The War against the Academy

Author(s): Leslie A. Fiedler

Source: Wisconsin Studies in Contemporary Literature, Vol. 5, No. 1, Scholars, Critics,
Writers & the Campus (Winter - Spring, 1964), pp. 5-17
Published by: University of Wisconsin Press
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THE WAR AGAINST THE ACADEMY*

LESLIE

A. FIEDLER

It is the revoltagainst school and in particularagainst the

Universitywhich most clearly distinguishesthe writersof the
Sixties fromthose who immediatelypreceded them. Given the
the generationof the Sixties prefers (theoretically
opportunity,
at least) to go on the road ratherthan into school; and even,if
forced so far, would choose the madhouse over college,prison
over the campus. Yet at the very centerof the generationsimmediatelybefore,there stands a group of novelistsbound together,whatevertheir social origins,by a commonsocial fate:
that is, by a commitment,
primarywithsome of them,secondary
with others, to the University. Among distinguishedrecent
Americanwritersof fictionwho have taughtor are teachingin
Universitiesare Saul Bellow,Isaac Rosenfeld,BernardMalamud,
Philip Roth, Mary McCarthy,Randall Jarrell,John Hawkes,
JohnBarth, WrightMorris,Walter Van Tilburg Clark, Robert
Penn Warren, Peter Taylor, Robie Macauley, Herbert Gold,
Lionel Trilling,VladimirNabokov,and a host of others.
As a matterof fact,theirrole as teachersin the University
may seem in the long run the trulyunique characteristicof the
Generationof the Forties-Fifties,more critical even than their
urban origins,or the particularflavorlent themby the Jewish
writerswho constituteso large a part of theirnumber.Naturally,
theyhave distilledout 'oftheirexperiencea kind of fiction,new
at least in theme,a sub-genreof the novel whichtreats the academic community
as a microcosmreflectingthe great world,an
adequate symbolof our total society. The College Novel is a
formas clearlydefinedfor us as the HistoricalRomanceor the
Tale of Terror; and, indeed,it usually is a Tale of Terror with
appropriate comic overtones.In this respect,it resemblesthe
War novel of the Twenties,and especiallythe Hollywoodnovel
of the Thirties: that other product of the American writer's
dreamof findinga job notwhollyat odds withwhat he is driven
to do, whetherit pays or not. The encounterbetween such a
dream and the realityto which its dreamerawakes is bound to
eventuatein a catastropheat once comicand horrible,a pratfall
fromwhich the comediandoes not rise again; and models for
such pratfallsare providedin Fitzgerald's unfinishedThe Last
Tycoon,as well as in NathanaelWest's The Day of theLocust.
*This essay, somewhat revised, appears in Mr. Fiedler's book, Waiting
For the End, published in 1964 by Stein and Day.

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Fitzgerald's book provides,in addition,suggestionsfor introducingintosuchnew versionsof GothicBurlesqueelementsof

