motives I found myself a little fuzzy.
On a side note I read this book specifically because I had read and enjoyed McCarthy's How I Grew... and I could have sworn I had read some others by her. I have it in my head that I really dig her work all around, but upon closer inspection through Goodreads discovered that perhaps How I Grew was the only McCarthy I had read prior to The Groves of Academe. Now I'm just annoyed.
I thought it would be good to read after finishing Owen Johnson's Stover at Yale - Stover was an undergraduate beginning his first year at Yale, and the protagonist of McCarthy's book was Henry Mulcahey, a professor at a progressive college. Stover spent the majority of his time trying to figure out where and how on campus he would fit, while Mulcahey discovers in the first chapter of his story that he has been denied reappointment in the academic field. Stover's society were other undergraduates - his classmates, his girlfriends, secret campus societies such as Skull and Bones; Mulcahey's society is comprised of his fellow academics - his peer professors and president of the college mostly, but also a touch of interaction with his wife.
McCarthy's story is a satire on the whole academic field, and anyone who has spent time with professors can see the connection even today. Professors can be, and often are, just as catty, gossipy, and out for blood as the students they teach. But the story itself is also rather cold, not all that humorous, and honestly a little on the Big Yawn side. I actually enjoyed the discussions of literature and philosophy, and the philosophy of literature, but when having to try to understand Mulcahey's own choices and motives I found myself a little fuzzy.
On a side note I read this book specifically because I had read and enjoyed McCarthy's How I Grew... and I could have sworn I had read some others by her. I have it in my head that I really dig her work all around, but upon closer inspection through Goodreads discovered that perhaps How I Grew was the only McCarthy I had read prior to The Groves of Academe. Now I'm just annoyed.
March 31, 2019
I really wanted to like this book as I found McCarthy’s book, The Group, to be quite fascinating. But I was bored to tears by this and found it tedious. There was quite a bit of humor in it, and as a person with a masters degree in English there were certainly members of Jocelyn’s English Dept. faculty that I recognized, but it just felt like McCarthy was trying too hard.
April 11, 2009
Imagine Nabokov's Pnin. Then imagine the protagonist is Pnin's evil twin.
January 13, 2025
A mid-century minor classic; an academic’s satire of academia. Henry Mulcahy, the only PhD in the Literature Department at a small “progressive” liberal arts college, and possessed of a difficult personality, is informed that his contract will not be renewed after the current academic year. He comes up with a plan to save his job by falsely spreading word to his colleagues that he is a Communist Party member - deducing that the college President, who has carefully crafted a reputation as a liberal defender of free thought in the academy and staunch McCarthyism opponent, will not risk that reputation if Mulcahy can shape public opinion to suggest that he is being fired for his Communist politics.
Those machinations and their initially rousing then disillusioning effects on several of Mulcahy’s colleagues form around the first two-thirds of the novel, with the final third a comic send-up of a modern poetry symposium on campus.
“I suppose, in a certain sense, I must be saying farewell to progressivism.”
Those machinations and their initially rousing then disillusioning effects on several of Mulcahy’s colleagues form around the first two-thirds of the novel, with the final third a comic send-up of a modern poetry symposium on campus.
“I suppose, in a certain sense, I must be saying farewell to progressivism.”
November 12, 2008
I had to drop this book. After 4 months of trying to get through it I just gave up. The language in the book is dated. The character descriptions are funny and very elaborate but go on and on and eventually lost me. Probably a good book for book on tape when one can't get to sleep. On to the next book - Hurray!
May 7, 2016
A fierce battle for little gain
Those argumentative people in your classes who would argue for its own sake, well many of them became academics. After 45 years in academia, I had the bad fortune to see many of them split departments and colleges into factions, with no one the winner.
Those argumentative people in your classes who would argue for its own sake, well many of them became academics. After 45 years in academia, I had the bad fortune to see many of them split departments and colleges into factions, with no one the winner.
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April 27, 2015Yeah, I just don't care.
October 4, 2025
Oh my god I really didn’t like this book. Apparently the first chapter was a short story that she published in the New Yorker and then later expanded into a full length work…. It should have stayed as a short story.
Besides the plot of this book being SO BORING there’s all these tangential side quests that she goes on that are just completely unrelated to the plot and unnecessary. It moves horribly slow and for a 300 page book it felt like 1,000. This book is so obnoxiously pretentious and that is coming from me. The constant references seem snotty and overdone, and she tries WAY too hard with this.
