Forget writer's block. Test anxiety is a breeze. James Hynes' latest novel makes term papers seem like child's play in comparison to the pressures facing university professors. When survival depends on publication, Hynes' characters find that the stakes have been raised from achieving tenure to staying alive. Paranoia preys on academia in Hynes' trilogy of supernatural satire, "Publish and Perish."
Hynes, a former University professor, may be writing from personal experience. He has also written "The Wild Colonial Boy" and is a Hopwood Award-winner. But the fear of literary drought haunts his protagonists, as all are university professors at the turning point of their careers.
In the book's first novella, "Queen of the Jungle," Paul is an untenured English professor with a secret. While his wife teaches in Chicago, Paul holds home office hours with Kym, a perky communications major. Paul's cat Charlotte witnesses her master's infidelity and signals this by peeing indoors. Paul's wife obsesses over Charlotte's strange behavior and turns for help to ... the cat psychic. Like each of Hynes' characters, the New Age soothsayer is stark, catchy and perceptive - she quickly diagnoses Charlotte as disturbed.
Charlotte goes on to wreak mayhem on Paul's romance, his work and his marriage. Like a descendant of Stephen King's recalcitrant "Pet Sematary" cat, Charlotte will not die. The cat drives Paul into a paranoia reminiscent of the psychological horror in Poe's "The Tell-tale Heart."
"99" is the story of Gregory Eyck, a washed-up cultural anthropology professor. To escape his failed conference and embittered affair with a graduate student, Eyck embarks on a sabbatical in Salisbury, England. He tries to reconstruct his wounded ego among Salisbury's ancient ruins, and develops a delusion of grandeur, imagining himself the host of a groundbreaking show featuring the "indigenous" people.
Instead, with the help of a countryside Circe, the locals make Eyck an unwilling participant in an ancient ceremony. Eyck becomes the star of a ritual sacrifice to the goddess, jeopardizing not only his career, but his life.
Here is one final warning: Even the stout-spirited should read the last story, "Casting Runes," by daylight. Virginia, a promising young professor, is horrified to learn that her mentor is trying to steal her manuscript about feminism. Victor Karswell is the elderly predator who feeds off the papers of his younger colleagues. Virginia recruits Beverly, a very large diva with a vendetta, to overcome Karswell's curse. In this story, Hynes effectively uses the supernatural to achieve both satirical and scary effects.
Hynes' prose is suspenseful, seductive and saturated with detail. He builds intrigue out of the generational and ideological conflicts of postmodernism. In this book, the adage "publish or perish" proves to be the secret to survival.
It is comforting to learn that professors thrive on approval as much as students do, but frightening to consider what means they could use to get it. James Hynes may do for academia what John Grisham has done for the legal profession. Beware: Your history professor could star in an upcoming suspense hit.
- Stacy Arnold