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Arts and Sciences: A Seventies Seduction
Book by Mallon, Thomas
210 pages, Hardcover
First published February 1, 1988
About the author
Thomas Mallon
42 books288 followersThomas Mallon is an American novelist, essayist, and critic. His novels are renowned for their attention to historical detail and context and for the author's crisp wit and interest in the "bystanders" to larger historical events. He is the author of ten books of fiction, including Henry and Clara, Two Moons, Dewey Defeats Truman, Aurora 7, Bandbox, Fellow Travelers (recently adapted into a miniseries by the same name), Watergate, Finale, Landfall, and most recently Up With the Sun. He has also published nonfiction on plagiarism (Stolen Words), diaries (A Book of One's Own), letters (Yours Ever) and the John F. Kennedy assassination (Mrs. Paine's Garage), as well as two volumes of essays (Rockets and Rodeos and In Fact).
He is a former literary editor of Gentleman's Quarterly, where he wrote the "Doubting Thomas" column in the 1990s, and has contributed frequently to The New Yorker, The New York Times Book Review, The Atlantic Monthly, The American Scholar, and other periodicals. He was appointed a member of the National Council on the Humanities in 2002 and served as Deputy Chairman of the National Endowment for the Humanities from 2005 to 2006.
His honors include Guggenheim and Rockefeller fellowships, the National Book Critics Circle citation for reviewing, and the Vursell prize of the American Academy of Arts and Letters for distinguished prose style. He was elected as a new member of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences in 2012.
He is a former literary editor of Gentleman's Quarterly, where he wrote the "Doubting Thomas" column in the 1990s, and has contributed frequently to The New Yorker, The New York Times Book Review, The Atlantic Monthly, The American Scholar, and other periodicals. He was appointed a member of the National Council on the Humanities in 2002 and served as Deputy Chairman of the National Endowment for the Humanities from 2005 to 2006.
His honors include Guggenheim and Rockefeller fellowships, the National Book Critics Circle citation for reviewing, and the Vursell prize of the American Academy of Arts and Letters for distinguished prose style. He was elected as a new member of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences in 2012.
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Displaying 1 of 1 review
June 19, 2007
I met the author of Arts and Sciences at a Park City writing conference years ago, and the only thing he and I, separated by decades of vastly different experiences, were able to small talk about was that he went to Harvard, and I knew somebody who did.
So finding this novel on a free book table at my school was a surprise, because it is Mallon’s story of a young man’s coming of age at Harvard in the 1970’s. Whether it’s autobiographical I have no idea, though this copy has pencil notes in the margin from someone who seems at least as familiar with the school as the author (in those comments are names and questions and the occasional Marv Albertesque, “Yes!”)
As with Intuition, I enjoyed the Cambridge setting, and I appreciated again that here was a book, written in 1988 and set in 1973, where all the correspondence between characters is actually done by mail. (It’s nice to remember what we’re missing.)
Really I just read this book to get a break from Acts of Faith. Arts & Sciences is total candy by comparison: upbeat, naïve, solipsistic, and, except as some elaborate parable, pretty shallow. You spend the first half of the book wishing the narrator would get laid, and after he does (which I promise you is not a spoiler: he’s a college freshman and we’ve all been there), you spend the second half of the book wondering why he won’t shut up about it.
The book’s jacket tells you that this novel is a sort of bridge between the abandonment of the values of the 1970’s (sexual fluidity, drugs, a collective American innocence – or denial) and the embracing of the establishment that became the 1980’s (drugs, that unjustified American optimism, and some switching of gender powers). I’d say that might be a stretch to call a theme this idea that appears very, very late in the book. Maybe that is all in there, but the reveal shouldn’t be as painfully neurotic as this.
So finding this novel on a free book table at my school was a surprise, because it is Mallon’s story of a young man’s coming of age at Harvard in the 1970’s. Whether it’s autobiographical I have no idea, though this copy has pencil notes in the margin from someone who seems at least as familiar with the school as the author (in those comments are names and questions and the occasional Marv Albertesque, “Yes!”)
As with Intuition, I enjoyed the Cambridge setting, and I appreciated again that here was a book, written in 1988 and set in 1973, where all the correspondence between characters is actually done by mail. (It’s nice to remember what we’re missing.)
Really I just read this book to get a break from Acts of Faith. Arts & Sciences is total candy by comparison: upbeat, naïve, solipsistic, and, except as some elaborate parable, pretty shallow. You spend the first half of the book wishing the narrator would get laid, and after he does (which I promise you is not a spoiler: he’s a college freshman and we’ve all been there), you spend the second half of the book wondering why he won’t shut up about it.
The book’s jacket tells you that this novel is a sort of bridge between the abandonment of the values of the 1970’s (sexual fluidity, drugs, a collective American innocence – or denial) and the embracing of the establishment that became the 1980’s (drugs, that unjustified American optimism, and some switching of gender powers). I’d say that might be a stretch to call a theme this idea that appears very, very late in the book. Maybe that is all in there, but the reveal shouldn’t be as painfully neurotic as this.
Displaying 1 of 1 review