<p>I love these book threads!
Marite-It has been some time since I thought of The Group!
Thanks for bringing it back to mind.</p>
<ol>
<li><p>Since all of my favorites have been spoken for (Gaudy Night, Possession, Trading Places), let me suggest the mystery novels of Marshall Jevons (a pseudonym for two economics professors), which, in addition to being primers on economic theory, are also comedies of Harvard University manners.</p></li>
<li><p>And we shouldn’t forget that many of Philip Roth’s books are excellent novels of the academy. Not just the already-mentioned The Human Stain, which is really first rate. The Ghost Writer, and The Professor of Desire, Sabbath’s Theater, The Prague Orgy . . . really, any of the Zuckerman books.</p></li>
<li><p>I haven’t read Saul Bellow’s Ravelstein. Has anyone?</p></li>
</ol>
<p>No, but Herzog and Humbolt’s Gift and The Dean’s December also have academic settings.</p>
<p>Can’t stop!</p>
<ol>
<li><p>Since we seem to be talking about student-centric novels as well as faculty-centric ones, two words: Brideshead Revisited. And two more words: Charley’s Aunt. (OK, it’s a play, but funny.)</p></li>
<li><p>The first academic satire: Rabelais’ Pantagruel.</p></li>
<li><p>Staying in France: Balzac, Le pere Goriot (among others); Flaubert, Education sentimentale.</p></li>
<li><p>In Peru, Mario Vargas Llosa’s Aunt Julia and the Scriptwriter and Conversation in “The Cathedral” both draw heavily on the author’s university years, telling two completely different stories with completely different tones. His The Storyteller is also in large part a university novel. And Alfredo Bryce Echenique’s La vida exagerada de Martin Romana is a wonderful and funny novel of the Sorbonne in the spring of 1968.</p></li>
</ol>
<p>The Dante Club by Matthew Pearl</p>
<p>Tom Sharpe - Porterhouse Blue / Grantchester Grind
Malcolm Bradbury - The History Man / Stepping Westwards
Don DeLillo - White Noise
Sergio Troncoso - The Nature of Truth</p>
<p>Brideshead Revisited</p>
<p>The Harrad Experiment </p>
<p>Or are you all too young to remember this “dirty” book?</p>
<p>
</p>
<p>Powlett-Jones is the protagonist. The book is actually by R.F. Delderfield. 
It was made into a superb series by the BBC and shown here on Masterpiece Theater. Along with Brideshead Revisited and The Jewel in the Crown, it’s one of the best TV productions out there.</p>
<p>Michael Chabon’s extremely amusing Wonder Boys hasn’t been mentioned, not has his first novel, The Mysteries of Pittsburgh. Much of The World According to Garp takes place in academic settings, as well.</p>
<p>A Girl of the Limberlost was published in 1909, but I still think it is very relevant and enjoyable, The Paper Chase was also not only a television series but a novel
Tam Lin a reworking of the Scottish ballad by Pamela Dean is set in Blackstock College.</p>
<p>^^Blackstock College is the name of the college in the book, but as Pamela Dean explains in the afterward, it’s based on Carelton. :)</p>
<p>One more: </p>
<p>Publish and Perish, Three Tales of Tenure and Terror, by James Hynes</p>
<p>a very funny, very true must-read for anyone in academics</p>