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Blue Angel
It has been years since Swenson, a professor in a New England creative writing program, has published a novel. It's been even longer since any of his students have shown promise. Enter Angela Argo, a pierced, tattooed student with a rare talent for writing. Angela is just the thing Swenson needs. And, better yet, she wants his help. But, as we all know, the road to hell is paved with good intentions. . . .
Deliciously risqué, Blue Angel is a withering take on today's academic mores and a scathing tale that vividly shows what can happen when academic politics collides with political correctness.
Deliciously risqué, Blue Angel is a withering take on today's academic mores and a scathing tale that vividly shows what can happen when academic politics collides with political correctness.
314 pages, Paperback
First published March 22, 2000
214 people are currently reading
2,738 people want to read
About the author
Francine Prose
174Ìýbooks844ÌýfollowersFrancine Prose is the author of twenty works of fiction. Her novel A Changed Man won the Dayton Literary Peace Prize, and Blue Angel was a finalist for the National Book Award. Her most recent works of nonfiction include the highly acclaimed Anne Frank: The Book, The Life, The Afterlife, and the New York Times bestseller Reading Like a Writer. The recipient of numerous grants and honors, including a Guggenheim and a Fulbright, a Director's Fellow at the Dorothy and Lewis B. Cullman Center for Scholars and Writers at the New York Public Library, Prose is a former president of PEN American Center, and a member of the American Academy of Arts and Letters and the American Academy of Arts and Sciences. Her most recent book is Lovers at the Chameleon Club, Paris 1932. She lives in New York City.
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Displaying 1 - 30 of 511 reviews
March 18, 2019
Don't you love train wrecks? Or, better question, who doesn't? This book is a train wreck, and in the best way.
A failing, aging writer is forced to make a living as a professor, teaching creative writing to talentless snots at a small Vermont university. Said writer, who has a lovely, blameless wife, finds himself drawn to one of these students. Spoiler alert: it doesn't end well.
We witness sexual humiliation, professional humiliation, the disintegration of a marriage, career, a man. What voyeur can possibly turn from these pages? I dare you to try. Even the classroom scenes are cringeworthy - and brilliant - particularly for anyone who has participated in a writing workshop.
The story isn't exactly original. There are plenty of other books that feature this type of taboo "relationship". But what sets this apart, and what I loved, is the voice of this novel. This voice, belonging to the aging writer, has a sardonic, sniping quality - a nasty tone which is perfect for the satirical heart of this book. It's like the uncensored voice we all have inside our heads. Using this voice, Francine Prose transplanted me into the body of this guy, with his massive ego, his equally massive insecurities, his good intentions, his failures, and his sexual appetite. It's this very believable voice that makes up for somewhat weak, less believable aspects of the plot.
You could rant on about political correctness gone mad in academia. You could discuss ad nauseam about sexual power imbalances. But I saw this novel is really about the truth - how hazy it becomes, how we become ensnared in the lies we tell ourselves and in the stories others tell us. How eventually, the truth can become so tangled there is no clear path out.
This is also a fantastic example of how the walls of a carefully constructed life can be taken down in a moment. The foundations of one's life dismantled over the course of a meal.
Unfortunately, the first three quarters of this book are much more compelling than the ending, which took the form of a long, drawn out kangaroo court scene with less than shocking revelations. Though the conclusion is realistic, I felt there was something lacking... a missed opportunity for that last shot of venom I was craving. The fourth and final leg of this table is uneven to the other three, and thus I am left walking away with a bit of a wobbly opinion.
But that didn't stop me from rubber necking. It is a train wreck, after all.
4.5 stars
A failing, aging writer is forced to make a living as a professor, teaching creative writing to talentless snots at a small Vermont university. Said writer, who has a lovely, blameless wife, finds himself drawn to one of these students. Spoiler alert: it doesn't end well.
We witness sexual humiliation, professional humiliation, the disintegration of a marriage, career, a man. What voyeur can possibly turn from these pages? I dare you to try. Even the classroom scenes are cringeworthy - and brilliant - particularly for anyone who has participated in a writing workshop.
The story isn't exactly original. There are plenty of other books that feature this type of taboo "relationship". But what sets this apart, and what I loved, is the voice of this novel. This voice, belonging to the aging writer, has a sardonic, sniping quality - a nasty tone which is perfect for the satirical heart of this book. It's like the uncensored voice we all have inside our heads. Using this voice, Francine Prose transplanted me into the body of this guy, with his massive ego, his equally massive insecurities, his good intentions, his failures, and his sexual appetite. It's this very believable voice that makes up for somewhat weak, less believable aspects of the plot.
You could rant on about political correctness gone mad in academia. You could discuss ad nauseam about sexual power imbalances. But I saw this novel is really about the truth - how hazy it becomes, how we become ensnared in the lies we tell ourselves and in the stories others tell us. How eventually, the truth can become so tangled there is no clear path out.
This is also a fantastic example of how the walls of a carefully constructed life can be taken down in a moment. The foundations of one's life dismantled over the course of a meal.
Unfortunately, the first three quarters of this book are much more compelling than the ending, which took the form of a long, drawn out kangaroo court scene with less than shocking revelations. Though the conclusion is realistic, I felt there was something lacking... a missed opportunity for that last shot of venom I was craving. The fourth and final leg of this table is uneven to the other three, and thus I am left walking away with a bit of a wobbly opinion.
But that didn't stop me from rubber necking. It is a train wreck, after all.
4.5 stars
September 24, 2020
Tale as old as time: teacher and student's amorous liaison. But the notes on THIS scandal are particularly exquisite. The mind of the disgraced professor is put out fully naked on the table, so let the anatomy session begin! The innards are salacious, for its pretty hard to find empathy with the sap.
Francine Prose, a more adequate name has never existed!
Francine Prose, a more adequate name has never existed!
January 31, 2019
This novel was a New York Times Notable Book, and a finalist for the National Book Award. These accolades prove the reverse of what you'd imagine: not that Blue Angel is a good read, or anything or literary merit, but that standards on the whole have fallen. This novel fails on so many levels, I felt insulted 150pgs in and angry by the end.The novel wants to be either a satirical critique of political correctness, and how its guilty-without-trial ethos of college-level sexual harassment is as easy to manipulate as the justice system in the south was in To Kill a Mockingbird. Except: Lee's tale was extraordinarily well-drawn (Atticus! What a character!), well-edited, and well-executed. Prose's version, however, is painfully predictable, its characters by and large either annoying as shit or completely unbelievable, and its writing very very weak. It would be tedious to get into why, on a technical level, the novel is a failure. So let's keep to the thematic issues.
{Spoilers below}
Basically a reverse-Lolita, it's the story of Swenson, a neurotic wimp of a novelist professor at a remote liberal arts school, who, despite what looks like a pretty amazing life—loving spouse, cush job, security—gets pissed off or bored by pretty much everything. Until a "punk" student, Angela Argo, turns in astonishingly good work and wakes him from a slumber that's never very convincing. He encourages her work, a novel in progress about a high school student's burgeoning affair with her music teacher. They inevitably fool around, and we do believe that the encounter is mostly her seducing him: he's really too incompetent to do any of the work, and besides, he points out to the reader several times his clean record up to this point, after 20 years of teaching.
You can pretty much guess the rest: she urges him to show her work to his editor, he tries and fails, so she tells everyone and his life is in ruins. A few hundred pages of really elementary buildup for ten pages of climax wherein the reader is supposed to go, "But wait! It's not like that! Swenson's not entirely to blame! She's complicit!" And, to be honest, I did a little. Then I realized how contrived everything is. He's "tried" by a jury of his colleagues, apparently whose fierce devotion to semi-antiquated 101 feminist values more befitting a freshman than any scholar on the topic (one of whom happens to be in the committee trying Swenson) trumps any sense they would realistically have of fairness, democracy, justice, or even humanity. A proper allegory might be: imagine your boss of several years was told by one of your employees, perhaps the mailroom clerk, that you were embezzling money. Now, despite the fact that you've been an employee for years without incident, and that your boss happens to be very current as to how you are in no position to embezzle anything, he fires you on the spot. Not very realistic is it?