the class struggle.And, indeed,the College- or moreproperly,
anti-College- Novel of the Forties-Fiftiesis distinguishedfrom
earlier American books with academic settings by its quasiMarxian or Popular Front view of the relationshipbetweenprofessorsand administrators.
As early as Hawthorne'sFanshawe,
therehad been novelsin whichcollege-educated
authorsreturned
in imaginationto the scenesoftheiryouth;but unlikeFanshawe,
with campus setand the scores of middlebrowentertainments
tings which followed,fromFair Harvard to Stover at Yale, or
even such worksof seriousnovelistsas Fitzgerald's The Beautiful and Damned and Faulkner's Sanctuary, recent academic
novelsdeal primarilywithprofessorsratherthan students.When
studentsenterat all, theyenterbrieflyto seduceor be seducedby
theirteachers,thus providingeroticrelieffromthe struggleof
facultyand administrativeofficersat the barricades. In this
light,George Stewart's Doctor's Oral seems a transitionalbook
- representing,
as it were,the Americanauthorin the process
of gettinghis Ph.D., and thusgraduatingfromthe distillationof
undergraduatereminiscenceto the dispensingof post-graduate
gossip.
Yet despitethe large numberof talentedwriterswho have
taught in colleges and have been willingto tell the tale, we do
not yet have a collegenovel to comparewith West's account of
the artist in Hollywoodor Hemingway'sof the writerat war;
perhaps because in the Universitytragedytends to be reduced
to the pathetic,and the comicto stir a titterratherthan a bellylaugh. Or perhaps it is the incestuousnature of the Academic
Novel, the apparentlyirresistibletemptationimplicitin it that
makes its practitionersabandon their administratorvillains in
favor of writingabout those most like themin the University.
Randall Jarrell'sPicturesfroman Institutiontypifiesthe genre,
being a book about a writerwritinga book about a college; and
about a writer
beyond it we imagine a counter-counter-novel,
writingabout a writerwritingabout a writerin the Academy.*
Or perhaps the failure of the anti-Collegenovel has to be
*Most recentlyJack Ludwig has written in Confusions a college novel
intended to end all college novels. At least his protagonist,contemplating
one of his own (surely the one in which he appears), attempts to make
a pact with the Devil to help him achieve so improbable an end. "Devil,
tell me," he says, "if I merge with you will you guarantee ... That this
book will kill off, once and for all, the Jewish novel and the campus
novel?" To which the Devil answers, "What, what? Should I bargain
away my primaryvehicles?"

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explained on the groundsthat failure is its very subject; and

that its authors typicallycannot maintain enough distance betweentheirprotagonistsand themselvesto keep the inadequacies
of the formerfrom seeming their own. As accounts of the
writer'scontinuingdoomedbattle with the establishmentin its
manifoldforms,latter-dayacademicnovelstendto fall into selfsince they are inevitablyhistories of
pity or self-exculpation,
defeat, a defeat which the institutionthe writer berates may
considerhis, but whichhe asserts (withoutfinal conviction)is
its. In any case, the feelingswhich motivate such books are,
primarily,frustrationand impotentrage - secondarily,the desire to strike back and be revengedby making a last minute
success out of failure,i.e., a best-sellingor criticallyacclaimed
novel. And indeed preciselysuch secondarysuccesses wrested
fromprimaryfailurehave been achievedin books whichpresent
the writer'scase against the armyor even Hollywood.
Why not then in the anti-Collegenovel? Is it because such
novels are oftentoo circumstantial,too much romans a clef or
personal justifications,ripped unalteredfromthe diary, or directlytranscribedfromthe complaintto the AmericanAssociation of UniversityProfessors? But
more, precisely such
,once
occasionstheybewailed,
undisguisedapologieshave survivedthe
and outlivedthose theytravestiedor praised, Hemingway'sThe
Sun Also Rises, forinstance,or HenryMiller's Tropic of Cancer
- so whynot academicnovels,too? Is it simplythat no one has
ever succeededin makingtypicaluniversityeventsseem at once
as banal and surreal as they actually are? Most College novels
are, in fact,not nearlygrotesqueenoughfor theirsubjects,and
end up seemingnotthe descentsintohell theirauthorshad surely
intendedon one level or another,but merelyidescriptions
of obstacle coursesdevisedby mindsmoreapt at tediumthan terror.
They are, that is to say, hopelesslymiddlebrow,muted where
theypretendto be moderate,melodramaticwhere they pretend
to be tragic, commonplacewhere theypretendto be wise. And
this is, surely,theiressentialflaw,the clue to whytheyinevitably end by fallingintothe veryattitudestheybeginby satirizing.
Certainlymostof themseem not so muchtranscendentexplorationsofthefailuresof institutionsof higherlearning,as depressing symptomsof the way in whichsuchinstitutionssubservethe
flightfromexcellenceand the parody of culturerepresentedby
the triumphof midculturein our lives.
Some literaryformsappear to be born middlebrow,while
othershave to be radicallydebased to suit middlebrowends; and
the College novel,like, say, the earnest expose of advertisingin
such sub-novelsas The Big Ball of Wax, or attacks in satirical
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sciencefictionon organizedreligion,is an innatelyvulgar form.

