Blue Angel
Francine Prose, 2000
HarperCollins
344 pp.
ISBN-13: 9780060882037
It has been years since Swenson, a professor in a New England creative writing program, has published a novel. It's been even longer since any of his students have shown promise. Enter Angela Argo, a pierced, tattooed student with a rare talent for writing. Angela is just the thing Swenson needs. And, better yet, she wants his help. But, as we all know, the road to hell is paved with good intentions. . . .
Deliciously risqué, Blue Angel is a withering take on today's academic mores and a scathing tale that vividly shows what can happen when academic politics collides with political correctness. (From the publisher.)
Author Bio
• Birth—1947
• Where—Brooklyn, New York, USA
• Education—B.A., Radcliffe College
• Awards—Pushcart Prize; PEN-America prize for translation; Guggenheim Fellowship
• Currently—lives in Brooklyn, New York
When it comes to an author as eclectic as Francine Prose, it's difficult to find the unifying thread in her work. But, if one were to examine her entire oeuvre—from novels and short stories to essays and criticism—a love of reading would seem to be the animating force.
That may not seem extraordinary, especially for a writer, but Prose is uncommonly passionate about the link between reading and writing. "I've always read," she confessed in a 1998 interview with Atlantic Unbound. "I started when I was four years old and just didn't stop.... The only reason I wanted to be a writer was because I was such an avid reader." (In 2006, she produced an entire book on the subject—a nuts-and-bolts primer entitled Reading Like a Writer, in which she uses excerpts from classic and contemporary literature to illustrate her personal notions of literary excellence.)
If Prose is specific about the kind of writing she, herself, likes to read, she's equally voluble about what puts her off. She is particularly vexed by "obvious, tired clichés; lazy, ungrammatical writing; implausible plot turns." Unsurprisingly, all of these are notably absent in her own work. Even when she explores tried-and-true literary conventions—such as the illicit romantic relationship at the heart of her best known novel, Blue Angel—she livens them with wit and irony. She even borrowed her title from the famous Josef von Sternberg film dealing with a similar subject.
As biting and clever as she is, Prose cringes whenever her work is referred to as satire. She explained to Barnes & Noble editors, "Satirical to me means one-dimensional characters...whereas, I think of myself as a novelist who happens to be funny—who's writing characters that are as rounded and artfully developed as the writers of tragic novels."
Prose's assessment of her own work is pretty accurate. Although her subject matter is often ripe for satire (religious fanaticism in Household Saints, tabloid journalism in Bigfoot Dreams, upper-class pretensions in Primitive People), etc.), she takes care to invest her characters with humanity and approaches them with respect. "I really do love my characters," she says, "but I feel that I want to take a very hard look at them. I don't find them guilty of anything I'm not guilty of myself."
Best known for her fiction, Prose has also written literary criticism for the New York Times, art criticism for the Wall Street Journal, and children's books based on Jewish folklore, all of it infused with her alchemic blend of humor, insight,and intelligence.
Extras
• Prose rarely wastes an idea. In Blue Angel, the novel that the character Angela is writing is actually a discarded novel that Prose started before stopping because, in her own words, "it seemed so juvenile to me."
• While she once had no problem slamming a book in one of her literary critiques, these days Prose has resolved to only review books that she actually likes. The ones that don't adhere to her high standards are simply returned to the senders.
• Prose's novel Household Saints was adapted into an excellent film starring Tracey Ullman, Vincent D'Onofrio, and Lili Taylor in 1993.
• Another novel, The Glorious Ones, was adapted into a musical.
• In 2002 Prose published The Lives of the Muses, an intriguing hybrid of biography, philosophy, and gender studies that examines nine women who inspired famous artists and thinkers—from John Lennon's wife Yoko Ono to Alice Liddell, the child who inspired Alice in Wonderland. (From Barnes & Noble.)
Book Reviews
There is a way of getting inside your characters that renders them intimately known and comprehensively exposed—at once privileged and gutted—and Francine Prose is very good at it. Her people convict themselves out of their own mouths.... Once you start reading [Blue Angel], you'll be hooked. It's not that Prose has simply reversed the politically correct line for mischief's sake. Rather, she has upped the stakes by making Angela as unknowable as Nabokov's Lolita.
Lorna Sage - New York Times Book Review
A literary arsonist with blistering wit, sends up both smug academics and politically correct undergrads in the satrical bonfire Blue Angel.
Entertainment Weekly
Her trenchant satire of sexual harassment gives political correctness a much deserved poke in the eye.
Vanity Fair
Screamingly funny.
USA Today
A mesmerizing and hilarious tour de force.
Us Weekly
Prose is a pro, and this funny yet devastating novel will rock literary and academic worlds alike.
Mademoiselle
Trust the iconoclastic Prose to turn conventional received wisdom on such subjects as predatory professors, innocent female students...on their silly heads. In this astutely observed, often laugh-aloud funny and sometimes touching academic comedy, she proves more skeptic than cynic, with an affection for her central character that is surprisingly warm.... [T]inglingly contemporary and timelessly funny.
Publishers Weekly
Prose's latest novel charts the downward spiral of a creative writing professor caught up in a sexual harrassment scandal.... Like the professor's debasement in the Marlene Dietrich film of the same name, Swenson's impending entanglement is compelling and fascinating to behold. Recommended for all fiction collections. —Reba Leiding, James Madison Univ. Lib., Harrisburg, VA
Library Journal
Discussion Questions
1. "[T]he writer need not paint a picture of an ideal world, but only describe the actual world, without sermons, without judgement" (pg. 3). How does this quote from the first chapter resonate throughout the novel? Do you think it reflects what Francine Prose is aiming to accomplish in Blue Angel? Is she successful? Why or why not?
2. Angela's favorite novel is Jane Eyre, which is about a governess who falls in love with the scarred, angry father of her charge. One of Swenson's favorite novels is The Red and Black, which is about a young man who also happens to be social climber. How is this ironic?
3. Much is made of the fact that Angela is a compulsive liar. That said, what do we really know about Angela? Working backwards from the end of the novel, reconstruct her history. Who is her father? Was she molested?
4. "What if someone rose to say what so many of them are thinking, that there's something erotic about the act of teaching, all that information streaming back and forth like some...bodily fluid" (pg. 22). Discuss this quote from Chapter 2. Is it true?
5. One theme central to the novel is that of truth, which is crystallized during the dinner party given by Dean Francis Bentham. Swenson witnesses Magda commit what he calls professional suicide by elaborating on an attempt to teach her students a Philip Larkin poem in which the word "fuck" is used. Was Swenson projecting his own fear of the truth, or did you get the sense that Magda was walking a fine line? In a situation such as that, is there such a thing as too much truth?
6. How would you characterize Swenson's relationships with the women in Blue Angel: Sherrie, Magda, Ruby and Angela. Is there something that he wants from them that they can't give him? If so, what is it and does it affect Swenson's final fall from grace?
7. How do you feel about Swenson? Did you empathize with him? Were you angry with him? Regardless of Angela's predatory nature, did you hold him more responsible for the eventual outcome of the situation than she? Why or why not?
8. Discuss the current climate of political correctness. What are pros and cons of political correctness? Is too much political correctness better than no political correctness?
(Questions issued by the publisher.)