Perhaps I'm being reductive, which is fair considering it is a novel. You can never parse 300pgs of moral ambiguities to a paragraph or two. It was an admirable attempt by Prose, and a decent avenue to explore issues of hypocrisy in our current colleges, but when ambition so far overreaches talent, you have to refer to other successes. So I will. For a much more believable neurotic wimp, check out Jonathan Ames' ; for a better book on a college professor's infatuation with students and writing, see Michael Chabon's Wonder Boys (also the excellent film adaptation by Curtis Hanson); and for a better satire on academia and sexual politics, I can think of no better place than the original source: Lolita (Pnin is also great, though less about sex.) And I have yet to read it, but all my friends love Zadie Smith's On Beauty, which tackles similar issues to Prose's book.
{Spoilers below}
Basically a reverse-Lolita, it's the story of Swenson, a neurotic wimp of a novelist professor at a remote liberal arts school, who, despite what looks like a pretty amazing life—loving spouse, cush job, security—gets pissed off or bored by pretty much everything. Until a "punk" student, Angela Argo, turns in astonishingly good work and wakes him from a slumber that's never very convincing. He encourages her work, a novel in progress about a high school student's burgeoning affair with her music teacher. They inevitably fool around, and we do believe that the encounter is mostly her seducing him: he's really too incompetent to do any of the work, and besides, he points out to the reader several times his clean record up to this point, after 20 years of teaching.
You can pretty much guess the rest: she urges him to show her work to his editor, he tries and fails, so she tells everyone and his life is in ruins. A few hundred pages of really elementary buildup for ten pages of climax wherein the reader is supposed to go, "But wait! It's not like that! Swenson's not entirely to blame! She's complicit!" And, to be honest, I did a little. Then I realized how contrived everything is. He's "tried" by a jury of his colleagues, apparently whose fierce devotion to semi-antiquated 101 feminist values more befitting a freshman than any scholar on the topic (one of whom happens to be in the committee trying Swenson) trumps any sense they would realistically have of fairness, democracy, justice, or even humanity. A proper allegory might be: imagine your boss of several years was told by one of your employees, perhaps the mailroom clerk, that you were embezzling money. Now, despite the fact that you've been an employee for years without incident, and that your boss happens to be very current as to how you are in no position to embezzle anything, he fires you on the spot. Not very realistic is it?
Perhaps I'm being reductive, which is fair considering it is a novel. You can never parse 300pgs of moral ambiguities to a paragraph or two. It was an admirable attempt by Prose, and a decent avenue to explore issues of hypocrisy in our current colleges, but when ambition so far overreaches talent, you have to refer to other successes. So I will. For a much more believable neurotic wimp, check out Jonathan Ames' ; for a better book on a college professor's infatuation with students and writing, see Michael Chabon's Wonder Boys (also the excellent film adaptation by Curtis Hanson); and for a better satire on academia and sexual politics, I can think of no better place than the original source: Lolita (Pnin is also great, though less about sex.) And I have yet to read it, but all my friends love Zadie Smith's On Beauty, which tackles similar issues to Prose's book.
February 15, 2018
I am struggling to write a review of this book: it is a satire of political correctness gone mad within the highly volatile environment that is a university campus. Having witnessed the kind of witch hunt described in this novel first hand, I cringed more than I would have if I hadn't been a direct to witness to how broken the academic system is. I tried to just focus on the book, and not how reminiscent the story was of things I've been privy to, but it obviously tainted my appreciation of this novel.
The trope of students seducing teachers (or vice-versa) is about as old as� well any kind of education system where there are students and teachers. But what I found interesting about Prose's novel is that it eviscerates the strange way career academics and professional students (by that I mean students who have never had any kind of occupation outside of academia) think and (re)act. I am not surprised that this is a polarizing novel. It made me both angry and sad, occasionally at the same time.
Swenson is a creative writing professor at a small college in Vermont. He is happily married, with a daughter in college; but his job frustrates him, both because of the constant walking-on-eggshells that teaching in a university has become (safe space and trigger warnings!), but also because he hasn't had a genuinely talented student in years. Then one semester, an enigmatic young woman named Angela surprises him by handing in a very promising manuscript.
There is a certain amount of predictability at play here: of course there will be an affair, of course it will be made public and of course, this will mean disgrace for Swenson. His downfall is like a car crash: you know where this is going and that it will be bloody� and yet you can't look away. How this novel manages to save itself from being a cliché is by showing us how this slightly ridiculous characters reacts to his bad decision and deals with the consequences.
Swenson is not likable, but he's not a bad guy either: he is intensely self-conscious and tries really hard not to ruffle his students' feathers. What really struck me about him is actually how much of a coward he is: he'll prefer to remain a fence-sitter than take a stand, and that goes both for his attitude towards his students, his marriage and even his dalliance with Angela. I caught myself wishing this book had been written in the first person from his point of view: it would have made him more sympathetic.
Angela's character isn't any more likable: she's manipulative, a pathological liar who has no qualms exploiting the climate of sexual paranoia shrouding the academic community. Her flawed attempts at writing is what attracts Swenson, who suffers from writer's block, but the attempt to also make her a symbol for his estranged daughter was a bit much...
It's also hard for me not to get annoyed with how stereotypical she was: punk/Goth girl with issues and a "history" of sexual abuse and deviancy. Urg, honestly� Where did those ideas come from, anyway? But then, this was written before Suicide Girls became mainstream, so I suppose it added an edge to the story.
The meta aspect of the creative writing class analyzing work, pointing out flaws, aspects that need to be fleshed out more, was an interesting touch: the self-awareness that this book would in its turn get picked apart is Prose winking at you through the page, saying "I see you, reader!". But it also occasionally felt much too self-conscious.
I mentioned that this story is at times, eerily realistic. Political correctness in the academic milieu is something that can become Orwellian faster than one might imagine. I feel like there is something so paradoxically puritan about North American culture (porn is everywhere but high school students are made to take abstinence pledges instead of getting proper sex ed), and the current sexual paranoia brought on by rape culture is a severe symptom of this strange relationship of extremes that this continent has with sex. Prose seems to agree with this: she built this satire of the hypocrisies of the hardline PC crusade that we see on university campuses everywhere, but she doesn't really make any other point than being exasperated with the safety hysteria. She wants to point out that abuse and consensual-but-misguided sex are different things, that each case is unique, and that distorted truths aren't facts. OK, sure, but now what? The ending doesn't offer any kind of resolution, for the characters or for the issue.
"Blue Angel" is nowhere near as good as "The Human Stain" or "On Beauty"' which touch similar subject matters. It is funny, absurd and tragic, and it makes me really glad I gave up on being a career academic when I did. But it is hard to stack up against the pathos found in Roth's work, or the humor in Smith's. A clever and interesting book, but not really a pleasure to read.
The trope of students seducing teachers (or vice-versa) is about as old as� well any kind of education system where there are students and teachers. But what I found interesting about Prose's novel is that it eviscerates the strange way career academics and professional students (by that I mean students who have never had any kind of occupation outside of academia) think and (re)act. I am not surprised that this is a polarizing novel. It made me both angry and sad, occasionally at the same time.
Swenson is a creative writing professor at a small college in Vermont. He is happily married, with a daughter in college; but his job frustrates him, both because of the constant walking-on-eggshells that teaching in a university has become (safe space and trigger warnings!), but also because he hasn't had a genuinely talented student in years. Then one semester, an enigmatic young woman named Angela surprises him by handing in a very promising manuscript.
There is a certain amount of predictability at play here: of course there will be an affair, of course it will be made public and of course, this will mean disgrace for Swenson. His downfall is like a car crash: you know where this is going and that it will be bloody� and yet you can't look away. How this novel manages to save itself from being a cliché is by showing us how this slightly ridiculous characters reacts to his bad decision and deals with the consequences.
Swenson is not likable, but he's not a bad guy either: he is intensely self-conscious and tries really hard not to ruffle his students' feathers. What really struck me about him is actually how much of a coward he is: he'll prefer to remain a fence-sitter than take a stand, and that goes both for his attitude towards his students, his marriage and even his dalliance with Angela. I caught myself wishing this book had been written in the first person from his point of view: it would have made him more sympathetic.