Certainlytwo of its major themeswhich we have already noticed - the teacheras liberal and innocentvictimof social repression,and the teacher as lecher and guilty seducer of the
to the stocksubject of sentimental,
young- belongrespectively
popular frontpolitics,and to garden varietypornography.But
both of these demand cliche ratherthan truth,since their end
is titillationratherthaninsight;and bothare hard to avoid,since
theyare as old or olderthanthe formitself.
Long beforethe kind of collegehad been inventedto which
the writercan come to be disillusioned,the archetypalstoryof
Abelard and Eloise had been adapted to novel form by JeanJacquesRousseau in his Julie,or the New Eloise; and the notion
of the teacherburningwithlust behindhis pretenseto detached
wisdomhas continuedto excitethe popularimaginationon levels
progressivelymore and more debased. The truthis, of course,
thatthe relationshipof teacherand taughtis a passionateone in
essence,thoughno officialtheoryof educationhas takenthis into accountsince the collapse of the Greeksynthesisof pedagogy,
gymnastics,and pederastyexpoundedin Plato's Symposium.But
middlebrowwritershave neverforgottenit, takingadvantageof
relaxingtaboos to make more and more explicitthe aura of sex
which the mass mind connectsnot onlywith teachersbut with
co-edsas well,even when quite unencouraged.
Lowbrowfantasyhas always conceivedof collegeas a place
where atheism and communismare taught,while middlebrow
liberalismhas thoughtof it ratheras one wherethose two challenges to orthodoxyare persecuted;but both have agreed that
withinits walls good girls are likelyto be defloweredby their
And the writersof colmentorsas well as theirfellow-students.
view. HerbertKubtheir
sustain
much
to
lege novelshave done
in
a
case
Zone
is
The
recent
point,not only deWhistling
ly's
and an academic
love-affairs
a
of
professorial
scribing pair
but culminatingin a campusorgydrippingwithmore
cuckolding,
spermthan has flowedin any Americanbook since Moby Dick;
but Kubly intersperseshis sex withpious exhortationsto political toleranceand righteoussermonsabout freedomin the classroom.More sophisticated,and consequentlymorefranklypornographic,thoughnot withoutsatiricalintentis the accountof the
adventuresof a particularlylusciouscollegegirl (saved fromher
of a boy loverof that
lubriciousteacheronlyby the intervention
'ofthe latestbooks
's
one
Kenton"
in
"Maxwell
Lollipop,
teacher)
to have passed froma firstpublicationby the Olympia Press,
whichlaunchedThe GingerMan and Lolita, to the list of a respectable American publishing firm.

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If, however,the relationshipof teacher to studentin the

