John Grisham's new book, The Associate, has set academic robes a-flapping this week. According to the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette, Duquesne University is upset that Grisham located his most recent blockbuster - featuring a rape at a frat house - at their college. A spokesperson for Dusquesne said, "we think it's unfortunate that he chose to use our name and associate it with a fictional incident of this nature, especially when Duquesne students are generally known for their leadership and integrity."
Over at Inside Higher Ed, Jack Stripling reports on the Grisham/Duquesne story and argues that the bestselling author "ignored the implicit advice of some of his literary forerunners....Don't pick on real colleges, and be accurate and fair if you absolutely must name an existing institution."
Stripling interviews other authors who have written campus novels; most of whom think Grisham was foolhardy to name Dusquesne as the location, especially for such a controversial topic.
Grisham's decision is indeed curious. Why not just make up a college name, particularly when -- as Grisham claims -- the story of the rape is fictional? (sidenote: this is what I decided to do for my novel The Professors' Wives' Club. The book is set at the fictitious "Manhattan University" which does look a lot like NYU, I admit. But I decided not to call it NYU, as the central story about a group of wives taking on a ruthless Dean to save a garden is fiction).
On the other hand, are Duquesne being rather over-sensitive? As one commenter on Stripling's report points out:
No one would think twice if a novelist set their story in a real life city or neighborhood. Fictional stories often portray real-life government institutions like the FBI, CIA, or particular police departments in an unflattering light. Why should universities receive some sort of special dispensation from being portrayed in fiction?
But what fascinates me more, though, is how often sex scandals appear in novels about academic life. Grisham is just the latest in a line of authors who've written university stories featuring sex scandals -- or, at the very least, stories of sexually inappropriate relations on campus.
I don't want to give too many plots away, but just take a look at J.M. Coetzee's Disgrace, Francine Prose's Blue Angel, Phillip Roth's The Human Stain, Zadie Teeth's On Beauty, Tom Wolfe's I am Charlotte Simmons, Alison Lurie's The War Between the Tates, Michael Chabon's Wonder Boys, and David Lodge's Think...
These books make up a sizeable chunk of the relatively few campus-based novels published in the last ten or twenty years and amongst them you'll find a veritable grab bag of scandals and sexual dalliances: student/professor affairs, students falsely accusing their professors of sexual harassment, date rapes, extramarital affairs between faculty members, students rightly accusing their professors of sexual harassment, and even affairs with college janitors.
Now, I know a couple of weeks ago I posted about the surprising amount of hanky panky which goes on at academic conferences. But is there really this much scandalous sex happening on campus to warrant the appearance of sex and dalliance in so many university novels?
Maybe there is, and I'm just not hearing about it.
Or perhaps authors feel they have to throw in some sex scandal to spice up the crusty, book-filled ivory tower.