Alma Mater: A College Homecoming

An alumnus of Kenyon College as well as a faculty member, Kluge presents a knowledgeable examination of the dynamics, character, traditions, tensions, and pretensions of the small, private, and costly school. Famous teachers include John Crowe Ransom, and famous students include E.L. Doctorow."e;I love islands. Micronesia — Saipan, Palau, Pohnpei — is full of them. Gambier, Ohio is another kind of island, a small, surrounded place where I live and teach. My alma mater, my current employer. If you live in a place, you write about it. Alma Mater is a loving, scathing, funny account of a year in the life of Kenyon College. No names have been changed. And I put myself in the way of as much experience as I could bear: trustees, hiring searches, fraternity life, dormitory grotesquerie, departmental meetings — I even moved back into the same dorm I'd occupied as a college freshman in 1960-61. For that alone I deserve Nobel Prize consideration."e;