Eric Goodman's Child of my Right Hand. Goodman, a colleague of mine (for about two more weeks) at Miami, does something extraordinary with the narration of this novel, shifting into a faux third-person objectivity for the bulk of the story in order to play with his protagonist's own struggles with his existence as a detached scientist. That protagonist professes the history of science at a fictional Ohio college that clearly draws on Miami for inspiration, and is also struggling with how both he and the conservative college town receive his out-of-the-closet son Simon. The narrator begins two new scholarly projects, one looking at the "gay gene" and its intellectual antecedents, and the other telling Simon's story (which the protagonist/Goodman do with a paradoxical sentimentality and scientific gaze). Simon becomes a compelling, funny, real, imperfect, infinitely likable character in Goodman's hands.
But what interested me most were the not-so-subtle critiques of SW Ohio imbedded in the narrative: the cross burnings, the hate crimes, the rampant anti-intellectualism, the loathing of public institutions. I picked up the book after hearing buzz from teachers in the Ohio Writing Project, ambivalent over the novel's representations of area schools (which don't smell like roses in the book). The book doesn't break any new ground regarding the familiar town-gown divide, which Miami exemplifies, but it's a sensitive and raw account of how lefty profs in these parts often feel, and holds a mirror up to local communities (AND the family culture of higher education) in all kinds of interesting ways. If I were staying at Miami, I'd love to use the book in undergraduate classes. The appeal might be limited for readers outside of college towns, but this is also a truthful look at all kinds of aspects of family life. Check it out...
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