Angela's character isn't any more likable: she's manipulative, a pathological liar who has no qualms exploiting the climate of sexual paranoia shrouding the academic community. Her flawed attempts at writing is what attracts Swenson, who suffers from writer's block, but the attempt to also make her a symbol for his estranged daughter was a bit much...
It's also hard for me not to get annoyed with how stereotypical she was: punk/Goth girl with issues and a "history" of sexual abuse and deviancy. Urg, honestly� Where did those ideas come from, anyway? But then, this was written before Suicide Girls became mainstream, so I suppose it added an edge to the story.
The meta aspect of the creative writing class analyzing work, pointing out flaws, aspects that need to be fleshed out more, was an interesting touch: the self-awareness that this book would in its turn get picked apart is Prose winking at you through the page, saying "I see you, reader!". But it also occasionally felt much too self-conscious.
I mentioned that this story is at times, eerily realistic. Political correctness in the academic milieu is something that can become Orwellian faster than one might imagine. I feel like there is something so paradoxically puritan about North American culture (porn is everywhere but high school students are made to take abstinence pledges instead of getting proper sex ed), and the current sexual paranoia brought on by rape culture is a severe symptom of this strange relationship of extremes that this continent has with sex. Prose seems to agree with this: she built this satire of the hypocrisies of the hardline PC crusade that we see on university campuses everywhere, but she doesn't really make any other point than being exasperated with the safety hysteria. She wants to point out that abuse and consensual-but-misguided sex are different things, that each case is unique, and that distorted truths aren't facts. OK, sure, but now what? The ending doesn't offer any kind of resolution, for the characters or for the issue.
"Blue Angel" is nowhere near as good as "The Human Stain" or "On Beauty"' which touch similar subject matters. It is funny, absurd and tragic, and it makes me really glad I gave up on being a career academic when I did. But it is hard to stack up against the pathos found in Roth's work, or the humor in Smith's. A clever and interesting book, but not really a pleasure to read.
June 3, 2018
Near the end of this story of a seductress and her feckless, hubristic seducee, there is a moment when the seducee—a teacher who has gone off the wire—gives up and doesn’t even try to defend himself, because the story has gotten so complex that saying anything simple seems impossible. It would feel like a lie. And he has lost the ability.
That’s how I feel about this book. Anything simple would be a lie. The story is an intricate psychological dance between a student and a teacher, where neither is good or honorable, and yet for the judgers of this the story, shallow “right or wrong� becomes the issue.
I’ve had moments in my life—completely different from this story—that share a similar ending of “walking through a crucible.� And for that reason, I found the ending spectacular.
April 7, 2023
Reminiscing about dear sweet perverse Angela - I read this novel at a perfect time... Yes Angela is one of my all time favorite characters. I love how characters step back into your everyday thoughts, just to tickle your imagination, so that is all you think about the whole day long. Then of course, trailing behind her, professor Ted Swenson jumps into your imagination. He's still thinking about Angela wearing a black miniskirt and engineer boots in November in northern Vermont. I can't remember if she was braless?
Eat your heart out professor Humbert Humbert, Lolita didn't look this hot!
Eat your heart out professor Humbert Humbert, Lolita didn't look this hot!
February 2, 2014
I find the negative comments about this novel mystifying--it's a brilliant satire, and was deservedly nominated for a National Book Award (a prize rarely given to comic novels or satires). I suspect that the lack of suspense, the reader's foreknowledge that certain things will happen blunts their pleasure in Prose's wonderful writing and the insight she has into each of her characters, and the affectionate but acerbic picture of life in a small, somewhat pretentious and second rate college. But for me, the plot is the least important feature of the book. The title alone tells you that Prose is playing with a well-established trope, one explored many times, and that she has something in mind other than letting the reader find out "what happened"--the book is primarily a character study crossed with a satiric send up of political correctness as played out in a creative writing class. Anyone who has ever taught such a class will recognize the emotional land mines lurking in the seemingly innocent offerings of students who have great ambitions and dreams but do not necessarily have the talent (or the discipline to utilize the talent they do possess) to realize them. This is the first of her novels I've read. I now look forward to reading others.
August 2, 2007
Only bother reading Blue Angel if you don't mind books where you're not gonna like the main character.
The paragraph below describes the chief reason I hated the main character. If you want to avoid the sexual exploits of the main character, quit reading now.
SPOILER ALERT - QUIT READING IF YOU CARE
So the dude is married, right? And he's a professor. He's never slept with one of his students. He seems half proud and half sad about this fact. Anyway, during the course of the book, he does have sex with one of his students. They're in her dorm room, clothes are removed, a condom is placed on, male bits are inserted into female bits. And then, while they are having sex, he breaks a tooth. Apparently he's a teeth grinder. Whatever. But the mood is pretty much broken and they quit. However, for the rest of the book, he keeps saying they "tried" to have sex. When he confesses to his wife, it was that he tried to sleep with a student and that breaking a tooth stopped him. Dude, if your penis was in the chick's vagina, you had sex. You didn't orgasm, but you sure as hell had sex. Loser.
The paragraph below describes the chief reason I hated the main character. If you want to avoid the sexual exploits of the main character, quit reading now.
SPOILER ALERT - QUIT READING IF YOU CARE
So the dude is married, right? And he's a professor. He's never slept with one of his students. He seems half proud and half sad about this fact. Anyway, during the course of the book, he does have sex with one of his students. They're in her dorm room, clothes are removed, a condom is placed on, male bits are inserted into female bits. And then, while they are having sex, he breaks a tooth. Apparently he's a teeth grinder. Whatever. But the mood is pretty much broken and they quit. However, for the rest of the book, he keeps saying they "tried" to have sex. When he confesses to his wife, it was that he tried to sleep with a student and that breaking a tooth stopped him. Dude, if your penis was in the chick's vagina, you had sex. You didn't orgasm, but you sure as hell had sex. Loser.
February 5, 2009
professor likes student's novel. student likes praise from professor. professor and student make out. UH OHHHHHH SPAGHETTI-O
October 22, 2021
Blue Angel is not an original story: a male figure of authority violates the societal trust that has been placed in his hands and enters into a sexual relationship with a young female subordinate. However, Francine Prose elevates the story by making it about human desire. When we see something that we very much want, desire can guide our actions without any consideration about the future. Whether it’s an extra serving of desert, an expensive piece of jewelry, or an illusion of youth, rational thought can be completely absent, or bent into an accomplice, during our acts of indulgence.
Francine Prose accomplishes her story by doing something that I relish in novels. She constantly probes the human mind of her main character so that by the end, you know who he is. She creates a character with the ability to decisively act in contradiction to his rational thoughts, or to act in the absence of rational thought altogether. In truth, Blue Angle reveals the person of Ted Swenson.
The supporting characters, if not as well defined, are just as craftily written. They exist with the definition of the main character’s limited understanding of them. After all, if we were there, the most we could hope to understand of these people is what we could see from a distance. Prose uses the light of the main character to contrast the shadows surrounding the supporting characters.
In Francine Prose, I may have found a writer of the likes of Greene, Maugham, and Leonard. These are the writers that know that the thoughts and actions of their characters are equally interesting things. They feed off one another, support one another, and oftentimes contradict one another. And these writers use this dance to create stories that reach far deeper into the human condition than stories of simple action alone. Definitely the best book I’ve read this year.
Francine Prose accomplishes her story by doing something that I relish in novels. She constantly probes the human mind of her main character so that by the end, you know who he is. She creates a character with the ability to decisively act in contradiction to his rational thoughts, or to act in the absence of rational thought altogether. In truth, Blue Angle reveals the person of Ted Swenson.
The supporting characters, if not as well defined, are just as craftily written. They exist with the definition of the main character’s limited understanding of them. After all, if we were there, the most we could hope to understand of these people is what we could see from a distance. Prose uses the light of the main character to contrast the shadows surrounding the supporting characters.
In Francine Prose, I may have found a writer of the likes of Greene, Maugham, and Leonard. These are the writers that know that the thoughts and actions of their characters are equally interesting things. They feed off one another, support one another, and oftentimes contradict one another. And these writers use this dance to create stories that reach far deeper into the human condition than stories of simple action alone. Definitely the best book I’ve read this year.