All of the interesting themes like morality and truth and justice were lost to the mind-numbing plot and irritating loftiness of the prose. Just read Stoner instead that book is 100000x better.
Besides the plot of this book being SO BORING there’s all these tangential side quests that she goes on that are just completely unrelated to the plot and unnecessary. It moves horribly slow and for a 300 page book it felt like 1,000. This book is so obnoxiously pretentious and that is coming from me. The constant references seem snotty and overdone, and she tries WAY too hard with this.
All of the interesting themes like morality and truth and justice were lost to the mind-numbing plot and irritating loftiness of the prose. Just read Stoner instead that book is 100000x better.
August 20, 2012
A funny, smart, and insightful book that felt, to me at least, as also marking the end of a certain kind of literature. The book itself includes a certain amount of talk about "Jesuitical" habits of mind, that trained argumentative style that for some of us will always be the ulitmate form of intellectual investigation, and the characters definitely engage in that here, at this peculiar depth of strategy and counter-strategy, investigating morals and motives at a level of psychological depth that also echoes Henry James.
But for whatever reason, and maybe it's the leavening humor, this never quite achieves the sympathy or gravity of James. The canvas feels, somehow, smaller than it should-- I'm a teacher, too, so I'm disposed to enjoy nuts-and-bolts presentations of what students are really capable of and not overstating the case, but the stakes here, for the students, felt very low. And in the absence of that, it feels like the question of whether Hen stays or goes was kind of beside the point. I understand that the drama is about the fate of Hen's soul, and that of Maynard and maybe to a lesser degree Domna, but even with those souls hanging in the balance, this seemed a little slight.
Which is not to say I didn't enjoy it; but I'm also glad that fiction moved into other areas, post this particular form of modernism-- into fragmentation, and stylistic experimentation, and also embracing the idea of the protagonist as representative rather than eccentric, since it opens the book up to being of greater moment, aesthetically and culturally.
But for whatever reason, and maybe it's the leavening humor, this never quite achieves the sympathy or gravity of James. The canvas feels, somehow, smaller than it should-- I'm a teacher, too, so I'm disposed to enjoy nuts-and-bolts presentations of what students are really capable of and not overstating the case, but the stakes here, for the students, felt very low. And in the absence of that, it feels like the question of whether Hen stays or goes was kind of beside the point. I understand that the drama is about the fate of Hen's soul, and that of Maynard and maybe to a lesser degree Domna, but even with those souls hanging in the balance, this seemed a little slight.
Which is not to say I didn't enjoy it; but I'm also glad that fiction moved into other areas, post this particular form of modernism-- into fragmentation, and stylistic experimentation, and also embracing the idea of the protagonist as representative rather than eccentric, since it opens the book up to being of greater moment, aesthetically and culturally.
May 20, 2016
I might have not appreciated this book as much had I not gone to Film school for five years - or any other Arts/Humanities course for that matter.
The description of the minds and quarrels and attitudes and dialogues of scholars is just perfect. It's a very toxic environment established by smart people who were led to think at some point in their lives that they are smarter than the others.
There are many interesting discussions concerning all the different branches connected with thought: philosophy, morality, religion, social sciences, politics and, of course, literature. It's quite enriching, I have to say, and it makes the reading easier.
Of course, as I have stated before, this might not be the case for those who have not attended an Arts/Humanities course at university, thence confronted with the constant ego battles between teachers, coordinators and students. I don't mean to sound patronising with this comment, but merely to warn readers on what they are going to find in this book.
I really enjoyed Mary McCarthy's writing, it reminded me of Kurt Vonnegut - more specifically, in this case, "Hocus Pocus", which is also set in a so-called progressive college that admits a number of rejects within their student body.
The description of the minds and quarrels and attitudes and dialogues of scholars is just perfect. It's a very toxic environment established by smart people who were led to think at some point in their lives that they are smarter than the others.
There are many interesting discussions concerning all the different branches connected with thought: philosophy, morality, religion, social sciences, politics and, of course, literature. It's quite enriching, I have to say, and it makes the reading easier.
