Magical Realism and the “Truth” of English Departments

            James Hynes, in his novel The Lecturer’s Tale , weaves a biting and sardonic portrait of modern-day academic life at Midwest University.  The protagonist, Nelson Humboldt, just lost his visiting lecturer status, and realizes that any chance of tenure has been destroyed.  He has never felt at home in the English Department, partly because he is a traditionalist, and partly because he actually likes reading books.  Through an examination of the dynamics within the English Department at Midwest University, and the way in which Nelson navigates it, Hynes sheds light on the ills of the professoriate, while satirizing the various literary theories that have come to dominate the profession.   Within the structure of Magic Realism, along with an aggressive satirical style, the novel gives pause to future academics and hopefully some of the wrongs that a person corrects along his path to a doctoral degree.

            The beauty of the book lay within its blend of the fantastic and real, its use of sarcasm and satire, and the magical journey that Nelson Humboldt travels.  A prime example of the satire used in the novel is the way Hynes represents the different schools of Literary Theory within his characters.  While an undergrad, Nelson experienced this school of new theory of Literature with one of his professors, who states that he will “be an intellectual terroriste, striking brutally ruthlessly and without warning at the foundation of everything you hold dear” (19).  This type of theoretical inquiry would continue at his first job, where the majority of the faculty were to the extremes of traditional or formalist theorists.  There is a large line of division between those who still believe in the Western Canon of literature, and the new theorists who deconstruct the joy out of reading.  The English department has been overrun by gender, queer, and post-modern theorists.  The queen bee of the department, Victoria Victorinix, whose major work was “Daughters of the Night:  Clitoral Hegemony in LeFanu’s Carmilla,” is leading the feminist and gender studies faction.  She is joined by an equally number of disturbing and extreme personalities:  a Serbian who writes such dense articles that most readers have issues understanding them; a cougar professor with in Penelope O, who holds the endowed chair of Hugh Hefner in Sexuality Studies; a crazy Irish poet who only refers to himself in the third person; and the Department Chair, Anthony Pescecane, a former advertising man, who is more like a character in “On the Waterfront” than an academic professional.   

     Another line of demarcation is the one between composition teachers and literature professors. After losing his contract to teach, and gaining the Midas touch in his severed finger, Nelson forces the leader of Composition teachers to offer him some classes. Linda Proserpina was “a petite, wide-eyed woman with prematurely gray hair and skin as pale as moonlight” who “spoke with all the disdain of the Queen of the Underworld for the spoiled and capricious residents of Olympus” (64-65). The faculty who teach composition do so because of their love for teaching and Nelson, just looking to stay at Midwestern in some capacity, is taking away from the nobility of that profession.

     Finally we have the division between Nelson and everyone else. Having been handpicked for his appointment by Weissman, who no longer held any real power within the politics of the English Department, Nelson had never been accepted into his colleague’s world. He was a white man, who loved books, and seen as the typical oppressor, representing everything that the new theorists despised. His “face and gender were the root of all evil” (25) in the eyes of everyone he met in Graduate school, and he “lived in terror of saying the wrong thing” (25). His social inadequacy did not change when becoming a Visiting Professor at Midwest, and an overall theme of the narrative seems to be this constant isolation one would feel when at odds with the prevailing theories of a modern English department.

     This novel was an awakening for me. I intend to pursue my PhD in either English or History with the intent of teaching at the college level. Although I know that Hynes goes to extremes, to prove his point, it is the small truths in the book that are enlightening. By pointing out the competition, politics, and absurdity, it is obvious that after receiving your degree, there is still a fight to go. I am not at all afraid of the prospects, but in a slightly masochistic way, cannot wait to see how much of The Lecturer’s Tale may actually come true.