October 31, 2007
A lot of people have complained that this book is a cliche, but I think it's really playing on cliches--political correctness on college campuses, male creative writing teacher / female student. I really felt for the professor at parts of the novel. He really seems to care if his student is writing "creative" work or if she is a victim of incest asking for help. And at other times, I couldn't stand him. His justifications for "wanting" the student, etc. (But that means he's a well developed character.) I think his getting drawn in and falling for her versus how much she is manipulating him is a terrific tension throughout the novel. I hope that more people will give this book a chance.
May 16, 2008
It took me two days to read this book and I feel like it's two days that I would like to demand the author give me back. If I'm not mistaken, this book was a National Book Award finalist and I would also like an opportunity to smack some of those judges around.
The premise: an aging writer with a bad case of writer's block spends his days teaching sub-par students creative writing at an over-privileged liberal arts college in an out of the way small town. When a student with talent enters his class, he develops a sexual infatuation with her which - obviously - leads to accusations and termination.
I hate Don DeLillo and I hate when people try to write like a second rate DeLillo even more. I hate the muddled wooziness of befuddled thought processes that are supposed to make us feel some connection with a mid-life crisis. The frantic energy goes nowhere and more time is spent describing what the lead character is confusedly puzzling out in his mind than in actual plot development.
both my thumbs are DOWN. Do NOT read.
The premise: an aging writer with a bad case of writer's block spends his days teaching sub-par students creative writing at an over-privileged liberal arts college in an out of the way small town. When a student with talent enters his class, he develops a sexual infatuation with her which - obviously - leads to accusations and termination.
I hate Don DeLillo and I hate when people try to write like a second rate DeLillo even more. I hate the muddled wooziness of befuddled thought processes that are supposed to make us feel some connection with a mid-life crisis. The frantic energy goes nowhere and more time is spent describing what the lead character is confusedly puzzling out in his mind than in actual plot development.
both my thumbs are DOWN. Do NOT read.
September 19, 2015
On the one hand: very entertaining, breezy, fast-paced, witty, engrossing. On the other hand: almost self-parodically stereotypical "comedic lit-fic" plot about a creative writing professor with writer's block having a midlife crisis and getting involved with a younger woman. Seems like it wants to "tackle" culture-war topics about "political correctness," university responses to sexual harassment on campus, etc., but doesn't take any real stands one way or the other, and this element ends up feeling like empty provocation for provocation's sake -- a sheep in wolf's clothing.
Main character makes stupid mistakes and is punished for them very harshly; the latter sections of the book are full of a plaintive sense that the world should be more forgiving, but it was hard for me to feel much pity for a middle-aged, married adult with a daughter in college who makes such adolescent-level blunders. Ultimately I didn't really care about any of it, although it sure was a fun way to pass the time. Writing throughout is competent but never, ever really good.
Sometimes when I hang out with science fiction fans I hear complaints about how "literary fiction" is a category full of unambitious, complacent "books about middle-aged English professors having affairs." This may or may not be a fair characterization as a whole, but this is exactly the sort of book they're talking about. Maybe it would have been better with a spaceship or two.
Main character makes stupid mistakes and is punished for them very harshly; the latter sections of the book are full of a plaintive sense that the world should be more forgiving, but it was hard for me to feel much pity for a middle-aged, married adult with a daughter in college who makes such adolescent-level blunders. Ultimately I didn't really care about any of it, although it sure was a fun way to pass the time. Writing throughout is competent but never, ever really good.
Sometimes when I hang out with science fiction fans I hear complaints about how "literary fiction" is a category full of unambitious, complacent "books about middle-aged English professors having affairs." This may or may not be a fair characterization as a whole, but this is exactly the sort of book they're talking about. Maybe it would have been better with a spaceship or two.
June 12, 2008
I loved this book, thought it was a very witty academic satire and fun spoof on students and terrible writing. To me the central joke is that the "brilliant" student is also a terrible writer-- the excerpts we read of her novel are cliches of goth/riot grrrl anomie, with the lurking menace and squalor and minimalism and repulsive/erotic imagery. (Her name "Argo(t)" suggests this quality of subculture chic and slang). Plus hello she's writing about a student attracted to her male teacher, FOR her male teacher. Her writing and character exemplify a sleazy 90's "porno feminism" and the joke is that the teacher mistakes his sexual response to this dirty girl and her dirty book as an aesthetic response to her talent. And the agent recognizes her writing and image as something/someone he can package and sell on its bony, angry, anti-sexy sexiness.
October 24, 2007
How did this book get so many awards?
It's the most cliched story out there; male writing professor gets involved with his brilliant female student. About fifty pages in (and not getting any more involved), I made a bet with myself. I bet that I could predict where the book was going and save myself the three hours it would take to get there naturally. So I turned to the last forty pages and sure enough...it was exactly where I figured.
It's discouraging that Blue Angel was so revered. I honestly don't get it. But don't waste your time even reading the first fifty pages like I did...you, too, will probably be able to predict what's coming.
It's the most cliched story out there; male writing professor gets involved with his brilliant female student. About fifty pages in (and not getting any more involved), I made a bet with myself. I bet that I could predict where the book was going and save myself the three hours it would take to get there naturally. So I turned to the last forty pages and sure enough...it was exactly where I figured.
It's discouraging that Blue Angel was so revered. I honestly don't get it. But don't waste your time even reading the first fifty pages like I did...you, too, will probably be able to predict what's coming.
July 12, 2017
“You are guilty until proven innocent, and you will never be proven innocent,� is the charge in this book and it is a sad unravelling of what inevitably happens when sense overrules sensibility in a politically correct institution of higher education.
Professor Theodore Swenson is a professor in a New England college’s creative writing program and is a former bestselling author now hobbled by writers block and mid-life crisis. The students in his class are allowed free reign with their subject matter; therefore bestiality, necrophilia and sex with professors are topics being creatively explored and insensitively critiqued in the classroom. Enter Angela, a punk dresser, former sex-chat worker and disturbed student who has a flair for writing and is determined to be published by a big house in New York, by hook or by crook, and her professor looks like a great conduit to fame. Swenson falls ass over tea kettle for her through her writing, which seems to be imitating life, his life, and the inevitable fall of the weak man and the rise of the unscrupulous woman is written on the cards. I was amazed and found it a bit implausible that a mature, jaded professor like Swenson could fall so hard.
What makes this story tragic is that Swenson is a good man, albeit a weak and inept one; he loves his wife, he desperately wants his daughter to love him, and he is kind and goes out of his way for his students. As a writer aspiring for the freedom to roam and explore, he is stifled by the need to earn a living and in having to do that within the narrow confines of a college that is scared of any impropriety that could land it in a lawsuit and imperil its funding sources. Perhaps the college’s insularity is what contributes to Swenson’s irrationality.
What interested me was the glimpse offered into this stifling world of academia which by its very political correctness is at odds with the creative process. Perhaps creative writing programs should not be run in universities and colleges, although this has now become a viable form of subsidy for writers. The classroom discussions on the various stories written by the students is a peep into a wildly creative writing group where insults and tears are par for the course. Swenson has to play two roles: a public one where he is the balanced and considerate teacher, and an internal one where he is a vitriolic critic of the hypocrisy he has to live with. This internal monologue overplays itself through the novel and becomes a bit tedious. Swenson sometimes subsides into defensiveness. It would have been just sufficient to show and not tell.
When the inevitable inquisition begins, past grudges held against the defendant by colleagues, relatives and students, and all lies and fabrications designed by those in power positions are brought to bear. And as the bells ring out in the college, the author likens it to “the Women’s Alliance announcing their triumph over another male oppressor, one small path towards a glorious future.� The bells also spell Swenson’s liberation from oppression, the writer free at last to pursue his dream, wherever it may lead.
An easy read, posing some thought provoking questions.
