Sense and Nonsensibility: Lampoons of Learning and Literature

From book awards to Brian Lamb to professorial pretensions and foibles, two professors at Amherst College take aim at the worlds of literature and academia. Douglas and George, who also write humor columns for the New Yorker and the New York Times Book Review, propose that the National Book Awards add new awards to rival those of Hollywood, and suggest accolades for ""Best Supporting Character"" and ""Best Female Protagonist-Doomed"" (finalists are Emma Bovary, Anna Karenina, Lily Bart and Antigone). The authors' erudite whimsy is not for everyone, but it will entertain those similarly inclined. Their imagined literary counterparts to eBay and A.A., for example, are hilarious. (In ""Graduate Students Anonymous"" the dissertation-bound learn to look into the mirror and say, ""I will never get a tenure-track job."") Most anyone who has spent any time in the worlds of literature and the academy will laugh, and occasionally wince, at the barbs thrown here.