The Lecturer’s Tale, by James Hynes.
New York: Picador/St. Martin’s Press, 2001.
$25 - 432 pages.

Minutes after being fired from his position as visiting adjunct professor at Midwest University, Nelson Humboldt loses a finger in a freak accident on the Quad outside the administration building. As he loses consciousness, a faceless stranger whispers in his ear, “What can I do for you, Professor Humboldt?”

When he first wakes up in the hospital, Humboldt’s life is filled with pain -not only the pain of the amputated finger, now reattached, but the pain of telling his wife of his lost job, of another defeat. Only after he returns home does Humboldt slowly realize that his wounded finger has given him the strange ability to force his will on anyone simply by touching them.

Initially, Humboldt uses his new power sparingly - to secure some extra months on the lease of his apartment, to win back his former position at Midwest, to put his children to sleep at night, to relax his anxious wife, to soothe the nerves of a woman in the English Department. Soon, however, he begins to use the power to better his own position in the department and to settle old scores with those who had wronged him before his accident.

Without revealing the conclusion, that brief description captures the basic plot of James Hynes’ The Lecturer’s Tale, but this summation is only the skeleton of the story; the flesh and blood of this book, its nerves and muscles, may be found in Hynes’s marvelous tour of the academic world and its exotic concerns. Humboldt shows us the primacy of ideas regarding gender, race, and class in the university - particularly gender - and how greatly the work of deconstructionists has influenced what is being taught in classrooms. Those unfamiliar with the struggles in modern academia, particularly within the liberal arts departments, will find themselves in this book in a hothouse breeding power struggles, insane sexual theories, and political mumbo-jumbo. Little attention is paid in this world to literature as inspiration, as solace, as a fount of wisdom. Instead, literature among these academics is used primarily as a weapon to bash males, capitalism, racism, and most literary works written before 1960.

The last thing the literature department needs is a poet - so thinks Penelope 0, one of the radical faculty members. Like many of the professors in The Lecturer’s Tale, Penelope 0 hates and fears not only poets, but books and non-academic writing in general. Morton Weissmann, an aging professor who still loves literature, states:

“And what do our poor students take from this? That you must read these works, children, but you may not enjoy them. These trusting youths are told that books - great books, Nelson, the jewels of our civilization - have value only as cultural artifacts or as evidence of some ideological failing. My God, Nelson, students are being told that the language itself is corrupted and untrustworthy! In English classes!”

Although Hynes does an excellent job of blending the realistic with the supernatural elements in the story, what may not appeal to some readers in The Lecturer’s Tale are the fantastic figures and unreal events that enter into the novel. Some readers may regard as intrusions Nelsons seemingly magical power, the appearance of Serbian terrorists, and a demonic sprite, but Hynes does such a splendid job of blending the natural world with the supernatural that we are left by the end of the book gasping with admiration at his skill.

Besides being witty satire, The Lecturer’s Tale is also a story of a 20th century Faust, a man who bargains with a demon to abuse his power. Hynes drops numerous hints telling us to regard his story as a medieval morality tale, a story from Chaucer, making it clear that this is a tale of a man’s temptation, his yielding to that temptation, and his redemption.

The story of Nelson Humboldt is also stuffed with literary treats. Lovers of literature will delight in this compendium of literary references ranging from Chaucer to Pound, from Shakespeare to Stephen King. Indeed, a reader could argue that books and their authors constitute the real hero of this story.

If you have an interest in any of the above topics - metaphysics, literature, the current state of acadernia - then I strongly recommend The Lecturer’s Tale. It is a timely, funny, and ultimately profound book.

(Jeff Minicks owns Saints and Scholars bookstore on Main Street in Waynesville.)

 

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