Professor Theodore Swenson is a professor in a New England college’s creative writing program and is a former bestselling author now hobbled by writers block and mid-life crisis. The students in his class are allowed free reign with their subject matter; therefore bestiality, necrophilia and sex with professors are topics being creatively explored and insensitively critiqued in the classroom. Enter Angela, a punk dresser, former sex-chat worker and disturbed student who has a flair for writing and is determined to be published by a big house in New York, by hook or by crook, and her professor looks like a great conduit to fame. Swenson falls ass over tea kettle for her through her writing, which seems to be imitating life, his life, and the inevitable fall of the weak man and the rise of the unscrupulous woman is written on the cards. I was amazed and found it a bit implausible that a mature, jaded professor like Swenson could fall so hard.
What makes this story tragic is that Swenson is a good man, albeit a weak and inept one; he loves his wife, he desperately wants his daughter to love him, and he is kind and goes out of his way for his students. As a writer aspiring for the freedom to roam and explore, he is stifled by the need to earn a living and in having to do that within the narrow confines of a college that is scared of any impropriety that could land it in a lawsuit and imperil its funding sources. Perhaps the college’s insularity is what contributes to Swenson’s irrationality.
What interested me was the glimpse offered into this stifling world of academia which by its very political correctness is at odds with the creative process. Perhaps creative writing programs should not be run in universities and colleges, although this has now become a viable form of subsidy for writers. The classroom discussions on the various stories written by the students is a peep into a wildly creative writing group where insults and tears are par for the course. Swenson has to play two roles: a public one where he is the balanced and considerate teacher, and an internal one where he is a vitriolic critic of the hypocrisy he has to live with. This internal monologue overplays itself through the novel and becomes a bit tedious. Swenson sometimes subsides into defensiveness. It would have been just sufficient to show and not tell.
When the inevitable inquisition begins, past grudges held against the defendant by colleagues, relatives and students, and all lies and fabrications designed by those in power positions are brought to bear. And as the bells ring out in the college, the author likens it to “the Women’s Alliance announcing their triumph over another male oppressor, one small path towards a glorious future.� The bells also spell Swenson’s liberation from oppression, the writer free at last to pursue his dream, wherever it may lead.
An easy read, posing some thought provoking questions.
May 9, 2010
I was very torn on this book. I kept hearing echoes of "Oleanna" and "Disclosure" as I read. I mean, taking things that happen quite often - sexual harassment and sexual relationships between male professors and female students - and doing a bit of role reversal? How shocking, how transgressive, how...completely obnoxious. It's about as edgy as someone who shows more concern for the few men who might be falsely accused of rape than for the multitudes of women who are actually raped. Never mind all of the women who are actually sexually harassed! What about the one dude who is falsely accused of sexual harassment? WHO WILL THINK OF TEH MENZ?!?!?!!!1
I also found the positioning of the campus feminist group as the villain of the story rather annoying. Maybe it's just a feature of small liberal arts schools, because at the two big state universities I attended, the campus women's groups and the women's studies departments were more like perfunctory nods toward multiculturalism and less terroristic enforcers of joyless political correctness that ruins all of the fun for everyone (and by everyone, I mean the dudes).
So why did I give this book three stars? Because it was entertaining, because Prose made a lot of points about writing - particularly creative writing dispatched in service of a political ideology - that I agree with, and because she made the self-destruction of one sadsack of a man so compulsively readable. Because, make no mistake about it, the narrator completely self-destructs. The student was just the catalyst for it. Swendon was clearly unhappy with everything about his life, even his marriage and his wife, about which he spent much brain power trying to convince himself that he really was happy, that he really did have a good life, that he truly loved his wife. He loathed his students and his colleagues, but most of all he loathed himself, and he tried to make up for it by being an insufferable snob. He was thoroughly unlikeable, mired in a clusterfuck of his own making, and yet Prose managed to stir up something resembling sympathy in my heart.
I also found the positioning of the campus feminist group as the villain of the story rather annoying. Maybe it's just a feature of small liberal arts schools, because at the two big state universities I attended, the campus women's groups and the women's studies departments were more like perfunctory nods toward multiculturalism and less terroristic enforcers of joyless political correctness that ruins all of the fun for everyone (and by everyone, I mean the dudes).
So why did I give this book three stars? Because it was entertaining, because Prose made a lot of points about writing - particularly creative writing dispatched in service of a political ideology - that I agree with, and because she made the self-destruction of one sadsack of a man so compulsively readable. Because, make no mistake about it, the narrator completely self-destructs. The student was just the catalyst for it. Swendon was clearly unhappy with everything about his life, even his marriage and his wife, about which he spent much brain power trying to convince himself that he really was happy, that he really did have a good life, that he truly loved his wife. He loathed his students and his colleagues, but most of all he loathed himself, and he tried to make up for it by being an insufferable snob. He was thoroughly unlikeable, mired in a clusterfuck of his own making, and yet Prose managed to stir up something resembling sympathy in my heart.
September 19, 2007
I don't know if I can bring myself to finish this book. The writing itself is not so bad, though the author does do a thing with her possesives that is beginning to drive me nuts. The bigger problem however is the unbelievable characters, and their trajectory. I haven't been sold on the story. These people need to more wicked - how can a guy who is so complacent do what he does? I'm not a prude, I know people are having illicit sex all over the place, and enjoying it much more than this self-obsessed professor - I just haven't been convinced that he would really do the things that he is doing. I feel like I'm wasting my time on a novel that could have been a short story - tight, fast, and I'd be done with it by now.
It's like that movie Match Point - by the time the guy got the shotgun, I didn't care anymore who he was going to shoot.
This book is a complete failure (for me) because I don't care what's going to happen.
It's like that movie Match Point - by the time the guy got the shotgun, I didn't care anymore who he was going to shoot.
This book is a complete failure (for me) because I don't care what's going to happen.
Read
May 21, 2018I'm halfway through this book, and this lame professor hasn't even gotten to second base with his student. Supposedly they end up having sex in her dorm room at some point, but I don't have time for this shit. DNF.
November 5, 2010
This was absolutely BRILLIANT!! Witty, clever, funny, intelligent, and original! This one will be going on my list of all-time favorites for sure.
Ted Swenson is a creative-writing professor at a small college in Vermont. He is happily married with an ideal teaching schedule of just one small class a week. He also has a college-aged daughter who won't speak to him, and he can't seem to make progress on the novel he's been writing. When one of his students - the sullen, awkward, pierced, tattooed Angela Argo - asks him to read her own novel and give his opinion and feedback, he reluctantly obliges. However, he soon discovers that her writing is actually very very good. Thus begins his involvement with a student young enough to be his daughter. His feelings for Angela quickly progress from intriguement to admiration to attraction to something bordering on obsession. There is plenty of suspense as we wait to see just how far this relationship will go.
Even though my normal instinct is to hate a man who would let his attention stray to someone other than his wife, I found myself feeling compassion for this particular man, and even forgiving him for his transgressions. Miss Prose did a magnificent job of telling the story from the male perspective - I had to double-check one time to make sure that it was indeed written by a woman. She also had me laughing at Ted's witty observations of ordinary human behavior - which is always my favorite kind of humor.
Anyways, LOVED it, and highly recommend!!!!!
Ted Swenson is a creative-writing professor at a small college in Vermont. He is happily married with an ideal teaching schedule of just one small class a week. He also has a college-aged daughter who won't speak to him, and he can't seem to make progress on the novel he's been writing. When one of his students - the sullen, awkward, pierced, tattooed Angela Argo - asks him to read her own novel and give his opinion and feedback, he reluctantly obliges. However, he soon discovers that her writing is actually very very good. Thus begins his involvement with a student young enough to be his daughter. His feelings for Angela quickly progress from intriguement to admiration to attraction to something bordering on obsession. There is plenty of suspense as we wait to see just how far this relationship will go.
Even though my normal instinct is to hate a man who would let his attention stray to someone other than his wife, I found myself feeling compassion for this particular man, and even forgiving him for his transgressions. Miss Prose did a magnificent job of telling the story from the male perspective - I had to double-check one time to make sure that it was indeed written by a woman. She also had me laughing at Ted's witty observations of ordinary human behavior - which is always my favorite kind of humor.
Anyways, LOVED it, and highly recommend!!!!!