Universityis unconfessedlypassionate, his relationshipto the
administrationis avowedlypolitical; and since the time of Senator McCarthyat least,he has been seen in thelightof themiddlebrow liberal's determination
to defendthe legitimacyof the intellectuals'flirtationwith Communism.For serious writersthe
mass of obtuse platitudes associated with that defense have
seemedas formidablean obstacleto art and truthas thosewhich
have grown up around campus love life; and theyhave sought
to redeemthe former,as theyhave the latter,by ambiguityand
parody and inversion.Their models in this regard have been
Nathanael West's A Cool Million, which attemptedto rescue
Horatio Alger for literatureby standinghim on his head, and
Saul Bellow's The Victim,which succeededin refurbishingthe
liberal-sentimental
novel about anti-Semitismby dissolvinginto
ambiguitythe relationshipwhichjoins anti-Semiteand Jew.
So more ambitiousand subtle novelistshave tried to free
the academic novel from the limitationsof erotic reverie and
ritualisticliberalism,by making,on the one hand,a sexual victim
rather than aggressor of the professor; and on the other,by
turninghim fromthe guilelessbuttof reactioninto a disingenuous exploiterof the cliches of the politicallyenlightened.Quite
early on, Faulknerhad portrayedTemple Drake, the University
of Mississippi studentin Sanctuary,as more seduced than seducing,but no teacherswere numberedamongher prey; and not
until Robie Macauley's The Disguises of Love was there a detailed, self-consciousstudyof the seductionof a professorby a
co-ed,in that ironicmode whichwe are likelyto associate these
days with Nabokov's Lolita. So extraordinary,
however,did this
pursuit then appear to one critic,conditionedby conventional
notionsof who pursues whomin the classroom,that he accused
Macauley of having fallen back on what that critic called the
"AlbertineStrategy,"which is to say, of having, like Proust,
presenteda really homosexual relationshipin the guise of a
heterosexualone.
In an analogous way, Mary McCarthy'sGrov,esof Academe
parodies the politicalstereotypesof the academic world by portrayinga grosslyinefficient
Professor,a monsterof self-pityand
self-adulation,who hangs on to his job by pretendingto have
been a Communist,thus becomingthe beneficiaryof the stock
attitudespropagatedby a hundredmiddlebrownovels,and ten
thousandmiddlebrowtracts provingthat a commitment
to the
radical movement(at the proper moment,of course) was the
noblestof humanerrors.GrovesofAcademeis a wittyand satisfyingbook; but it is essentiallya parasitic one, its satisfactions,
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like those of parody always, dependingon a knowledgeof and

contemptfor the kind of literaturewhichit invertsand mocks.
Finally,that is to say, it does not transcendits occasion,though
in its failure it provides many more incidentalpleasures than
most books of the genre to whichit belongs.In no case, at any
rate,has a fictionalworkof independentpowerand enduringappeal been created against the drag toward middlebrowbanality
that besets even the most wary writerof academic fiction.
Nevertheless,we keep trying.Indeed, the numberof academicnovelsturnedout in the Forties and Fifties exceedsmany
times over the number of Hollywood novels produced in the
Thirties; in part, because the professor,and even the administrator,is drivento turnwriterin emulationof the writerturned
professor (think of Carlos Baker, one-timeChairman of the
PrincetonEnglish Departmentand then anti-academicnovelist;
or of Stringfellow
Barr, firstPresidentof St. John'sat Annapolis
and thenauthorof Purely Academic) ; in part because so many
writershave soughtthe numerouscollege posts openingwholesale in a time of academic expansion. Is it an accident that
Hollywoodshrinksas the academy grows, or is it an essential
part of the comedyof our culturallife? Driven fromone kind
of cover,the writerseeks another,the ironicprayer of Melville
always on his lips, "Oh time! Oh cash! Oh patience!"
In any case, we must be carefulto understandthe precise
nature of the joke whichthe community
plays on the professorauthorat the momenthe believeshe is playinga joke on it; and
to understandthis,we mustdisabuse ourselvesof all conventional notionsof the "academic" writerand the kind of "academy"
he inhabits, particularlythose sponsored by Europeans. The
Americanwriterwho teaches in a Universityand lives in a college town,necessarilyinhabitsneithera culturalcenternor an
"ivorytower." Rather than being protectedfromthe bourgeois
he is plungedinto it, immersedin its small politics and
,world,
petty spites, its institutionalizedhypocrisy,its self-righteous
timidity,and its endlessbureaucraticineptitude.If it is a refuge
fromthe pressuresof real life he is after,he can find it better
in the artificialparadises of NorthBeach or GreenwichVillage;
the worldhe inhabitsmay be artificial,too,but it is likelyto be
a smallartificialhell,in whichnot onlythe demonswho torment
him (i.e., Deans and administrators)but evenhis fellowdamned
are likelyto be membersof the local RotaryClub.
It mustbe rememberedthat the presenceof the intellectual
in an Americanuniversitycommunity
is boundto be an anomalous one, even when he is a full-fledged Ph.D., but more es-

