In his novel MENTIS AND ETHOS, R. Henry Price exhibits powers of observation approaching the granular about academic life and its discontents. Solly is a middle-aged professor who secures work as a residence associate (a warden assigned to oversee the population in a house of residence on campus) in mid-2010s CalTech. A self-described curmudgeon, but with the advantage of learning. Solly’s erudition, as well as an ever-so-slight hint of imposter syndrome (he calls himself a “shallow polymath”) allows him to watch the world around him with, if not detachment, a certain amusement. Darryl, a student who is both brilliant and a smartass, surprises Solly when he turns out to be a hacker and gets approached by a group of gangsters to hack into a public database using ransomware.
As befits a novel written by a university professor, there is a great deal here about academic life that rings true. Price skewers the overworking by tenured professors of what the author describes, with no hint of irony, as “auxiliary faculty” and “indentured instructor[s].” Rarely has an epithet chimed better; most adjuncts feel treated exactly as such—and wry humor is supplied particularly in the bestowal of names. The chair of the English department is one Professor Hommedieu; a chemical engineering student called Ethel gets the moniker Tetra (after tetraethyl lead). The plot develops slowly, dabbling in all kinds of topics. At its best it skirts geopolitics and the shifting sands of cross-national flows of money, drugs, and influence; at other times, it reads more like a lowbrow crime thriller. Dialogue is variable: sometimes it has a natural ring, but at other times there is a tendency towards prose, with characters including adjectives and pithy descriptions that tend in the moment to escape one’s notice.
A key theme is the innocence of Solly’s students. Price is aware that many young students and even grad students carefully assemble façades of detachment and sarcasm to mask their lack of worldliness. Confronted at first by Darryl’s quips and quickfire responses, his preternatural intelligence, and his apparently in-control demeanor, one ends up feeling rather sad for him as he confides to Solly of his “miscreant” behavior. It’s a story of overweening confidence in one’s abilities gone wrong that is all too common in Silicon Valley—given its history of here-today-gone-tomorrow startups, along with the promise of big advancements to be made and obscene amounts of money to be had. From that perspective alone, Price’s story is compelling and well worth the read.
R. Henry Price’s MENTIS AND ETHOS is an intriguing, deft observation of an academic life gone wrong.
Craig Jones for IndieReader