University Libraries Promotion and Tenure Recognition

John Irving’s poignant, if often satirical, portraits of university life appealed to me even as an adolescent. Though I discovered many of his novels after their tenure on the bestseller lists, I came to appreciate his wry sense of humor, twisted optimism, and charming irreverence. While The World According to Garp is not my favorite Irving novel, it is the one I credit with launching my academic career. I selected Garp and its exploration of the “marriage” between the critic and the creative writer as the subject of my college thesis. This early investigation of academic politics taught me invaluable lessons, several of which I put to use while navigating the tenure track.