November 23, 2016
Midlife crisis is a bitch. This glorious satire of the sexual politics in the ever increasingly politically correct society, particularly within the microcosmos of the tiny liberal arts college, is about that very specific kind of self destruction and reckless endangerment of a perfectly comfortable life in the most idiotic way possible. I've read Prose before, she impressed me then and has done so now. Suppose with a surname like that one ought to be able to churn out some well put together narrative, but jokes aside she's just great to read. Such astutely observed emotionally intelligent dynamics. Such a clever story. One inevitable to draw comparisons to Lolita or even the lesser know Mamet's Oleanna, but this stands very much on its own perversely shapely legs. Psychological fiction at its best. Recommended.
March 30, 2018
This was a very interesting story but not great. It's the story of a college professor who becomes involved with one of his students, old story I know. But things get out of control in a big way. Everything is told from the professor's point of view, he is telling the story about what happens to him. The story has some very ironic/funny parts which had me laughing outloud at the way he was thinking. The writing was very good but it was just a story about this man and how his life was destroyed and how he dealt with it. Relates to the movie by this name made back in the early 1920-30's. The professor likes to watch this movie and it is also about a college professor.
Shelved as 'tasted'
April 19, 2018Despite Prose’s professional writing and how little seems to have changed since 2000 (or was Prose unusually prescient?), the novel covers well-trodden ground and is based on a relationship that simply wasn’t very interesting, at least to me. I read most of it, but couldn’t make it to the end.
February 10, 2008
This book was well written. Prose does a good job giving us a glimpse into academia and marriage. Even the scenes in the writing class were funny and interesting. I'll give her that.
Prose is taking a satirical approach to try to make a point about today's air of politically correct gender relations. The college campus is overrun by ultra feminists who think all women are victims of men's phallocentric universe, led by the ultimate feminist witch professor. On the other hand, the main character is appalled that his own daughter would get a job working at a center for "battered" women. I guess just because she shows empathy for people who legitimately need help, he thinks she's turning into a feminist wacko. When she tells him a story about a girl who was brutally hazed by a bunch of frat boys at her university, he just wishes she would go to a nice little school where those things just don't happen. It's like he wants to turn his back on the whole issue. It's things like this that make me hate the main character. And when you love or hate a character so much, the author has achieved something, right?
There actually weren't any likable characters at all in this book. Certainly not the teenage nymphet this guy falls for. And really, as much as I want to like a bookish goth chick, I don't know why any grown man would like, much less "fall in love" with this psycho chick. The red flags were all over the place.
I think what Prose is trying to say (and maybe I'm wrong?) is that not every case is the same. She's obviously fed up with the whole sexual harassment hysteria, and I see a line being drawn here between sex between adults and real abuse. I liked the end where Swenson realizes he's spent 20 years of his life with people he didn't even know or like, after everyone he knew turned against him. Kind of makes you wonder how you'll feel in 20 years.
And by the way, despite the terminology that was used through half the book, if he put his penis in the girl's vagina, he didn't TRY to have sex, he DID have sex. OK?! The man having an orgasm is not a requirement for actually HAVING sex.
Prose is taking a satirical approach to try to make a point about today's air of politically correct gender relations. The college campus is overrun by ultra feminists who think all women are victims of men's phallocentric universe, led by the ultimate feminist witch professor. On the other hand, the main character is appalled that his own daughter would get a job working at a center for "battered" women. I guess just because she shows empathy for people who legitimately need help, he thinks she's turning into a feminist wacko. When she tells him a story about a girl who was brutally hazed by a bunch of frat boys at her university, he just wishes she would go to a nice little school where those things just don't happen. It's like he wants to turn his back on the whole issue. It's things like this that make me hate the main character. And when you love or hate a character so much, the author has achieved something, right?
There actually weren't any likable characters at all in this book. Certainly not the teenage nymphet this guy falls for. And really, as much as I want to like a bookish goth chick, I don't know why any grown man would like, much less "fall in love" with this psycho chick. The red flags were all over the place.
I think what Prose is trying to say (and maybe I'm wrong?) is that not every case is the same. She's obviously fed up with the whole sexual harassment hysteria, and I see a line being drawn here between sex between adults and real abuse. I liked the end where Swenson realizes he's spent 20 years of his life with people he didn't even know or like, after everyone he knew turned against him. Kind of makes you wonder how you'll feel in 20 years.
And by the way, despite the terminology that was used through half the book, if he put his penis in the girl's vagina, he didn't TRY to have sex, he DID have sex. OK?! The man having an orgasm is not a requirement for actually HAVING sex.
January 18, 2015
I’m not surprised this book has polarized reviewers, but I am surprised by the sheer mass of people who describe Blue Angel as just a melodrama of an ‘average� aging professor (who simply lacks the control required to deflect the advances of one punky student), and a thin satire of a higher academic institutions.
Some folks have called the book “cliché.� I’d make an important distinction that the main character’s perspective on the events are in fact contrived � but what makes this book brilliant is the extent to which this character is and is not a reliable perspective. To avoid spoilers, I’ll only say that there’s something unhinged, if not sinister, underlying the account of this seemingly impotent professor. Something that's masterfully revealed, and something that renders the rest of the book (the characters� takes on power, sex, emotional vapidity, etc.) much more complex than some people seem to give it credit for.
The book's an easy but intelligent read. The humor isn’t meant to be side-splitting, but simply sharp. Worth the time.
Some folks have called the book “cliché.� I’d make an important distinction that the main character’s perspective on the events are in fact contrived � but what makes this book brilliant is the extent to which this character is and is not a reliable perspective. To avoid spoilers, I’ll only say that there’s something unhinged, if not sinister, underlying the account of this seemingly impotent professor. Something that's masterfully revealed, and something that renders the rest of the book (the characters� takes on power, sex, emotional vapidity, etc.) much more complex than some people seem to give it credit for.
The book's an easy but intelligent read. The humor isn’t meant to be side-splitting, but simply sharp. Worth the time.
March 21, 2015
I read this book because of a recommendation on Ricochet. I was not disappointed.
I am a male university professor with predominantly female students, so this story had particular resonance for me, dealing as it does with the potential mine-fields that constitute the university classroom today. The title refers to the unforgettable Marlene Dietrich movie of the same name ("Falling in love again...can't help it"), and the movie plays a role in the novel.
As I read, I found myself almost out-loud telling the protagonist "No, no, you idiot! Don't do that! My. God, where's your head?" It was similar to the feeling you get in Sophocles' tragedy as Oedipus relentlessly and inexorably wrings out the truth that brings his downfall.
This novel has made me a Francine Prose fan. I shall read more.
I am a male university professor with predominantly female students, so this story had particular resonance for me, dealing as it does with the potential mine-fields that constitute the university classroom today. The title refers to the unforgettable Marlene Dietrich movie of the same name ("Falling in love again...can't help it"), and the movie plays a role in the novel.
As I read, I found myself almost out-loud telling the protagonist "No, no, you idiot! Don't do that! My. God, where's your head?" It was similar to the feeling you get in Sophocles' tragedy as Oedipus relentlessly and inexorably wrings out the truth that brings his downfall.
This novel has made me a Francine Prose fan. I shall read more.
February 20, 2008
I thought this was a very entertaining read. Many of the complaints in other reviews center on the main character not being likable and the book not being laugh-out-loud funny. For me, the humor was there in Prose's sharp observations and exaggerations when it came to her characters and academia in general... so, more of an appreciative "HA!" every so often as opposed to a side-splitting, rolling- around-on-the-floor fit of laughter. I especially liked her examples of bad student writing, a lot of fun. The ending left something to be desired for me, but overall a great read.
January 23, 2019
Let me just start off by saying that it’s borderline blasphemous to even think about putting this book on the same plane as Lolita. What was it that Swenson says about Eggs ~like Lolita but from her point of view~? Seriously, if you think that the eponymous protagonist of the novel seduced Humbert Humbert, then please re-read it, and by all means stay 500 feet from your nearest school zone.
