Michael Wilding: Academic Nuts

Michael Wilding, Academia Nuts". Review

Henry Lancaster lectures in English. Like Michael Wilding himself, Henry is a practitioner as well as a scholar and teacher. Henry considers expanding his repertoire to include a campus novel. Voicing 'the now outlawed traditional campus novelists' foreplay', Henry finds the university too painful to describe: 'He tried everything. He tried the postmodern and wrote about being unable to write about it … enough pages. For a postmodern novel.' While many readers will share Henry's frustration, some will seek relief by classifying "Academia Nuts" as meta-narrative rather than as just another campus novel.