By SARAH BOXER
Published: October 21, 2000 NYT
Once upon a time, the world of academic satire seemed to be a British protectorate. Kingsley Amis's ''Lucky Jim'' set the rules of the game and David Lodge's trio of academic farces, ''Changing Places,'' ''Small World'' and ''Nice Work,'' earned him an adjective: Lodgean.
There were, of course, American attempts. The mid-1950's were bountiful years, bringing ''The Groves of Academe,'' Mary McCarthy's novel about a man who tries to save his job by pretending that he's a blacklisted Communist; ''Pictures From an Institution,'' Randall Jarrell's spoof of Mary McCarthy as she was writing that novel; and ''Pnin,'' Vladimir Nabokov's tale of a Russian professor in America with a tenuous grip on the English language.
But this year the American campus novel has staked out rougher territory, something more tragic. Three new novels have appeared in 2000: ''Ravelstein,'' Saul Bellow's fictional memoir about the death of Allan Bloom, his high-living friend at the University of Chicago; ''The Human Stain,'' Philip Roth's tale of a professor ruined by his use of the word ''spook''; and ''Blue Angel,'' Francine Prose's novel about a professor undone by his student's sexual harassment plot and novel. This trio followed fairly closely on the hooves of ''Moo,'' by Jane Smiley, and ''The Handmaid of Desire,'' by John L'Heureux.
What has changed? What has made these later works darker?
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