Blue Angel: A Novel - Hardcover

Prose, Francine

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 006019541X ISBN 13: 9780060195410

Publisher: Harper, 2000

Synopsis

The National Book Award Finalist from acclaimed New York Times bestselling author Francine Prose—now the major motion picture Submission
 
“Screamingly funny ... Blue Angel culminates in a sexual harassment hearing that rivals the Salem witch trials.” —USA Today

It's 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 risque, 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.

About this title

Review

Francine Prose may never surpass Joyce Carol Oates in the Prolific Olympics, but she is one of those omnipresent writers whom failed writers hate. And surely she'll make new enemies with her hilarious and cruel 10th novel, Blue Angel, a satire of academia, specifically of English and writing departments. The setting is Euston College in rural Vermont, a place kids go to if they don't get into Bennington; a place where desperate novelists teach creative writing to rich kids who don't seem to read. Prose, who has taught at all the hotshot workshops, skewers both teachers and students in the way only a true insider could.

Swenson, her writing-teacher protagonist, once published a well-received novel but is now consumed by neuroses and repressed lust, and instead of writing tends to get drunk or morose, or both. But when a gifted student named Angela Argo enters his class, he feels like he is coming back to life. His resurrection into "believing" in writing again, and his eventual disappointment, form the core of the novel.

Prose's gift for satire is stunning as she directs her caustic wit at all the current academic debates: sexual-harassment policies warning against all manner of "touching"; deconstructionists versus Old School fuddy-duddies; women's studies teachers who bring everything back to the phallocentric Man killing us all. But Blue Angel's best passages come when the author is describing truly rotten writers. Here's a Connecticut rich girl, a member of Swenson's workshop, who likes to write about all those poor unfortunate nonwhite people. Her story is called "First Kiss--Inner City Blues" and is written from the point of view of a Latino woman who lives in a trash-strewn neighborhood full of gunfire and bad people. Here's the opening line: "The summer heat sat on the hot city street, making it hard for it to breathe, especially for Lydia Sanchez." It's a sentence so bad, it's almost a revelation. --Emily White

From the Back Cover

It has been years since Swenson, a professor of creative writing at a small New England college, has published a novel of his own. It's been even longer since a student of his has shown a glimmer of talent. And academia, with its increasingly stifling politically correct environment, isn't what it used to be. Enter Angela Argo, a pierced, tattooed student with a rare gift for writing. Fearless and ambitious, Angela seems like the answer to Swenson's prayers. Better yet, she wants his help. What could be more perfect? However, as experience shows, the road to hell is paved with good intentions...

A sublime stylist and satirist, Francine Prose is one of the treasures of contemporary literature. No one writes more wisely about love and marriage, or about the many forms of seduction: the seduction of youth, Of fame, of literary success. Blue Angel is also a withering take on modern academic mores, a scathing tale of colliding cultures that vividly shows just what can happen when academic politics crashes head-on into political correctness -- and to the innocent (or not-so-innocent) men and women caught in the wreckage.

Blue Angel is that rarest of gems: a novel that is a delight and a pleasure to read, a comic tour de force by one of our most inspired and gifted writers. Blue Angel does for creative writing programs what Upton Sinclair's The Jungle did for the meat-packing industry.

About this edition

• Publisher: Harper
• Publication date: 2000
• ISBN 10: 006019541X
• ISBN 13: 9780060195410
• Binding: Hardcover
• Edition number: 1
• Number of pages: 320