Of course, as I have stated before, this might not be the case for those who have not attended an Arts/Humanities course at university, thence confronted with the constant ego battles between teachers, coordinators and students. I don't mean to sound patronising with this comment, but merely to warn readers on what they are going to find in this book.
I really enjoyed Mary McCarthy's writing, it reminded me of Kurt Vonnegut - more specifically, in this case, "Hocus Pocus", which is also set in a so-called progressive college that admits a number of rejects within their student body.
December 15, 2012
Begins as a character and social study of a brilliant, arrogant academic at a small progressive private college in the fraught political climate of post-war America trying to save his job while stoking up his sense of misunderstood martyrdom, then veers into an entertaining satirical portrait of academia, the academic tendency to argue oneself into immobility, and the contemporary art scene (with the very funny scenes at a poetry conference held at the college). Insightful, fascinating bits along the way, but the book as a whole never quite coheres into a narrative whole.
October 20, 2015
This is an enjoyably brutal romp through the absurdities of academia and academics. McCarthy's prose is deliciously and mercilessly precise as she skewers the foibles of a small liberal arts college community during the heady days of the Red Scare and experimental poetry. Much in the machinations of college administrators, faculty, and students is firmly rooted in this specific cultural context; much, for better and for worse, is instantly recognizable to anyone who has spent time among the groves of academe.
May 28, 2016
Not my taste
I struggled to interest myself in the problems of the characters. The conflicts were primarily internal and academic and require tedious conversations to unwind. In the end, it was of little interest to me whether the unpleasant protagonist met an unpleasant end of not.
I struggled to interest myself in the problems of the characters. The conflicts were primarily internal and academic and require tedious conversations to unwind. In the end, it was of little interest to me whether the unpleasant protagonist met an unpleasant end of not.
December 18, 2018
Ugh... This novel started out so promising. Then it very quickly descended from an interesting character study to a mess of intellectual rivalries and literary allusions that gave me a headache. I'm a pretty well read and intelligent guy. When your novel descends to a point where I can hardly follow what's going on, your text is wayyyy too obscure.
October 15, 2013
I generally love campus novels, and this one started out with real promise. But by the second half, I was dragging myself through because I cared just enough (barely) to want to see how things wrapped up. Uneven, to say the least.
November 8, 2014
Hard to finish and dated
But I finished it
But I finished it
December 28, 2023
Mary McCarthy either knew well the politics and personalities of the people she impales in this novel, or simply had an axe to grind for all the literati and their criticism. Henry Mulcahy is a pompous, conniving ass, but he has plenty of company among his colleagues. All are portrayed as narcissistic, self-absorbed blowhards insulated from each other and the world. If this was McCarthy's purpose, she succeeded amazingly well, but reading this chronicle of ego and subterfuge is difficult nonetheless. McCarthy often overwrites, and seems, herself, to be taken with her own intelligence and knowledge. Seventy years later, the style is overly dramatic and verbose, but the terror people lived with during the HUAC era probably excuses some of the excess. That said, I couldn't wait to finish this and move on.
Read
May 27, 2023We’ve just finished reading Mary McCarthy’s “The Groves of Academe” together, and although it was published in 1952, I’m struck by how many of its concerns – academic freedom, ideological smears, etc. – are, mutatis mutandis, highly relevant in today’s climate. Still, as much as I often enjoy academic novels and books about the ‘50s, this one doesn’t manage be as urgent, dramatic, or witty as it sets out to be. Interesting in spots, wordy and attenuated as a whole.
Read
August 25, 2025one of the reasons I think the college (and the college/campus novel) is interesting stems from the fact that a lot of the conflict unique to a college setting/experience is remarkably temporal. I did a fair amount of research for my internship this summer about student protest and protest culture on a college campus, and something that I always found striking in those things was the built-in and fundamental altruism.
