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Loading... Blue Angel (original 2000; edition 2000)by Francine Prose
Work detailsBlue Angel by Francine Prose (2000)
Funny, tragic. Should be required reading for all exiting an MFA program. Not entering. Definitely not entering. (  ) usefuljack | May 17, 2013 |  Funny, tragic. Should be required reading for all exiting an MFA program. Not entering. Definitely not entering. ( ) usefuljack | May 17, 2013 | "Their hearts are heat-seeking missiles drawn to whatever's still burning." (145) (  ) JennyArch | Apr 3, 2013 | Well, this book just seemed a little too predictable to me. I was pretty much guessing the entire outcome within the first 50 pages. It follows the classic professor falling for a college student ruse but I liked it better when it was called The Corrections and when that wasn't the entire premise of the story. That it's written from a female perspective while the protagonist is male is the only thing that makes the book slightly tricky and interesting. Still, it's so clear what will happen that it makes reading it almost painful to get through. I wasn't sure if we were actually supposed to feel sorry for the professor for being so pathetic, either...Regardless, it's somewhat enigmatic to me how this got to be a National Book Award Finalist. Oh well. ( ) kirstiecat | Mar 31, 2013 | This was a novel about a college creative writing professor whose place of employment set up a committee that wanted to put into practice sanctions against those who practice sexual harrassment. Wouldn't you know it, then, that the married professor in our story becomes attracted to Angeo Argo, one of his students! According to Professor Swenson, the reason is that she writes well. He thinks he feels that she is attracted to him as well. Not all goes acording to plan as you shall see when you read this story. I found this an engaging read while my daughter thought it a "meh" book. Her fiance disliked the book completely and ranted that its ending was no ending at all. I was satisfied with it. You decide for yourself when you read it. ( ) SqueakyChu | Aug 24, 2012 |
 Before this novel of academic manners descends into a dark parody of the Salem witchhunt, it is very funny. If I have any criticism of this excellent novel, it is with the last section. Though written with sharpness and grace, the ending is too neat for the novel's complex social comedy, too grim for its playfulness. I trust I'm not spoiling anything for you if I reveal that a book called "Blue Angel" is about the young and heartless seducing the old and foolish. The erotic energy of the situation (writing as seduction and power trip, reading as willing submission) keeps "Blue Angel" hurtling ahead for perhaps its first half. And then, surprisingly, it becomes bleak and almost plodding.
Amazon.com Amazon.com Review (ISBN 0060882034, Paperback)Francine Prose may never surpass Joyce Carol Oates in the Prolific Olympics, but she is one of those omnipresent writers whom failed writers hate. And surely she'll make new enemies with her hilarious and cruel 10th novel, Blue Angel, a satire of academia, specifically of English and writing departments. The setting is Euston College in rural Vermont, a place kids go to if they don't get into Bennington; a place where desperate novelists teach creative writing to rich kids who don't seem to read. Prose, who has taught at all the hotshot workshops, skewers both teachers and students in the way only a true insider could.Swenson, her writing-teacher protagonist, once published a well-received novel but is now consumed by neuroses and repressed lust, and instead of writing tends to get drunk or morose, or both. But when a gifted student named Angela Argo enters his class, he feels like he is coming back to life. His resurrection into "believing" in writing again, and his eventual disappointment, form the core of the novel. Prose's gift for satire is stunning as she directs her caustic wit at all the current academic debates: sexual-harassment policies warning against all manner of "touching"; deconstructionists versus Old School fuddy-duddies; women's studies teachers who bring everything back to the phallocentric Man killing us all. But Blue Angel's best passages come when the author is describing truly rotten writers. Here's a Connecticut rich girl, a member of Swenson's workshop, who likes to write about all those poor unfortunate nonwhite people. Her story is called "First Kiss--Inner City Blues" and is written from the point of view of a Latino woman who lives in a trash-strewn neighborhood full of gunfire and bad people. Here's the opening line: "The summer heat sat on the hot city street, making it hard for it to breathe, especially for Lydia Sanchez." It's a sentence so bad, it's almost a revelation. --Emily White (retrieved from Amazon Tue, 19 Apr 2011 15:26:03 -0400) Charts the downward spiral of a creative writing professor caught up in a sexual harassment scandal. (summary from another edition) |
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