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withoutthe customary
peciallywhen he is a writer-in-residence
academic degrees.His appointmentis likelyto represent(quite
like the Hollywoodproducers'quest for big-namewriters) the
tributemiddlebrowvice pays to highbrowvirtue,a tributeinevitablywithdrawnwhenculturalshame-feelings
yieldto hostilityand suspicion.And,afterall, thisis fairenough,forthewriter
most often regards his non-writingcolleagues with a certain
amountof genial contempt,
based on his sneakingconvictionthat
all their differencesare to his advantage. The difficultyof his
positionis compoundedin cases wherehe is not merelyan intellectual among anti-intellectuals,
but also, say, a Jew among
an
Easterner
Gentiles,
among Westerners,a radical among conor simply
servatives,a European refugeeamongthe native-born,
an urban type among defensiveprovincials.
Two recentattemptsto deal with the tragi-comedy
involved
in such situations(thoughin each a tributehas also been paid to
the standardmiddlebrowproblemsof sex and politics) are Bernard Malamud's A New Life and VladimirNabokov's Pale Fire:
the formerMalamud's valedictoryto one collegehe was about to
leave for another,the latterNabokov'sfarewellto teaching.But
thereis no way out forthe teacher-writer
in the end. Even when
he has exchanged a less sympatheticset of colleagues for
a more amiable one, or has fled all academic colleagues forever,
he hears still his own hectoringvoice, demanding: Why were
you thereto beginwith? What on earth did you thinkyou were
after? And this voice is not really appeased by the answer: I
wentto malkea book,to turntheveryexperiencein questioninto
art - likeMaryMcCarthyin The Grovesof Academeor Randall
Jarrellin Picturesfroman Institution,or JohnBarth in The End
of the Road, to show how funnyit all is, to make clear the joke
on everyone,includingmyself.To whichthe firstvoice answers,
Not funnyenough!
Indeed,therehave been some who have foundthe whole adventure,the entryof the freeintellectualintothe Universityand
his futurethere,not funnyat all; but most of these have feared
self-pityand have camouflagedtheirpathoswith quips and funny sayings (like Malamud and Barth and Nabokov), thougha
few have triedto reveal the naked horrorbehindthe superficial
humor.The suicideof F. O. Matthiessen,late Professorat Harvard and authorofthatastonishingly
non-academiccriticalwork,
The AmericanRenaissance,has twice over temptednoveliststo
trytheirhands (more successfullyin May Sarton's FaithfulAre
the Wounds) at academictragedies,in whichhis self-destruction
and thebetrayalsthatpresumablypromptedit are made parables
of the intellectual'sdefeatin the University.
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11

in America no fictionistwith the giftsand

Unfortunately,
sensitivityof the Italian Cesare Pavese has beenmovedas Pavese
was movedby the death of Matthiessen;and for Pavese no possible novel seemed an adequate response to his feelingsabout
that death. What followedfor him was his own suicide - cued
doubtlesslyby many other things beside the example of the
American critic he loved, though his suicide note was like
Matthiessen'sthe quotation from Shakespeare, that had been
underlinedforthembothby Herman Melville: We must endure
our goinghenceeven as our cominghither.The iripenessis all.
For a youngergenerationof Americansand their spokesmen,however,thosewho representthe final horrorof academic
lifeare notthe defeatedintellectualswho fledthe campusor died
defeatedon it, but thosewho have adapted to the demandsof the
universityand have stayedon in the classroom- most usually
to teach literature,and, presumably,to writenovelson the side.
The viewpointof that generationis not,in any case, that of the
professor,lickedor victorious,but that of a brightand sceptical
studentlookingat the professor,particularlyat the kind of professor who, over two decades now, has helped create the new
academicnovel.Sometimes,as in WilliamGoldman'sThe Temple
of Gold,the eye that looksand the voice that speaks belongto an
actual childof the university,
a professor'sson,whosevalues,unlike his father's,are derivedfrompopular culturerather than
the classics, fromthe screenversionof Gunga Din ratherthan
the plays of Euripides.
More usually,theyare the voiceand eye of a sensitivefreshman, unattachedto the academy exceptby waveringchoice,as
renderedby some recentcollegegraduate or someonemovedby
sympathyand love to emulatesuch a role,like Salinger,for instance,playingat being Frannyin the storycalled by her name.
But here is Franny's versionof the "sectionman," the kind of
young teacher,proud,as she does not even troubleto note, of
his differencefromthe old-fashionedscholars who taught him
and of his intimateknowledgeof recent or currentlyprized
books; and likely,as she has no way of knowing,to end by writing a conventionalanti-academicnovel.
... whereI come from,a sectionman's a person that
takes over a class when the professorisn't there or is
busyhavinga nervousbreakdownor is at the dentistor
something.He's usually a graduate studentor something.Anyway,if it's a course in Russian Literature,
shirt
say, he comes in, in his littlebutton-down-collar

