by Janice Albert

IN HER LATEST novel, Blue Angel, Francine Prose updates a 1905 story by Heinrich Mann in which an entertainer, Lola Lola, fascinates and then ruins Professor Rath, who gives in to his obsession for her. Francine Prose moves the story to a small, expensive college in Vermont. Her professor is Ted Swenson, the sole tenured member of the college creative writing department. Her female antagonist, Angela Argo, pierced, dyed, dressed in sadomasochistic gloom, and propelled by some atavistic urge to destroy the thing she feeds on, intuits his every weakness, betrays him in whatever way she can, and finally hangs him out to dry. Did I mention it's a comedy?

Francine Prose is the author of ten novels and her interest in academic life runs deep. Her article, "I Know Why the Caged Bird Cannot Read," critiquing multicultural literature, was the hit of Harper's September, 1999, issue. There are some good moments in Blue Angel, chiefly in Prose's descriptions of campus life. She writes of driving over college roads "crippled with speed bumps." There's a set piece in which faculty guests at the Dean's dinner get on each other's nerves, playing roles they established with each other years before. Even the food plays a comic role -- crackers with Marmite, burned sausage, and a dessert of jam trifle, "a giant freestanding pudding, its outer layer ... trembling under the load of tiny silver candy ball bearings and multicolored sprinkles. A blazing toxic rainbow."

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