NO GREAT TRAGEDY

In Schopen’s campus novel, the dean of a Classics department must contend with the interpersonal repercussions of losing his post.

Harry Hoyle is the dean of the Classics department at a nonspecified college somewhere in the high desert. When the new provost moves to shut the department down, Hoyle’s plan to quietly coast into retirement is upended, and he must scramble to reevaluate his own future in addition to those of all of the department’s other members. Strong personalities abound, including the under-competent but overly arrogant Daryl Maugham, who’s determined to press Hoyle into a fruitless lawsuit; the lascivious older professor Lionel Lash, who, as “a star, one of the brightest on campus, his reputation international,” has a secure landing place in Philosophy; the scholars Jim Sally and Marla Wells, each vying for the one available spot teaching Latin in Foreign Languages; and the hapless, peculiar Gwen Harper, whose only focus is her work and the promise she was given that tenure meant lifetime employment. While dealing with these disparate, robustly developed characters, Hoyle must continue to teach classes and process the unexpected news that his wife wants a divorce. The escalation of hostilities in his marriage mirrors the increasing difficulties that Hoyle faces at work, culminating in a dark twist. Schopen’s detailed prose limns a bracing portrait of the ways in which increasingly STEM-focused priorities at the college level affect both the faculty and the student body at large. With its preponderance of collegial debates and classroom issues, the novel occasionally verges on becoming overly insular, but readers with an interest in the academic world will remain engaged. The discussions Hoyle and his students conduct are particularly compelling, both in their interpretations of the Greek tragedies being read and the applications of those lessons to the intrigue unfolding in the novel.

An engrossing look at academic politics that measures the human cost of devaluing the humanities.