and striped tie, and starts knocking Turgenev for about

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a half hour. Then, when he's finished,when he's completelyruinedTurgenevforyou,he startstalkingabout

Stendhal or somebodyhe wrote his M.A. on. Where I
go, the English Departmenthas about ten littlesection
men running around ruining things for people, and
they're all so brilliant they can hardly open their
mouths . . . .

Only Lionel Trillinghas attemptedto treat a similar situation fromthe teacher's,whichis to say, the adult pointof view;
thoughthere is an anticipationof such an approach - much
confusedby overtonesof anti-Semitism- in the section of
Thomas Wolfe's Of Time and the River which deals with his
relationshipat N.Y.U. withan undergraduatewhomhe calls Abe
Jones.Trilling,more sure of what he is after,has made of the
attempthis onlywhollysuccessfulpiece of fiction,the shortstory
"Of this Time, of that Place," which has won an extraordinary
kindof fameforso briefa work.Indeed,a recentlyinaugurated
TV series based on campus life has as its hero a younginstructor called JosephHowe, afterthe protagonistof Trilling'sstory;
thoughthe actual shows since the pilot program,which was an
adaptationof that story,have had nothingto do with Trilling's
vision or the actual plightof the universities.Worthyof much
bettertreatment,Trilling'sstoryinvitesby virtueof its subject
matter middlebrowdegradationand dilution,despite the fact
that it first appeared in the almost archetypicallyhighbrow
pages of Partisan Review.
And how muchmoreeasily is the fictionof Salinger assimilated to the same level; for his earlier storiesappeared in Good
Housekeeping,Collier's, and the Saturday Evening Post, while
at the heightof his career he has been contentto write for the
kind of reader to whom the New Yorker representsultimate
sophistication.Yet even if the youngfor whom Salinger means
most come out of the social circles to whichthe readers of the
New Yorkeraspire whentheydo not belong,this does not make
themunrepresentative,
nor the storieswhichappeal to themuntypical.His audience consists,it is true,of the cleanest,politest,
best-dressed,
best-fed,and best read amongthe disaffectedyouth
- and his protagonistsreflect (or explain) that fact. Not
junkies or faggotsor even upperbohemians,his chiefcharacters
travel a road whichleads fromhometo school,and fromschool
eitherback home again or to the nuthouseor both. They have
families and teachers and psychiatristsrather than lovers or
friends; and their crises are likelyto be definedin terms of
whetheror not to go back for the second semesterto Vassar or
Princeton,Dana Hall or St. Mark's. Their angst is improbably
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13

