Pictures From An Institution
by Randall Jarrell
Nomination: National Book Finalist 1955
Date Read: January 23, 2022
Randall Jarrell seems to have perfected the art of campus satire, however, I wish I had enjoyed it more. At fictitious Benson College, an all-female institution, visiting novelist and lecturer Gertrude Johnson arrives with her husband/lap-dog Sydney Bacon and rattles the windows of all the faculty from the president down to the secretaries.
Gertrude from the first moment she steps foot on the Benson campus is a force to be reckoned with. She has no verbal filter and literally blurts out exactly what’s on her mind, regardless of repercussions, other’s perceptions of her and injurious or not.
The unnamed narrator, an anonymous member of the English department, walks us through the semester she upends all the pretentions and self-descriptions often insidious in institutions of higher learning. For example, it is early noted that Americans have a high regard for college education but simultaneously don’t trust it. I would say this is even more true today than in the 50s.
Gertrude notes how professors have a thin façade which they hide behind and wear as a measure of self-protection. I would argue that unless a professor was coddling their own ego, a measure of self-protection is necessary as a professor who is constantly bombarded with misguided affections, students nagging for better grades, the heady responsibility with imparting knowledge and a defense against their own work outside of the classroom.
Parts of this were intriguing (Fred admits in passing he views all the students as robots, an intellectual argument still being had as philosophers continue to ponder whether we are living in a simulation) but I found most of this a slog of wittiness gone amok. I think Jarrell is really into his own tail wagging and shrewd observation but I didn’t appreciate his talents as much as he appreciates his talents.
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