Chicago students in fiction

marlowe1
Wed, 09 May 2018 00:11:11 +0000

Long ago I got very fired up about going to college at the U of C when I read a very moving novel about two Chicago students grappling with their studies and the baggage of their prior lives while falling in love. I particularly remember a climactic scene between them on the quad, which made the place seem very familiar when I actually arrived there and hoped to have scenes of that sort myself.

I suspect there are some newly admitted Chicago students out there who would like to read about their fictional counterparts before commencing their own real life adventures. Here is a short reading list:

1. "The Silence of History" by James T. Farrell - the novel that inspired me in 1963. The book itself was set in an even earlier period. Read it for history as well as for the affecting portrait of aspiring students of a typical UChicagoish vintage of almost any period.

2. "The Pursuit of Happiness" by Thomas Rogers. Another love story between UChicago students. Several scenes take place in classic campus and off-campus hangouts, but much of the story concerns a family struggle over a crazily eccentric Kenwood mansion. You will see that sort of place when you get there.

3. "Letting Go" by Philip Roth. This was an early novel that captures Roth's own experience as a young instructor at the University, which involved falling in love with a student (you could do that in those days) who is a classic messed-up beautiful brilliant wreck of a woman from the midwestern hinterlands - a type of woman and a tortured relationship of the sort Roth depicted over and over in his later fiction. Not quite your typical U of C student but recognizable, including the heavy aura of angst clinging to her.

Other suggestions?