motivatedby such questionsas: "Does my date for the Harvard

Weekendreally understandwhat poetryis?" or "Is it possible
thatmyEnglish instructorhates literatureafterall?"
I do not mean by reductionto mock the concernsof Salinger's characters; they cannot in any case be reduced, and I
should only mock myselfmaking fun of them. For better or
worse,a significantnumberof youngAmericanslive in a world
where politicsis meaningless,words in the newspaperrepeated
by the solemnold; and sex unreal,a threator a promise,a compulsion or a curse,but never a pleasure.And in that world,the
classroom and the footballgame provide adequate arenas for
anguish and joy, both to the dull majoritywho go to themand
themoresensitiveminoritywho stayaway. To thatworld,at any
rate, Salinger has been more faithfulthan it perhaps deserves,
more faithfulthan one would have expectedof a writerwho far fromremainingin it with whateverambivalence,like Trilling,forexample- was bustedout of it forgood earlyin his college career.For this reason,Salinger,unaffiliatedas he is, must
be understoodas an academic novelist,thoughone fixedforever
in the student's stance, which is to say, at the point he had
reached when he flunkedout; and in this regard,he resembles
such othernotableflunkees,returningforeverin the imagination
to the sophomoreyear theyneverquite attained,as Faulknerand
Fitzgerald.
If Faulkner'sTempleDrake standsas the classic co-edof the
Twenties,the Franny of Salinger's Glass storiesbids to become
her equivalentfor the Fifties,her only rival the younglady in
search of an orgasm,who shuttlesback and forthamong T. S.
Eliot, her psychoanalysts,and two lovers in Norman Mailer's
short story,"The Time of her Time." Mailer's storypreserves
muchof thebrutalimpactof Faulkner's; and if thereis a decline
in terrorand intensityin Salinger's,this is not only because of
the marketsfor which he writes,but also because he is more
faithfulto the general experienceof the middleclassyoung in
our cushytimes.Not the orgasm,as Mailer would theoretically
insist,but madness,as Salingerinstinctively
knows,what politer
circlescall a "nervousbreakdown,"is the fatal Cleopatra of the
young; fortheyare fightingnow new enemiesin new wars, not
the AnthonyComstockswithwhose ghostMailer stilljousts, but
preciselythemostenlightenedoftheirelders.And this,of course,
those elders find harder to understandin direct proportionto
their enlightenment.
Indeed, the females among them,earnest
readers of the New Yorker one and all, revealed the depth of
their incomprehension
when "Franny" first appeared in that
her collapse in the face of impending
magazine,by interpreting
insanityas a symptomof pregnancy.
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The revolttheyremember,
and are bracedto understandand
forgivein the young (as their parents did not understandand
forgiveit in them) is the sexual revolt,the attack on vestigial
puritanismand obsolescentchivalrywhich had set Temple in
motion,and had led her to take up the weaplonsof booze and
promiscuityand gettingaway fromhome to college.But Franny's is a revoltagainst literatureand the New Criticism,and
her weapons are the "Jesus Prayer" and the quick retreatfrom
school to home. Certainlythis is fair enough,for in the thirty
years that separate the two archetypalco-eds,the CultureRelias the orthodox
gion ofWesternEurope has replacedChristianity
faith of those most eager to send their childrento college,at
least if theyare urban,middleclassAmericans;and the pastors
to whomour hungrysheep look up in vain are not ministersof
the old-timereligionbut Ph.D.'s in literatureand those section
men who serve as their acolytes.In a societypresided over by
this new clergy,to play with Vedanta or Buddhism or even
Christian orthodoxy,except as reflectedin certain standard
poetic texts like 'Eliot's Four Qucartets,
i.,e.,to seek a salvation
beyondthe reach of art,is consideredheresyor insanity,or some
particularlyblasphemous compound of both; for which the
recommended
cure is psychiatry.
Franny,at any rate, who will not writethe propercritical
papers or go out forthe next collegeplay, seems,not onlyto her
eldersand her moresubmissivepeers,but even to herselfa heretic guiltyas chargedand thereforeself-condemned
to a "nervous
breakdown."Certainly,she entersthe scene in which Salinger
asks us to be interestedas an academic "drop-out": one of that
group of quiet protestors,who adapted passive resistance to
Americanconditionslong beforeit was taken up by CORE, and
have managedto shake our society- or at least to impressit to
a pointwherethe Presidenthimselfhas begunto set up committees to studythe problem.The suggestionthat collegehas failed
the kind of youngman or woman for whom we have all along
dreamed it, at any rate, stirs in us feelingsof guilt and confusion.The spectrethat haunts a worldsecure economicallybut
culturallyuncertainto the pointof panic is preciselythis threat;
and Franny,in her own way, embodiesit.
Despite her finalsubmissionto that unspeakablefalse guru,
her brotherBuddy,with his pop-culture'dogmathat "Christ is
the Fat Lady," she remainsa sisterin rebellion,a fellowtraveller
at least to Ferdinand R. Tertan of Trilling's "Of this Time, of
that Place," the studentalways rightin his literaryjudgments,
of whomhis poet-instructor
is nonethelessforcedto decide,"Oh,
the boy was mad. And suddenlythe word,used in hyperbole,inWar Against theAcademy

