The Lecturer's Tale
by Vicki Urquhart
What British Lit instructor hasn’t given the assignment to create another Chaucerian tale? In The Lecturer’s Tale, James Hynes has a rollicking good time telling his own bawdy, fantastical, and mysterious tale. Alternately a satire and allegory, this bizarre portrayal of a dysfunctional English department will offend some academicians and amuse others. From power-hungry eccentrics to lesbian feminists, Ivory Tower scholars, and Serbian intellectuals, the English department at Midwestern University in Hamilton Groves, Minnesota, has it all.
Hynes’s story shamelessly oozes with symbolism and literary allusion, as these professors vie for promotion to higher, more coveted positions in the academic hierarchy. Hynes evokes Dante, Shakespeare, Milton, and of course, James Hogg, the dissertation subject of protagonist Nelson Humboldt. The novel is divided into two predominant and distinctly different parts and a third smaller section. Part I offers a humorous yet sympathetic look at the too real plight of members of Midwest’s adjunct and untenured faculty, believable dialogue, and discussions of the canonical worthiness of “truth and beauty.”
Here we learn that Humboldt does indeed have humble beginnings. Influenced by his father and encouraged by his professor, he pursues a life in academe but lacks the tough-minded militantism to be successful. Nor is he inclined toward the kind of rigorous, creative research that will make him famous. When times are hard for Humboldt, his wife Bridget, and their two daughters, he is bolstered by the belief that, “A man’s reach should exceed his grasp.” When we meet him, Humboldt is a lowly, likeable visiting adjunct lecturer. A bit of an outsider, his noble-like qualities make him vulnerable to a predictable and inevitable fall from grace.
In an early plot-propelling event, Humboldt’s right index finger is severed in a freak accident in which he falls, ensnarling his hand in a bicycle spoke. Reattached, the finger becomes the source of inexplicable powers; with a simple touch, Humboldt can change people’s lives. Humboldt’s magic finger is some finger. A blessing at first, it helps restore his job and convince the housing coordinator to extend his housing eligibility. Later, it plays a key role in landing Humboldt his heart’s desire–a three-year lecturer position, and it even makes his wife “like” him again. It is these moral dilemmas, and not the supernatural events themselves, that move the plot forward. Enter Fu Manchu, a crass, crude, and homeless figure who abruptly appears and disappears throughout the story. Humboldt calls him his nemesis, a prophetic reference to his own self-destructive and dark side that will emerge.
As quickly as Humboldt’s life improves, events spiral downward, as exemplified in Hynes’ description of a seminar luncheon, where Humboldt’s officemate and colleague Vita Deonne presents her paper on the lesbian phallus. Here, contemporary literary theory and those who espouse it get the bullet. Eventually, all hell breaks loose amid the posturing and clever rhetoric. Another complication, we discover, is that poison-pen letters targeting Jews and gays are being sent to members of the department. These events cause the pleasingly eccentric English faculty to appear more like fringe lunatics with frightening mean streaks. Hynes sets the stage for more lunacy to come.
Part II, “The Rope Dance,” is true to its trick–never verified, always fascinating, and fooling us into believing what cannot be believed. In Part II, Humboldt gets sucked deeper and deeper into the fantastic scheming of his colleagues. There is an escalating tone of craziness. When a new position opens, there is a race to fill it. “The three stooges” stingingly describes a parade of academic misfits–one an Elvis freak, one a “queer theorist of the moment,” and one a stylish and confident black woman who later makes overtures to the wife of the department chair. By this point in the story, nothing is as it seems—even Vita is not who we believe her to be.
Eventually, the mysteries are unraveled. Vita’s true sexuality is made known, Chair Anthony Pescacane is exposed as “a man who believes in nothing,” and the writer of the hate letters is revealed. And as for Humboldt–he experiences a supernatural (ala James Hogg) encounter in Midwestern’s clock tower.
Ultimately, Humboldt has only himself to blame for the chaos of his life. He gains his undergraduate chairmanship, but loses his soul. His magic finger is once again severed, his wife and children leave him, and he is left alone with the dream to one day, “build a department that rises above petty politics, that melds the best of both worlds of traditional scholarship and cutting-edge theory … to turn the department into a real democracy and treat everyone with respect, pay the composition and adjunct instructors a living wage and give them benefits … ” Sadly, no one is listening.
This is not a flawless book. The pace quickens until Hynes nearly loses control then jerks it back just in time. This is a world that Hynes knows well. Students will recognize their professors, instructors their colleagues, and all who read it will see the absurdity afflicting the academic world today.