at HWS, students in the late 60s battled with the trustees about improvements to dining, adding students to the board of trustees, more flexible housing -- usually with the implicit understanding that, especially for seniors (and sometimes juniors), changes wouldn't be implemented for some years, until they had already graduated. so student protest sometimes becomes this kind of silly, very earnest support for a good that the protester will not benefit from. unlike protesting about national policy, problems in the community, global issues -- all of which are constantly pressing realities that will not only impact the rest of the protester's life, but also, ostensibly, the lives of their family, friends, neighbors, children, etc. -- much of the protest at the college is done in favor of supporting the future yet-unknown student. the protester (unless, say, they send friends or children to that college) will see no real improvement to their life once the college changes, because their time at the college is done. post-graduation, the college has no true bearing on the life of the graduate. there's just the credibility of the degree and, perhaps, the network one can rely on in their career or friendships. but the college is not an enduring truth in a protester's life -- so when the protester protests, it is fundamentally altruistic. and, depending on who you ask, maybe even fruitless or pointless
of course, protest at colleges speak to greater inequalities in the state, nation, etc.; a college education is regularly attached to one's future success, and the forceful loss of that education can be deeply detrimental; and there is absolute importance in the power of protest to adjust one's lived experience towards a more just and equitable one, even if it just for four years. but nonetheless, the college is probably one of the more concise experiences of the (American) life, for those who partake. one's conflict with a college usually ends after those four years are over. "so why bother protesting? it'll be over soon enough"
I'd argue that this is one of those issues that campus novels -- especially ones written from the student perspective -- are entitled to touch upon. in the college is evidence of a protest culture which is thoroughly and earnestly altruistic. the way we represent that culture, that condensed experience, shapes the way we view the power of protest
but then, this temporality is more complicated for the more 'typical' campus novel -- the ones written from the perspective of professors. if one of the defining features of the college experience is its confinedness -- that just as the campus is typically physically enclosed, secluded from 'outside forces', it is also a cultural process of enclosure and suspension, a momentary lapse between adolescence and adulthood -- then the professor, as a figure (or type), represents a dependence on that confinedness. (in a talk with my advisor, we found 'the professor' to be an infantalized role, someone incapable of making that true step towards adulthood, as in the greater reality beyond cultural suspension/confinement). that's why I fend tenure so fascinating. tenure, as a system, is something especially significant to the professorial position because it allows its own existence. tenure ensures that that suspension remains untouched and protected.
for the professor novel then, the premier conflict, the end-all-be-all stakes, is the potential loss of tenure and the professorial position. (cf., from what I remember, Stoner, Straight Man, Lucky Jim, On Beauty, and this novel). unlike student novels, where the conflict tends to be sourced in what happens after the college experience is done, once the rite of passage into adulthood is completed, the professor novel cannot escape the boundaries of its reality. when a novel is set on a campus, about a campus, dealing with professors, those characters cannot face a greater loss than that of their career. they're similar to students in that way -- but instead of students facing the inevitable entrance to adulthood, professors have been perpetually fighting against it. it's acceptance versus resistance.
McCarthy, here, has a narrative that basically lampshades this issue. the professor-protagonist, Mulcahy, is faced with the threat of losing his job as a professor. all drama in this novel spreads from that issue. but McCarthy explicitly complicates this issue by injecting the campus plot with extracampus issues -- i.e. the purge of academia during the Red Scare. the war on Communism in American culture becomes Mulcahy's excuse, as a self-proclaimed Communist, to elevate the trouble he is facing beyond just interpersonal college gossip (though he is faking this membership). in doing so, he disrupts the usual trouble of the professor/campus.
but the novel repeatedly doesn't allow the conflict to escalate to the greater American problem of Communism -- the college's president doesn't acknowledge the issue, Mulcahy's colleagues care more about the wellbeing of his ailing wife, even when the problem returns in the last 20 pages, it's revealed as total shams, fabricated outrage to keep Mulcahy's job. McCarthy doesn't allow the stakes of the narrative to truly progress beyond that of the true campus conflict: the exile from the campus. the campus novel is always serving itself in that way: it produces its own types, its own drama, its own conclusions, from the very first page by the virtue of its cultural characterization.
after two-thirds of the novel has passed, another character, Domna, a professor of Russian Lit, argues that Tolstoy would look at the struggles of these professors and say they were all being fools and that none of this mattered. and it's true. McCarthy proves this. Domna even asks, outright, if it would really be that big of a deal if Mulcahy was outed as a liar, if he kept his job regardless.
and that is the temporality of the campus novel at work. the conflict of a campus novel does not matter beyond itself -- it ends after four years, it ends at the boundary line between campus and town, between the professorship and the resignation/exile. that's why Greek fate plays so intensely into McCarthy's novel. (a novel, to note, that essentially precedes all American campus novels and the foundations of the genre). one of the reasons the Greek tragic figure is pitied is because we know, from the onset, that his struggle is pointless. the same is true of the professor.
