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A Campus Novel Classic

By C. Max Magee posted at 12:48 pm on April 2, 2010 0

University Of Chicago Press has come out with a new edition of a somewhat forgotten classic in the campus novel genre. Randall Jarrell was a National Book Award-winning poet who wrote only one novel, Pictures from an Institution, about the fictional Benton College. The Kenyon Review published the opening of the novel in its Winter 1953 issue. It begins: “Half the campus was designed by Bottom the Weaver, half by Ludwig Mies van der Rohe; Benton had been endowed with one to begin with, and had smiled and sweated and spoken for the other.”

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C. Max Magee created and edits The Millions. He is co-editor of the collection of essays The Late American Novel: Writers on the Future of Books, called "funny, poignant, relentlessly thought-provoking" by The Atlantic. He has appeared on NPR’s “Weekend Edition”, Minnesota Public Radio’s “Midmorning”, and ABC Radio National's "The Book Show" and has written for a number of publications. He and his family live in New Jersey. If you'd like to correspond, please don't hesitate to email.

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