Pictures from an Institution

Beneath the unassuming surface of a progressive women s college lurks a world of intellectual pride and pomposity awaiting devastation by the pens of two brilliant and appalling wits. Randall Jarrell s classic novel was originally published to overwhelming critical acclaim in 1954, forging a new standard for campus satire and instantly yielding comparisons to Dorothy Parker s razor-sharp barbs. Like his fictional nemesis, Jarrell cuts through the earnest conversations at Benton College mischievously, but with mischief nowhere more wicked than when crusading against the vitriolic heroine herself. A most literate account of a group of most literate people by a writer of power. . . . A delight of true understanding. Wallace Stevens I m greatly impressed by the real fun, the incisive satire, the closeness of observation, and in the end by a kind of sympathy and human warmth. It s a remarkable book. Robert Penn Warren Move over Dorothy Parker. Pictures . . . is less a novel than a series of poisonous portraits, set pieces, and endlessly quotable put-downs. Read it less for plot than sharp satire, Jarrell s forte. Mary Welp One of the wittiest books of modern times. New York Times [T]he father of the modern campus novel, and the wittiest of them all. Extraordinary to think that political correctness was so deliciously dissected 50 years ago. Noel Malcolm, Sunday Telegraph A sustained exhibition of wit in the great tradition. . . . Immensely and very devastatingly shrewd. Edmund Fuller, Saturday Review [A] work of fiction, and a dizzying and brilliant work of social and literary criticism. Not only a unique and serious joke-book, as Lowell called it, but also a meditation made up of epigrams. Michael Wood

Beneath the unassuming surface of a progressive women s college lurks a world of intellectual pride and pomposity awaiting devastation by the pens of two brilliant and appalling wits. Randall Jarrell s classic novel was originally published to overwhelming critical acclaim in 1954, forging a new standard for campus satire and instantly yielding comparisons to Dorothy Parker s razor-sharp barbs. Like his fictional nemesis, Jarrell cuts through the earnest conversations at Benton College mischievously, but with mischief nowhere more wicked than when crusading against the vitriolic heroine herself. A most literate account of a group of most literate people by a writer of power. . . . A delight of true understanding. Wallace Stevens I m greatly impressed by the real fun, the incisive satire, the closeness of observation, and in the end by a kind of sympathy and human warmth. It s a remarkable book. Robert Penn Warren Move over Dorothy Parker. Pictures . . . is less a novel than a series of poisonous portraits, set pieces, and endlessly quotable put-downs. Read it less for plot than sharp satire, Jarrell s forte. Mary Welp One of the wittiest books of modern times. New York Times [T]he father of the modern campus novel, and the wittiest of them all. Extraordinary to think that political correctness was so deliciously dissected 50 years ago. Noel Malcolm, Sunday Telegraph A sustained exhibition of wit in the great tradition. . . . Immensely and very devastatingly shrewd. Edmund Fuller, Saturday Review [A] work of fiction, and a dizzying and brilliant work of social and literary criticism. Not only a unique and serious joke-book, as Lowell called it, but also a meditation made up of epigrams. Michael Wood