MLR, I02.3,2007 845 of Englishness upon imperial 'hybridity' (p. 2) as upon the imagined coherence of folkconsciousness or homeland. UNIVERSITY OF SHEFFIELD MARCUS WAITHE Faculty Towers: The Academic Novel and itsDiscontents. By ELAINE SHOWALTER. Oxford and New York: Oxford University Press. 2005. vii+ i66 PP. ?I2.99. ISBN 978-o-Ig-928332-3. Elaine Showalter's study focuses on what is commonly referred to as the 'campus' novel, which periodically she refers to as theProfessorroman. She implies that for the academic either such texts ought to be endlessly fascinating or their depths should resonate with the experiential, the poignancy of the familiarly observed. I imagine many academic readers will share her interest in this form,one that concerns itself, as Showalter demonstrates, with a very particular and recognizable world. As she comments, 'Novels about professors are set inacademic time,which isorganized and compartmentalized according to various grids and calendars, vacations and rituals' (p. 9). Overall, her project engages with such texts with a great deal ofverve rather than than by applying any particular theoretical critique. Showalter adopts a chronological approach and abjures any implicit literaryhierarchy so that shemay include a great deal of detective fiction centred upon the academic lifealongside othermore comic and satirical novels. This inmy view succeeds. Moreover, her periodization allows her to chart certain intriguing shifts of focus in such texts firstlyfromOxbridge to theEnglish provinces and subsequently across theAtlantic to theAmerican English department of the I960s. Her selection is informative enough, covering an impres sive range ofAnglo-American texts. She draws upon personal academic experience to ground her explanations ofmany of the subtler nuances of academic life in this rarefiedatmosphere. Showalter's knowledge of the Professorroman is as impressive as her interest is genuine. However, she decides-rather neglecting central aspects of certain ofWilla Cather's works-that 'The academic novel proper doesn't start until the 1950s, but there are nineteenth-century precursors' (p. 6). Showalter conveys what might be de scribed as thephenomenology and sociology of academe. Her method is to summarize key featureswhich are interpreted in termsof a broader notion of the scholarlyworld. Apart frommurder, among the themes considered are intellectual disillusionment (echoing Eliot's Casaubon), tenure, departmental politics, and the sexual subtexts. Curiously, many of the departments described and those of the authors themselves are concerned with English and American Literature, which explained the obsession with literarycriticism and the so-called 'theorywars' in the I980s which supersedes the feminism of the I970S and the struggles of theMLA. More recent texts have foregrounded thevicissitudes of sexual harassment as amajor theme. Showalter benefits from a confident style and is very precise about interpreting some of theminutiae, especially the dynamics of job rivalries, the tortuous passions of those drawn into inappropriate sexual relationships, and thealmostmythic pattern of such lives. 'Winter in theuniversity isdifferentfrom winter elsewhere. Although it is a timeof darkness, it is also a timeof respite and escape' (p. I3). This formchanges with itsenvironment. As Showalter concludes, by the I990S 'The idyllic ivory tower [. ..] has fallen into ruins.Vocation has become employment; critics have become su perstars; scholars have become technicians' (p. I20). My only reservationwas that the emphasis very largelyon traditional universities means thatShowalter misses several highly comical, satirical British textsconcerned with less elevated academic, degree awarding institutions-important historically, as thesewould become inBritain the 846 Reviews 'new' universities-such asHoward Jacobson's Comingfrom Behind (i 983) and Hanif Kureishi's The Black Album (Igg). Showalter might consider their inclusion-along with Tom Sharpe's Porterhouse Blue ( 974)-in a second enlarged edition. BRUNEL UNIVERSITY PHILIP TEW William Empson: Among the Mandarins. By JOHNHAFFENDEN. Oxford: Oxford University Press. 2005. xxi+695 pp. ?30. ISBN 978-o-ig-927659-2. JohnHaffenden tellsus that in the eyes of theChinese William Empson was an exem plary 'Elder Born', aman of truehan yang, 'elevated nature', revered by his Chinese students as a loyal and large-hearted hero (p. 546). His work inChina in the late I930s,when China was atwar with Japan, is themost extraordinary part ofEmpson's astonishing early life.His university teaching inChina was undertaken inconditions which no young British academic todaywould be able to survive for five minutes, but this steely and resolute...