Tenure

Student protests, rape, sexual proclivities and faddish disciplines swirl and twist in the background as Billy Mann and Abraham Smith, two young assistant professors, are caught in the critical battles of campus life in this first novel whose style and tone can best be described as a combination of Tom Wolfe and a contemporary, hip Jane Austen. Things between Billy and Abe erupt when the department elders decide that only one assistant professor will be granted a permanent appointment. However, events forge an unlikely alliance between the two as they seek revenge against two senior professors who urge the university's administration to bypass their younger colleagues and hire a rising star from the outside. From the malevolent manipulators to the unlikely "good guys," Tenure takes us into the serious and often zany world of campus life, which reflects the larger world of American culture at the end of the twentieth century. This intriguing novel is studded with a large cast whose lives are peeled back exposing layer after layer of their characters. Underlying most of them is the age-old trope of appearance and reality. The world of academe is, if nothing else, one where appearance rules supreme.