Campus Characters: Exemption and Utopia on Campus

This chapter begins with the mythology of the “big man on campus,” as well as the prevalence of eccentric characters in the academic novel. This trope of the genre is rooted in the informal cultures of academic freedom: scholars, and to some degree students, enjoying wide personal latitude to conduct themselves as they see fit. These characters, paired with the work refusals discussed in the seventh chapter, make up one of the chief appeals of the academic novel. Eccentrics, youths beginning the world, hermits, degenerates, oddballs of all sorts—these characters are generally celebrated for their defiance of social norms (and sometimes for their defiance of drug and alcohol laws), providing a kind of wish-fulfillment for self-determination. The chapter studies fiction that complicates these tropes. Through readings of Don DeLillo’s football novel End Zone (1972) and Michael Chabon’s Wonder Boys (1995), this chapter evaluates the meanings of eccentricity: to what degree does it signal mere personal exemption from social norms, and to what degree does it provide a broader utopian program? And how does this exemption/utopia framework help us understand the possible futures of the university?