claudine-at-school

The Return of the Educators

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On the way to Boston this past Friday, May 8, from New Jersey. (Photo by me.) Unsurprisingly, we were behind a car with Massachusetts plates…I think.

My wife Laurel and I were in Boston the past couple days picking up our younger daughter Maria from her first year of college, meaning I didn’t have a lot of time to write. Because of that, I figured I’d rerun a post…and it seemed appropriate to have that literature piece be about educators — whether professors or teachers of younger students. But I’ve done several posts over the years featuring fictional (and actual) educators, so I decided to reference all of them.

In 2023, I discussed real-life authors who also are or were professors.

“And why not?,” I wrote back then. “Teaching uses different creative muscles, is a source of additional income (not all well-known novelists are rich), gets authors away from their solitary writing desks into some semblance of the real world, enables them to help budding writers, gives them insight into what young people are thinking, etc. Perhaps their teaching also indirectly infuses their own writing, or even directly if a book they pen has an academic setting. On the other hand, teaching time does take away from writing time.”

I added, “In some cases, dual-duty authors were professors who later became novelists. But perhaps in more cases, they first gained some renown as novelists — after which universities came a-calling.”

The living and deceased authors/professors I named in that 2023 post included Jhumpa Lahiri (Barnard College); Toni Morrison (Princeton University, Rutgers University, etc.); Joyce Carol Oates (Princeton, University of California, Berkeley); Jeffrey Eugenides (Princeton, New York University); Zadie Smith (also NYU); Viet Thanh Nguyen (University of Southern California); Junot Diaz (Massachusetts Institute of Technology); Kent Haruf (Nebraska Wesleyan University); Vladimir Nabokov (Wellesley College, Cornell University); and J.R.R. Tolkien (University of Oxford).

In 2021, 2015, and 2012 posts (the earliest one for The Huffington Post two years before this blog’s 2014 launch), I discussed fictional educators. Many who are as smart, hardworking, and compassionate as some of our favorite real-life teachers we might fondly recall when reading about fictional ones.

Literature’s memorable educators include — among others — Anne Shirley in Anne of Avonlea, the first sequel to L.M. Montgomery’s Anne of Green Gables; Charles Chipping of James Hilton’s Goodbye, Mr. Chips; Ricky Braithwaite of E.R. Braithwaite’s autobiographical novel To Sir, With Love; Dan Needham of John Irving’s A Prayer for Owen Meany; and Jane Eyre, briefly a teacher in Charlotte Bronte’s novel after that character spent a longer time as a teacher of another sort: being a governess.

Children’s fiction also has some great teachers — with one I mentioned in a previous post being Ms. Frizzle of The Magic School Bus books written by Joanna Cole and illustrated by Bruce Degen.

Of course, not all teachers are terrific and/or admirable. In past posts I cited the bumbling Gilderoy Lockhart of J.K. Rowling’s Harry Potter series; the charismatic but fascist-leaning title character in Muriel Spark’s The Prime of Miss Jean Brodie; the means-well-but-overwhelmed Ida Ramundo of Elsa Morante’s novel History; and the comedic-but-a-bit-irresponsible Aimee Lanthenay of Colette’s Claudine at School.

When previously naming fictional professors, I noted that a number of them are quirky — which obviously can make for interesting reading. I added: “There can be drama in their interactions with students, in their competitive relationships with fellow profs, in their sometimes-fraught encounters with university administrators, in their quests for tenure, and in the whole publish-or-perish thing. All that makes up for the fact they are (usually) not the heroic, adventurous sorts who can make readers turn pages faster than tuition payments drain a bank account.”

Among literature’s other fictional profs are Howard Belsey and Monty Kipps of Zadie Smith’s On Beauty; Gauri Mitra of Jhumpa Lahiri’s The Lowland; William Stoner of John Williams’ Stoner; Virginia “Vinnie” Miner and Fred Turner of Alison Lurie’s Foreign Affairs; Tony Fremont (a woman) of Margaret Atwood’s The Robber Bride; Humphrey Clark of Margaret Drabble’s The Sea Lady; Grady Tripp of Michael Chabon’s Wonder Boys; and Godfrey St. Peter of Willa Cather’s The Professor’s House.

I asked this before in previous posts on this topic, but you’re welcome to again name some of your favorite fictional educators.

Happy Mother’s Day to my wife Laurel, who is…a professor. 🙂 This photo of her was taken last month in New York City.

Misty the cat says: “My teen human is home from college, so I sleep extra in celebration.”

My comedic 2024 book — the part-factual/part-fictional/not-a-children’s-work Misty the Cat…Unleashed — is described and can be purchased on Amazon in paperback or on Kindle. It’s feline-narrated! (And Amazon reviews are welcome. 🙂 )

This 90-second promo video for the book features a talking cat: 🙂

I’m also the author of a 2017 literary-trivia book…

…and a 2012 memoir that focuses on cartooning and more, including many encounters with celebrities.

In addition to this weekly blog, I write the 2003-started/award-winning “Montclairvoyant” topical-humor column every Thursday for Montclair Local. The latest piece — which discusses my town’s grim school budget and more — is here.

Lit With Wit That Might Side-Split

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On March 8, I marked International Women’s Day with a post about memorable women characters in fiction. On March 15, I marked The Ides of March (when Julius Caesar was killed) with a post about memorable murders in fiction. So, what holiday can I mark today? I did an online search, and discovered that March 22 is National Goof Off Day! Meaning I could write a post about some of the funnier novels I’ve read.

But a search showed I wrote a post like that back in this blog’s first year: 2014. Hmm…guess I’ll rerun that piece today (many of you had yet to become readers here 12 years ago). Then, I’ll add some humorous or part-humorous novels I’ve read since 2014 — or read before that but forgot to mention in my previous Obama-era post.