As Swenson would say, let’s start off with what I liked: the plot. Yes, this book won the fight against drooping eyelids. It was entertaining. And there was one passage I took from it: “Even if they don’t become writers, it’s a way of seeing the world � each fellow human character to be entered and understood. All of us potential chicken rapists, Dostoyevskian sinners.�
It’s obvious Prose can write, largely because she’s well-read. But if her literary merit isn’t obvious enough, she reassures you by name dropping Dostoyevsky and Chekov every other page (Garcia Lorca, Bronte, Hemingway, Morrison, Joyce, Proust, they make minor appearances, an expansion of her repertoire). Their undeniable engagement with meta, and the obvious meta aspects of this novel make it painstakingly comical that all the things wrong with this book are criticized in Swenson’s class: believability, shallow if not stereotypical characters, the obvious political statement, dear god, and the typos!
What well-read college girl in the 21st century, raging with feminism and that liberal climate prefers Bronte to, I don’t know� Lorde, Beauvoir, Atwood, Butler? As for the radicalized and romanticized literary Breakfast Club Prose disguises as a creative writing class, the clichés, if not stereotypes, are just unbearable: the two black binaries, the ungrammatical student with the strange name and the overcompensating woke girl; a manly, Hispanic Carlos whose only fathomable explanation for being in college is sports or army-related; an overtly punk, pierced white girl from Jersey ~cue eye roll~
Goodness, and what was up with that deer metaphor at the end?
Quite frankly, the p.c. theme and hostile atmosphere of the current academic climate could’ve developed tastefully if it wasn’t for the over-exaggeration (obvious gender and moral binaries), the erasure of the complexities of innocence and guilt (almost as if purposefully giving Dostoyevsky a big “fuck you�) the obvious antagonism (Swenson’s whining, his long meditations and useless rhetorical questions, the incessant finger-pointing at this generation�). And if all of this is some attempt at irony, I still can’t seem to find redemption.
By the end of the book, I questioned if this was even meant to be written as a novel, or was it a middle-aged writer’s therapeutic alleviation, journaling a story to express her discontent at this new generation of vicenarians? Literary pompousness and a manipulative tale that leans towards a certain ageist, phallic-centric sympathy? At least this way we can do Nabokov a bit more justice.
As Swenson would say, let’s start off with what I liked: the plot. Yes, this book won the fight against drooping eyelids. It was entertaining. And there was one passage I took from it: “Even if they don’t become writers, it’s a way of seeing the world � each fellow human character to be entered and understood. All of us potential chicken rapists, Dostoyevskian sinners.�
It’s obvious Prose can write, largely because she’s well-read. But if her literary merit isn’t obvious enough, she reassures you by name dropping Dostoyevsky and Chekov every other page (Garcia Lorca, Bronte, Hemingway, Morrison, Joyce, Proust, they make minor appearances, an expansion of her repertoire). Their undeniable engagement with meta, and the obvious meta aspects of this novel make it painstakingly comical that all the things wrong with this book are criticized in Swenson’s class: believability, shallow if not stereotypical characters, the obvious political statement, dear god, and the typos!
What well-read college girl in the 21st century, raging with feminism and that liberal climate prefers Bronte to, I don’t know� Lorde, Beauvoir, Atwood, Butler? As for the radicalized and romanticized literary Breakfast Club Prose disguises as a creative writing class, the clichés, if not stereotypes, are just unbearable: the two black binaries, the ungrammatical student with the strange name and the overcompensating woke girl; a manly, Hispanic Carlos whose only fathomable explanation for being in college is sports or army-related; an overtly punk, pierced white girl from Jersey ~cue eye roll~
Goodness, and what was up with that deer metaphor at the end?
Quite frankly, the p.c. theme and hostile atmosphere of the current academic climate could’ve developed tastefully if it wasn’t for the over-exaggeration (obvious gender and moral binaries), the erasure of the complexities of innocence and guilt (almost as if purposefully giving Dostoyevsky a big “fuck you�) the obvious antagonism (Swenson’s whining, his long meditations and useless rhetorical questions, the incessant finger-pointing at this generation�). And if all of this is some attempt at irony, I still can’t seem to find redemption.
By the end of the book, I questioned if this was even meant to be written as a novel, or was it a middle-aged writer’s therapeutic alleviation, journaling a story to express her discontent at this new generation of vicenarians? Literary pompousness and a manipulative tale that leans towards a certain ageist, phallic-centric sympathy? At least this way we can do Nabokov a bit more justice.
November 18, 2020
Lol this did not go where I expected and I loooooove it. It’s so well written, so completely deep into Swenson’s perspective, that you the reader share his tunnel-vision, his blinders, his ego while you judge the events of the book.
Premise: Swenson is a professor of creative writing (don't you love how a woman named Prose writes a prose book about a writer of prose?) at a small, liberal arts college in New England, called Emerson (seems rather like Middlebury College). He’s happily married to the school clinician. They’re somewhat estranged from their freshman college student daughter Ruby, who opted to go to the state school rather than Emerson, and one wonders if that distance doesn’t contribute to his fondness for his student, Angela Argo (considering he has been a professor for decades and was never interested in his students before). Angela is sort of a Lizbeth Salander type� all neon hair and leather jackets and metal studs, but a genius with writing instead of technology.
The thing is, you think for most of the book that the author identifies with Swenson. He’s written so believably, so empathically, that despite the creepiness of a male professor having an affair with a female student, you rationalize his actions the same way he does (even if you aren’t the kind of person who typically rationalizes those kinds of actions). And you’d think, for a writer to be able to convince you to do that, they must also feel as Swenson does.
But you’d be wrong. That empathy that makes Swenson so believable and compelling as a character is paired with sweet derision and an utter rejection of his entire worldview.
And that's what makes a great character, really: an unholy storm of the author's empathy plus deep honest scorn.
Premise: Swenson is a professor of creative writing (don't you love how a woman named Prose writes a prose book about a writer of prose?) at a small, liberal arts college in New England, called Emerson (seems rather like Middlebury College). He’s happily married to the school clinician. They’re somewhat estranged from their freshman college student daughter Ruby, who opted to go to the state school rather than Emerson, and one wonders if that distance doesn’t contribute to his fondness for his student, Angela Argo (considering he has been a professor for decades and was never interested in his students before). Angela is sort of a Lizbeth Salander type� all neon hair and leather jackets and metal studs, but a genius with writing instead of technology.
The thing is, you think for most of the book that the author identifies with Swenson. He’s written so believably, so empathically, that despite the creepiness of a male professor having an affair with a female student, you rationalize his actions the same way he does (even if you aren’t the kind of person who typically rationalizes those kinds of actions). And you’d think, for a writer to be able to convince you to do that, they must also feel as Swenson does.
But you’d be wrong. That empathy that makes Swenson so believable and compelling as a character is paired with sweet derision and an utter rejection of his entire worldview.
And that's what makes a great character, really: an unholy storm of the author's empathy plus deep honest scorn.
July 12, 2021
From the opening scene in Blue Angel, Ted Swenson is squirming from a self-imposed bit of foolishness.
“The students stare at him, appalled. He can't believe he said that. His pathetic stab at humor sounded precisely like what it was: a question he dreamed up and rehearsed as he walked across North Quad, past the gothic graystone cloisters, the Founders Chapel, the lovely two-hundred-year-old maples just starting to drop the orange leaves that lie so thickly on the cover of the Euston College viewbook.�
The question he posed to his class of writing students is whether there has been a recent spate of stories being produced about humans having sex with animals.
But soon Swenson is challenged by a student—what other stories? And Swenson “suddenly can’t recall. Maybe it was some other years, another class completely. He’s been having too many moments like this: a door slams shut behind him and his mind disappears. Is this early Alzheimer’s? He’s only forty-seven. Only forty-seven. What happened in the heartbeat since he was his students� age?�
We’re in Vermont at a hip school where students are expected to call their professors by their first names. “But some kids can’t make themselves say Ted, the scholarship students like Carlos (who does an end run around it by calling him Coach), the Vermont farm kids like Jonelle, the black students like Carlis and Makeesha, the ones least likely to be charmed by his jokey threats. Euston hardly has any students like that, but this fall, for some reason, they’re all in Swenson’s class.�
One student hasn’t said anything, five weeks into the school year. Until, finally, Angela Argo utters, “I think it sucks� about one student’s story. Angela, thinks Swenson, is a “special pain in the ass.� Angela has facial piercings and a ring on every finger. But the “special pain in the ass,� it turns out, also holds a certain allure. She can write! And Ted Swenson, who coasting on one novel published years ago and who is making barely perceptible progress on a new one, is taken. Angela is soon “occupying more than her share of territory in his mind.�
Soon, Angela is sharing a draft of her first novel with Swenson and soon there are meetings in his office, and then a trip to the big city of Burlington to help Angela buy a computer, and before you know it, Swenson is keeping secrets from his wife, and we all kind of have a hunch where this is going, don’t we?
