Not since Leiber's "Conjure Wife" has academia gamboled so compellingly with the Dark Arts. A good read on so many levels, frisson horror to academic satire. ( )

I love and admire this book; it is wickedly funny, and one of only two books in my collection that I have read three times. Its three tales offer brilliant satires of life in American academia -- ones that could only have been written by someone who has spent years in academic positions in the US. As academic satire, it is much better than such works as Jane Smiley's Moo and Richard Russo's Straight Man. As for the element of "horror" (given the book's subtitle: Tales of Tenure and Terror), it's all in good fun -- the tone of the stories is not one of horror, but comedic entertainment.

In "Queen of the Jungle," an academic couple faces complications and jealousy caused by their differential success. Elizabeth is a rising star on her way to tenure at "Chicago University", whereas Paul is stuck in a dead-end position in Iowa and unable to find the inspiration to finish his book manuscript. Paul is cheating on his wife with a flighty grad student named Kymberly. In response, Charlotte the cat has taken to urinating every place where they have coupled, and to collecting evidence of their affair to present to Elizabeth. Paul and Kym take to tormenting Charlotte with a squirt gun whenever Elizabeth is absent. This leads to all-out war between the cheating couple and the cat. It is a war that Paul is not destined to win. The cleverly evil cat manages to expose him in the worst possible way....

The second story, "99," features Prof. Gregory Eyck, a vain and ambitious archeologist who -- under the influence of the latest in post- modernist ideology -- seeks to build a career out of verbally "deconstructing" famous archeological sites. In his visit to Silbury (an alternative to Stonehenge), he decides to turn cultural anthropologist in order to document a local ceremonial ritual -- and becomes "deconstructed" himself in a denouement both terrible and terribly amusing.

The third story, "Casting the Runes" pits Virginia Dunning, an untenured professor, against Victor Karswell, a vicious senior colleague who steals her work and presents it as his own. She achieves victory, but only by summoning supernatural elements to her assistance. The climax is rather overdone, but it's funny nonetheless, and justice is meted out appropriately.

Aside from plot, each of the stories presents a satirical view of fashionable academic ideologies. In the first tale, Paul patiently rationalizes their affair to young Kimberley: ''Marriage has always been more of an economic relationship than anything else." he explains. "The idea that love has anything to do with it is a fairly recent construction, dating from the Romantic era. Elizabeth and I have a kind of . . . affectionate professional partnership.'' (Reader's can easily guess Elizabeth's view of the matter). In the second tale, Gregory Eyck has overturned the field of anthropology with his brilliant epigram, that "the notion that 'the proper study of mankind is man' is a bankrupt formulation... The proper study of anthropology is anthropologists." An academic symposium organized by Eyck (which figures in the 2nd and 3rd tales) is entitled '' 'Captains' and 'Cannibals': The Cultural Constructions of the Death of Captain Cook.'' The title reflects an actual ongoing controversy over whether Cook was killed by superstitious natives who mistook him for a god -- or whether they recognized him as a vanguard of imperialistic colonialists. No matter-- the conference explodes into violent argument over whether the poster constructed to advertise the conference (juxtaposing a cannibalistic dark-skinned native with a "pure white" European skull) was cleverly ironic or culturally insensitive. This is satire, but it hits very close to the mark.

Whether readers in general will enjoy this book as much as I did is an open question. Certainly individuals who have made a career in academia will find much that is recognizable, if not much too close for comfort. ( )

Wicked funny. ( )

The 3 tales of terror are supposed to be ruthless & chilling with cliff hanger endings. The blurb says, The characters spout silly jargon, wrestle with their writing problems, preen their tender egos, and skewer their colleagues. Most are likeable: their vanity is so human, it's almost touching. I thought the characters were sad examples of humanity with nothing particularly funny about them or their situations. I couldn't work up any particular empathy for any of them, although I did sympathize a bit with the cat in the first story.

Unfortunately, I was pretty sure where the story was going very early on & that's exactly where it went. There were absolutely no surprises including the 'cliff hanger' ending, which fell flat as it landed. It was just too obvious. This meant that all the description attempting to set the mood was boring as hell as I kept waiting for each predictable point to FINALLY get made.

Worse, I didn't find one of the major character's motivations logical at all. The entire theme of the story was self interest trumping morals. The girl friend is obviously similar to the main character in that regard so why would she hook up with him? His star is not ascending & she doesn't seem to even like him very much. Amidst all the long winded discussion, I had far too much time for every flaw to become glaring.

I never made it all the way through the next 2 stories. I tried, but found each of them as boring as the first, so moved on. ( )

This book contains three novellas that marry the world of the classic ghost story with that of the academic ivory tower, seasoned by hefty doses of black humor. Each story features a main character who is fighting for tenure and his or her academic career, and who, directly or indirectly, is suddenly plunged into the realm of the weird and otherworldly. Although the stories may seem familiar to devotees of the genre, the author is such a fine writer, and so deft at characterization, that they are a pleasure to read. My favorite by far is the first selection, “Queen of the Jungle,” about a philandering professor and a cat determined to expose him. ( )