Quote of the Day (Megan Marshall, on Academic Fiction)

“After so many years of reading about them, fictional college professors have come to seem like family to me. I'm not…a member of their ranks, but I do retain a college student's fascination with what goes on behind the scenes, not unlike the curiosity children feel about what their parents may be doing when they’re not around. These books also explore sex—usually adulterous sex—and driving intellectual ambition, as in our American ‘ur-narrative,’ [Nathaniel Hawthorne’s] Fanshawe. But books about professors are novels of middle age, and their consolations are those of midlife: redemption and reconciliation. The college student has grown up to be a professor, and life, though not lacking in complexity, can be good after all.”— Pulitzer Prize-winning American scholar and biographer Megan Marshall, “Academic Discourse and Adulterous Intercourse,” The Atlantic Monthly, Fiction Issue 2006