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15

tendedalmostfor the expressionof exasperatedadmiration,became literal... ." Yet thatinstructormustfinallyprefer,though

he must inevitablybetrayTertan's madnessto the sanityof his
"well-adjusted"and "well-rounded"classmate,boundfor success
in the same worldin whichthe instructorseeks to be recognized,
thoughthe latter will publishpoetrywhile the formersells insurance or real estate.
Interestinglyenough,Tertan was modelledin part at least
on a leading memberof the Generationof the Beats, who had
turnedup in Trilling'sown classes, and who has survivedto tell
much of his own story,thoughhe has never treatedhis college
devoteesof un-reason,to
years in any detail. Such self-conscious
whomthephrase "to flip,"i.e., to go out of one's head, represents
a supremeachievement,do not ordinarilywriteabout classroom
experience,for theyare likelyto be well out of it, and immune
to nostalgia,beforetheyhave begun to definethemselves.It is
lovedforhaving,withwhateverdoubts,
theirteachers,therefore,
protectedthe rightof othersto "flip,"but despisedfor not having dared cross that frontierthemselves,for having preferred
academic securityto insanity,who mustwritethe recordas best
theycan. Such teachersmay,moreover,in baffledaffectionand
unconsciousdesireforrevenge,invitetheirmadderstudentsback
to the campus to lectureor read fromtheir works,but it does
not really help, for the occasions theyplan are likelyto end in
frustrationand scandal. In any case, even after we have seen
himin an academicauditorium,we cannotimagineJackKerouac,
forinstance,in any relationshipto the collegecommunity
except
one of mockeryand evasion; and the brief valedictoryof Allen
Ginsberg'sHowl remains in the mind ("who passed through
the universitieswith radiant cool eyes hallucinatingArkansas
and Blake-lighttragedyamong the scholars of war,/who were
expelledfromthe academiesforcrazypublishingobsceneodes on
the windowsof the skull . . ."), no matterhow oftenhe has returned since to read it to undergraduatesin scheduled class
meetings.
We have come full circleto the Twenties and the attitudes
of Ernest Hemingway:the centrifugalyoungoncemorerunning
away fromschoolto strangelands,if not strangewars, in search
of salvation,instead of the centripetalyounggoing to school to
And the formeris, alas,
sit at the feetof the writer-in-residence.
the more typical Americanway. Though enormousnumbersof
novelistsand poets are still sustainedby the colleges and still
make themselvesvisiblethereto the less-enlightened
youngwho
seek themstill,we begin to feel that we have reachedthe end of
an era; begin to see that it was perhaps onlya singlegeneration
16

WisconsinStudies

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whichtried,against the grain of our tradition,to bring about a

marriage of literatureat its freestand most advanced with the
University.
Yet it was not an utterlyignobledream,this hope of compromisingyet another of the polarities that have disrupted
American life, and the Generationof the Forties and Fifties
could not have foreseenhow soon it would be disavowed. Certainlythatgenerationcontinuesto feelas naive and ignorantthe
contemptforthe Professorso rampantin the Twenties (and so
attractiveonce more in the Sixties) ; just as that generation
tends still to despise the Cult of Raw Experience,whichusually
accompaniessuch contempt,and which has for so long helped
keep Americanliteraturecallow and immature.It was not just
in search of security(whichin any eventtheydid not find) that
the childrenof the Depressionturnedto the colleges,but also in
pursuitof the long-delayedadulthoodof Americanculture,and
of a kindof independenceneverpossiblein bohemias.

War Against theAcademy

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