at HWS, students in the late 60s battled with the trustees about improvements to dining, adding students to the board of trustees, more flexible housing -- usually with the implicit understanding that, especially for seniors (and sometimes juniors), changes wouldn't be implemented for some years, until they had already graduated. so student protest sometimes becomes this kind of silly, very earnest support for a good that the protester will not benefit from. unlike protesting about national policy, problems in the community, global issues -- all of which are constantly pressing realities that will not only impact the rest of the protester's life, but also, ostensibly, the lives of their family, friends, neighbors, children, etc. -- much of the protest at the college is done in favor of supporting the future yet-unknown student. the protester (unless, say, they send friends or children to that college) will see no real improvement to their life once the college changes, because their time at the college is done. post-graduation, the college has no true bearing on the life of the graduate. there's just the credibility of the degree and, perhaps, the network one can rely on in their career or friendships. but the college is not an enduring truth in a protester's life -- so when the protester protests, it is fundamentally altruistic. and, depending on who you ask, maybe even fruitless or pointless
of course, protest at colleges speak to greater inequalities in the state, nation, etc.; a college education is regularly attached to one's future success, and the forceful loss of that education can be deeply detrimental; and there is absolute importance in the power of protest to adjust one's lived experience towards a more just and equitable one, even if it just for four years. but nonetheless, the college is probably one of the more concise experiences of the (American) life, for those who partake. one's conflict with a college usually ends after those four years are over. "so why bother protesting? it'll be over soon enough"
I'd argue that this is one of those issues that campus novels -- especially ones written from the student perspective -- are entitled to touch upon. in the college is evidence of a protest culture which is thoroughly and earnestly altruistic. the way we represent that culture, that condensed experience, shapes the way we view the power of protest
but then, this temporality is more complicated for the more 'typical' campus novel -- the ones written from the perspective of professors. if one of the defining features of the college experience is its confinedness -- that just as the campus is typically physically enclosed, secluded from 'outside forces', it is also a cultural process of enclosure and suspension, a momentary lapse between adolescence and adulthood -- then the professor, as a figure (or type), represents a dependence on that confinedness. (in a talk with my advisor, we found 'the professor' to be an infantalized role, someone incapable of making that true step towards adulthood, as in the greater reality beyond cultural suspension/confinement). that's why I fend tenure so fascinating. tenure, as a system, is something especially significant to the professorial position because it allows its own existence. tenure ensures that that suspension remains untouched and protected.
for the professor novel then, the premier conflict, the end-all-be-all stakes, is the potential loss of tenure and the professorial position. (cf., from what I remember, Stoner, Straight Man, Lucky Jim, On Beauty, and this novel). unlike student novels, where the conflict tends to be sourced in what happens after the college experience is done, once the rite of passage into adulthood is completed, the professor novel cannot escape the boundaries of its reality. when a novel is set on a campus, about a campus, dealing with professors, those characters cannot face a greater loss than that of their career. they're similar to students in that way -- but instead of students facing the inevitable entrance to adulthood, professors have been perpetually fighting against it. it's acceptance versus resistance.
McCarthy, here, has a narrative that basically lampshades this issue. the professor-protagonist, Mulcahy, is faced with the threat of losing his job as a professor. all drama in this novel spreads from that issue. but McCarthy explicitly complicates this issue by injecting the campus plot with extracampus issues -- i.e. the purge of academia during the Red Scare. the war on Communism in American culture becomes Mulcahy's excuse, as a self-proclaimed Communist, to elevate the trouble he is facing beyond just interpersonal college gossip (though he is faking this membership). in doing so, he disrupts the usual trouble of the professor/campus.
but the novel repeatedly doesn't allow the conflict to escalate to the greater American problem of Communism -- the college's president doesn't acknowledge the issue, Mulcahy's colleagues care more about the wellbeing of his ailing wife, even when the problem returns in the last 20 pages, it's revealed as total shams, fabricated outrage to keep Mulcahy's job. McCarthy doesn't allow the stakes of the narrative to truly progress beyond that of the true campus conflict: the exile from the campus. the campus novel is always serving itself in that way: it produces its own types, its own drama, its own conclusions, from the very first page by the virtue of its cultural characterization.
