The portrayal of academics in fiction is surprisingly rare. Recently, I've read two portraits. One is "Stoner" by John Williams. While the relationship of Stoner with his wife and daughter may be most central to the novel, his academic demise as a consequence of his objective evaluation of a mediocre student with exceptional linguistic bravoure is a hilarious illustration of the hypocrisy of academia. "Pnin" by Nabokov is equally funny in its depiction of a an alien academic, lost in the world, and even in the academic world that, not by any fault of its own, finishes off our hero without pity.
John Williams, Stoner
“...If he failed the first time he took his driver's licence test, it was mainly because he started an argument with the examiner in an ill-timed effort to prove that nothing could be more humiliating to a rational creature than being required to encourage the development of a base conditional reflex by stopping at a red light when there was not an earthly soul around, heeled or wheeled. He was more circumspect the next time, and passed...”
Vladimir Nabokov, Pnin
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