The squirming Ted Swenson, who feels uncomfortable in nearly every scene in Blue Angel, is soon going to squirm even more. The question is whether he can find an escape, some relief—whether the gothic graystone institution will offer him mercy.
This sentence includes a mild spoiler, but let’s just say that when you combine ‘gothic,� ‘graystone� and ‘cloisters� in your description of an institution, it’s unlikely that the current college powers that be will relax their standards for behavior between faculty and students, even as they sharpen the guillotine.
Blue Angel puts Ted Swenson in a torture chamber—self-inflicted torture as he parses every decision leading up to the awkward few minutes in Angela Argo’s dorm room and as he must attempt to discern the differences and distinctions between the reality of his actions versus the fictional accounts in Angela’s work-in-progress.
To make matters more interesting—and therefore more torturous—a dark cloud hovers around the Ted-Angela connection because it could have been transactional—did Ted Swenson agree to bring Angela’s novel to his agent in New York in exchange for some favors? Unfortunately for Swenson, appearances are everything.
This is only the surface of a novel with a raft of colorful characters—fellow faculty who admire Swenson, fellow faculty who despise him, college leadership, Swenson’s wife, Swenson’s college-age daughter Ruby, and all of Swenson’s wannabe writer students. Some of the scenes with the students are very, very funny. Prose’s dialogue is terrific.
The title of Francine Prose’s novel is a direct reference to the Marlene Diedrich movie (1930) of the same name, in which a professor falls for a nightclub singer. The movie is amply referenced in the pages here. The interwoven fabric of Swenson’s family history, and how much he used to inform his one novel to date, and Angela Argo’s fiction, which may or may not be based on her version of her upbringing, is tightly wound, especially after Swenson publicly adopts the title of Angela’s work in progress as one of his own. Readers, just remember that the writer with the best story wins.
In an article for The Paris Review, spurred by the film adaptation of the novel (“Submission,� starring Stanley Tucci), Francine Prose underscored what made the novel so interesting, whether we feel pity for Swenson as we see his desire run headlong into outright manipulation.
Warning, mild spoilers in Prose’s comments:
“Part of what still engages me about this story, and what makes it now seem riskier than ever, is that the female character—younger, more vulnerable—is the one who has the agency. She is the one who turns out to be in control, and who determines the way things proceed. This version of the familiar professor-student narrative is so rarely mentioned that it is likely to provoke a hostile reaction. But are we saying that these situations never exist? That woman are always the hapless innocents? Yes, Harvey Weinstein’s behavior was reprehensible. Yes, female students have been raped, pawed, bullied, and blackmailed into sex by their professors and mentors. But does that mean that we have a moral obligation to only create and consume art that follows those scripts?�
No, Francine, we do not.
Final note: The movie version is scene-by-scene faithful to the book, but it falls oddly flat. No movie could capture the deep interior space that Prose creates for the hapless Ted Swenson.
“The students stare at him, appalled. He can't believe he said that. His pathetic stab at humor sounded precisely like what it was: a question he dreamed up and rehearsed as he walked across North Quad, past the gothic graystone cloisters, the Founders Chapel, the lovely two-hundred-year-old maples just starting to drop the orange leaves that lie so thickly on the cover of the Euston College viewbook.�
The question he posed to his class of writing students is whether there has been a recent spate of stories being produced about humans having sex with animals.
But soon Swenson is challenged by a student—what other stories? And Swenson “suddenly can’t recall. Maybe it was some other years, another class completely. He’s been having too many moments like this: a door slams shut behind him and his mind disappears. Is this early Alzheimer’s? He’s only forty-seven. Only forty-seven. What happened in the heartbeat since he was his students� age?�
We’re in Vermont at a hip school where students are expected to call their professors by their first names. “But some kids can’t make themselves say Ted, the scholarship students like Carlos (who does an end run around it by calling him Coach), the Vermont farm kids like Jonelle, the black students like Carlis and Makeesha, the ones least likely to be charmed by his jokey threats. Euston hardly has any students like that, but this fall, for some reason, they’re all in Swenson’s class.�
One student hasn’t said anything, five weeks into the school year. Until, finally, Angela Argo utters, “I think it sucks� about one student’s story. Angela, thinks Swenson, is a “special pain in the ass.� Angela has facial piercings and a ring on every finger. But the “special pain in the ass,� it turns out, also holds a certain allure. She can write! And Ted Swenson, who coasting on one novel published years ago and who is making barely perceptible progress on a new one, is taken. Angela is soon “occupying more than her share of territory in his mind.�
Soon, Angela is sharing a draft of her first novel with Swenson and soon there are meetings in his office, and then a trip to the big city of Burlington to help Angela buy a computer, and before you know it, Swenson is keeping secrets from his wife, and we all kind of have a hunch where this is going, don’t we?
The squirming Ted Swenson, who feels uncomfortable in nearly every scene in Blue Angel, is soon going to squirm even more. The question is whether he can find an escape, some relief—whether the gothic graystone institution will offer him mercy.
This sentence includes a mild spoiler, but let’s just say that when you combine ‘gothic,� ‘graystone� and ‘cloisters� in your description of an institution, it’s unlikely that the current college powers that be will relax their standards for behavior between faculty and students, even as they sharpen the guillotine.
Blue Angel puts Ted Swenson in a torture chamber—self-inflicted torture as he parses every decision leading up to the awkward few minutes in Angela Argo’s dorm room and as he must attempt to discern the differences and distinctions between the reality of his actions versus the fictional accounts in Angela’s work-in-progress.
To make matters more interesting—and therefore more torturous—a dark cloud hovers around the Ted-Angela connection because it could have been transactional—did Ted Swenson agree to bring Angela’s novel to his agent in New York in exchange for some favors? Unfortunately for Swenson, appearances are everything.
This is only the surface of a novel with a raft of colorful characters—fellow faculty who admire Swenson, fellow faculty who despise him, college leadership, Swenson’s wife, Swenson’s college-age daughter Ruby, and all of Swenson’s wannabe writer students. Some of the scenes with the students are very, very funny. Prose’s dialogue is terrific.
The title of Francine Prose’s novel is a direct reference to the Marlene Diedrich movie (1930) of the same name, in which a professor falls for a nightclub singer. The movie is amply referenced in the pages here. The interwoven fabric of Swenson’s family history, and how much he used to inform his one novel to date, and Angela Argo’s fiction, which may or may not be based on her version of her upbringing, is tightly wound, especially after Swenson publicly adopts the title of Angela’s work in progress as one of his own. Readers, just remember that the writer with the best story wins.
In an article for The Paris Review, spurred by the film adaptation of the novel (“Submission,� starring Stanley Tucci), Francine Prose underscored what made the novel so interesting, whether we feel pity for Swenson as we see his desire run headlong into outright manipulation.
Warning, mild spoilers in Prose’s comments:
“Part of what still engages me about this story, and what makes it now seem riskier than ever, is that the female character—younger, more vulnerable—is the one who has the agency. She is the one who turns out to be in control, and who determines the way things proceed. This version of the familiar professor-student narrative is so rarely mentioned that it is likely to provoke a hostile reaction. But are we saying that these situations never exist? That woman are always the hapless innocents? Yes, Harvey Weinstein’s behavior was reprehensible. Yes, female students have been raped, pawed, bullied, and blackmailed into sex by their professors and mentors. But does that mean that we have a moral obligation to only create and consume art that follows those scripts?�
No, Francine, we do not.
Final note: The movie version is scene-by-scene faithful to the book, but it falls oddly flat. No movie could capture the deep interior space that Prose creates for the hapless Ted Swenson.
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