Here’s the 2014 piece, with a new first paragraph and some other editing:

Some novels are quite funny, in a satirical or just plain silly way. They include books that range from mostly comedic to those that are serious and/or dramatic and/or poignant but contain one or more hilarious scenes — such as Ishmael and Queequeg, pre-ship voyage, in the inn bedroom in Herman Melville’s Moby-Dick.

For instance, there’s Charles Dickens’ laugh-out-loud first novel: The Posthumous Papers of the Pickwick Club, which features the fabulously funny Sam Weller. That book launched Dickens into a popularity stratosphere he never left — even as his increasingly ambitious novels were never quite that humorous again. Was Bleak House a jest-fest? Don’t think so.

Colette had a similar career arc, entering the novel-writing realm with the sidesplitting Claudine at School before moving on to weightier (yet still engaging) works. The title character in Colette’s late-career Gigi wouldn’t last a minute in a battle of witticisms with the rambunctious Claudine.

Speaking of first novels, the seriocomic Harry Potter and the Sorcerer’s Stone has more laughs per square page than any of the six subsequent novels in J.K. Rowling’s series.

Also hilarious is Philip Roth’s Portnoy’s Complaint, in which the “thing” that hits an incandescent bulb is not a light-dazzled moth.

Then there’s Jeeves in the Offing, or almost any other P.G. Wodehouse novel or story starring the brilliant British valet and his rather clueless “master” Bertie Wooster. Wodehouse could make a shopping list funny.

In a very different milieu, novels don’t get much more amusing (or ribald) than Erskine Caldwell’s Tobacco Road and God’s Little Acre. Delightful “southern humor” can also be found in Charles Portis’ Norwood and The Dog of the South, Rita Mae Brown’s Rubyfruit Jungle novel and Sneaky Pie Brown mysteries, and Fannie Flagg’s Fried Green Tomatoes at the Whistle Stop Cafe. Mixed with the laughs in those books are serious themes such as poverty, racism, sexism, and homophobia.

Academia can also be a great source of humor and satire, as evidenced by novels such as Zadie Smith’s On Beauty, Richard Russo’s Straight Man, and Adam Langer’s Ellington Boulevard.

Returning to older novels, we see Mark Twain mixing strong antiwar satire with goofy humor in A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur’s Court, Henry Fielding even naming a character “Lady Booby” (for her personality) in his uproarious Joseph Andrews, and Miguel de Cervantes being much funnier than one expects in Don Quixote.

More hilarity? Valancy Stirling dramatically parts with her oppressively conventional mother and other relations in L.M. Montgomery’s moving/inspiring The Blue Castle, but the conversations the newly confident Valancy has with her family are as funny as the funniest sitcom.

Italo Calvino is very droll in his short-story-collection-as-novella Marcovaldo. John Steinbeck, so earnest in The Grapes of Wrath and East of Eden, will crack you up in Tortilla Flat, Cannery Row, and Sweet Thursday. And you don’t need an explanation from me about how dizzyingly comedic are Lewis Carroll’s Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland and Through the Looking Glass.

Now, as I write in 2026, here are some funny or part-funny (in certain cases darkly so) novels I’ve read since the above 2014 post — or read before that but didn’t mention back then. A number of those books of course have many serious moments, too. Alphabetical by author:

Margaret Atwood’s Oryx and Crake, Jane Austen’s Northanger Abbey, Fredrik Backman’s A Man Called Ove, Charles Bukowski’s Hollywood, Mikhail Bulgakov’s The Master and Margarita, Frances Burney’s Evelina, Charles Dickinson’s The Widows’ Adventure, Stanley Elkin’s The Rabbi of Lud, Helen Fielding’s Bridget Jones’s Diary, Jaroslav Hasek’s The Good Soldier Svejk, Joseph Heller’s Catch-22, Elin Hilderbrand’s The Hotel Nantucket, Jonas Jonasson’s The 100-Year-Old Man Who Climbed Out the Window and Disappeared, Bel Kaufman’s Up the Down Staircase, Steve Martin’s The Pleasure of My Company, Terry McMillan’s How Stella Got Her Groove Back, Viet Thanh Nguyen’s The Sympathizer, Terry Pratchett’s Small Gods, Maria Semple’s Where’d You Go, Bernadette, (Ms.) Lionel Shriver’s So Much for That, Zadie Smith’s White Teeth, Jonathan Swift’s Gulliver’s Travels, J.R.R. Tolkien’s The Hobbit, John Kennedy Toole’s A Confederacy of Dunces, Voltaire’s Candide, and Kurt Vonnegut’s Slaughterhouse-Five, to name a few.

And while Fyodor Dostoevsky’s The Brothers Karamazov is mostly dead serious, it does have one uproarious scene.

Novels you consider very funny — overall or in part?

Misty the cat says: “Odd that one of those cars looks like a dumpster.”

My comedic 2024 book — the part-factual/part-fictional/not-a-children’s-work Misty the Cat…Unleashed — is described and can be purchased on Amazon in paperback or on Kindle. It’s feline-narrated! (And Amazon reviews are welcome. 🙂 )

This 90-second promo video for the book features a talking cat: 🙂

I’m also the author of a 2017 literary-trivia book…

…and a 2012 memoir that focuses on cartooning and more, including many encounters with celebrities.

In addition to this weekly blog, I write the 2003-started/award-winning “Montclairvoyant” topical-humor column every Thursday for Montclair Local. The latest piece — about a close school budget vote, a delayed decision on a huge redevelopment project, a student anti-ICE march, and more; all threaded with a weird Tom Hanks movie theme 🙂 — is here.