after two-thirds of the novel has passed, another character, Domna, a professor of Russian Lit, argues that Tolstoy would look at the struggles of these professors and say they were all being fools and that none of this mattered. and it's true. McCarthy proves this. Domna even asks, outright, if it would really be that big of a deal if Mulcahy was outed as a liar, if he kept his job regardless.
and that is the temporality of the campus novel at work. the conflict of a campus novel does not matter beyond itself -- it ends after four years, it ends at the boundary line between campus and town, between the professorship and the resignation/exile. that's why Greek fate plays so intensely into McCarthy's novel. (a novel, to note, that essentially precedes all American campus novels and the foundations of the genre). one of the reasons the Greek tragic figure is pitied is because we know, from the onset, that his struggle is pointless. the same is true of the professor.
May 25, 2016
I think of Mary McCarthy, perhaps imprecisely, in the same breath with Dawn Powell and Janet Flanner as the quintessence of a certain urbane, New Yorker magazine-centric, Manhattan literary sensibility of the mid-20th century.
Whether that appraisal is here or there, I believe this kind of satire is what is called "wickedly funny." Her eye for the material details of clothes and food and furnishings that correlate with every character's social class and beliefs is brilliant and her similes and metaphors are often breathtaking - even though they disrupt the flow of the story in a way, they are well worth the interruption.
The story concerns a perhaps intellectually gifted scholar of Joyce who is a persistently troublesome faculty member, perhaps not a great teacher, though the subjectivity of that is an ongoing point of discussion with his colleagues.
After losing a series of jobs, his friends pull strings to land him at the fictional Jocelyn College in central Pennsylvania. The hint (we are in the early 50s) is that his youthful Communist Party affiliation is at the root of all this, but that ultimately appears to be part of his artifice as a sort of con man in the academic world.
Jocelyn itself has "...a ratio of one teacher to every 6.9 students, which made possible the practice of 'individual instruction' as carried on at Bennington (6:1), Sarah Lawrence (6.4:1), Bard (6.9:1) and St. John's (7.7:1). It had been founded in the late Thirties by an experimental educator and lecturer...who wished to strike a middle course between the existing extremes.... Its students were neither to till the soil as at Antioch nor weave on looms as at Black Mountain; they were to be grounded neither in the grass-roots present as at Sarah Lawrence, nor the great-books past, as at St. John's and Chicago."
Whether that appraisal is here or there, I believe this kind of satire is what is called "wickedly funny." Her eye for the material details of clothes and food and furnishings that correlate with every character's social class and beliefs is brilliant and her similes and metaphors are often breathtaking - even though they disrupt the flow of the story in a way, they are well worth the interruption.
The story concerns a perhaps intellectually gifted scholar of Joyce who is a persistently troublesome faculty member, perhaps not a great teacher, though the subjectivity of that is an ongoing point of discussion with his colleagues.
After losing a series of jobs, his friends pull strings to land him at the fictional Jocelyn College in central Pennsylvania. The hint (we are in the early 50s) is that his youthful Communist Party affiliation is at the root of all this, but that ultimately appears to be part of his artifice as a sort of con man in the academic world.
Jocelyn itself has "...a ratio of one teacher to every 6.9 students, which made possible the practice of 'individual instruction' as carried on at Bennington (6:1), Sarah Lawrence (6.4:1), Bard (6.9:1) and St. John's (7.7:1). It had been founded in the late Thirties by an experimental educator and lecturer...who wished to strike a middle course between the existing extremes.... Its students were neither to till the soil as at Antioch nor weave on looms as at Black Mountain; they were to be grounded neither in the grass-roots present as at Sarah Lawrence, nor the great-books past, as at St. John's and Chicago."
May 26, 2009
satire of a 'progressive' private school, circa '50s Red Scare. Shifts characters from chapter to chapter, possibly to show instability of point of view during the plots of scheming, manipulation, and revenge. Caps it off with a 'conference of poets,' which gives ample opportunity for a more removed perspective to provide commentary.
February 2, 2014
A classic academic novel. McCarthy writes beautiful prose, and can be quite funny, but the novel feels dated and arch. All of the characters are eloquent but self-absorbed, and the pleasure of seeing through the self-interestedness of everyone's motives in each and every scene soon begins to pale. A plot would have been nice, too.
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