Pictures from an Institution — Randall Jarrell

“A most literate account of a group of most literate people by a writer of power . . . A delight of true understanding.” -- Wallace Stevens, Pulitzer Prize�"winning poet

Beneath the unassuming surface of a progressive women's college lurks a world of intellectual pride and pomposity awaiting devastation by the pens of two brilliant and appalling wits. Randall Jarrell's classic novel was originally published to overwhelming critical acclaim in 1954, forging a new standard for campus satire -- and instantly yielding comparisons to Dorothy Parker's razor-sharp barbs. Like his fictional nemesis, Jarrell cuts through the earnest conversations at Benton College -- mischievously, but with mischief nowhere more wicked than when crusading against the vitriolic heroine herself.

“I'm greatly impressed by the real fun, the incisive satire, the closeness of observation, and in the end by a kind of sympathy and human warmth. It's a remarkable book.” -- Robert Penn Warren, Pulitzer Prize�"winning author

“One of the wittiest books of modern times.” -- The New York Times

“The father of the modern campus novel, and the wittiest of them all. Extraordinary to think that ‘political correctness' was so deliciously dissected 50 years ago.” -- Noel Malcolm, The Sunday Telegraph

“A sustained exhibition of wit in the great tradition . . . Immensely and very devastatingly shrewd.” -- Edmund Fuller, Saturday Review

“Mr. Jarrell is on the side of the angels. His is a divine meanness, and he exposes his female writing devil punitively, matching her stream of poisonous wisecracks with a series of coruscating cracks of his own worthy of Dorothy Parker at her most hilarious and deadly.” -- Francis Steegmuller, The New York Times Book Review