The War Between the Tates
Encyclopedia
The War Between the Tates is a campus novel
by Alison Lurie
that takes place an elite university during the upheavals of the late sixties and gently and deftly skewers all sides in the turmoils and conflicts of that era — opposition to the Vietnam war, the start of the feminist movement, the generation gap, sexual liberation, experimentation with drugs, and student unrest.
, the diplomat who devised President Harry Truman's policy of containment of the Soviet Union at the start of the Cold War
. Brian is depressed, however, because Kennan's reputation and influence are in abeyance, and he also realizes that his own ambition of writing a world-altering book will probably never be realized, and that in consequence, he will probably never be called to serve in Washington, D.C. His wife Erica, 40, is also not quite content with her lot. She has a degree from Radcliffe and has published some children’s books but has basically given up any ambition she may have had for a life of full-time motherhood and giving and attending faculty dinners. Now, as their children approach adolescence, Brian and Erica realize they can't stand their own offspring — their music, their rudeness, and their selfishness.
Meanwhile, Brian Tate has been pursued and has gotten involved with a young grad student, Wendy, who to his gratification, admires him greatly. When Erica finds out, Brian breaks off with Wendy, but he soon resumes the affair and impregnates her. The despairing Wendy now considers suicide; an abortion (New York State legalized abortion
in 1970, but it had become easier to get one immediately prior to this); or whether to raise the baby, the carrier of precious Tate genes, which, she feels, should be nurtured for the sake of humanity. She has the abortion, but then gets pregnant again and Brian is terrified he will have to marry her, but fortunately she goes off to live in a commune in California with a younger boyfriend.
Erica’s situation is paralleled by that of her friend Danielle Zimmern—recently divorced from her husband Leonard, Danielle has become involved with Women’s Liberation.
Erica embarks on an unsatisfying affair with an old friend—Zed, whom she once considered too homely to take seriously. He had pursued her when they were undergraduates at Harvard and now he runs a counter-cultural bookstore in the town. Zed invites her to participate in an LSD trip.
Brian, meanwhile, ends up helping a group of young women—he is attracted in particular to one, the beautiful young student Jenny—who want to protest the sexist attitudes of Professor Dibble, a highly conservative colleague in Brian's Department. Brian ends up futilely attempting to support both sides in this battle, to his own discomfiture. We learn that in the war between men and women, as in other wars, when the two sides are extremely polarized, there can be no middle ground.
(she later became the second woman ever to ever to be awarded tenure at Cornell) where her husband was a full professor. The fictional Corinth University, with its setting of creeks flowing through deep gorges, gracious but not always comfortable academic buildings, and its shabby college town, is obviously modeled on Cornell.
In a recent interview in the Cornell Chronicle, Lurie maintained that her novel had been a composite:
Lurie's novel, in fact, is only loosely based on the real people and events of the tumultuous sixties, and her characters are the more devastating for being types rather than recognizable portraits. Although she was at Cornell during the famous protests by black students in April 1969, the topics dealt with in her book are feminism, the woes of parenthood, infidelity, and academic pomposity— not race relations. At the fictional "Corinth" there is instead a very funny takeover of the office of political science Professor Dibble by his irate female students. The character of Dibble, a reactionary and sexist with a heart condition, is thought to be based on the young Allen Bloom. In the novel, the character Dibble is outraged because the administration has failed to call for military assistance to deal with the protesters, in his mind thereby compromising "professorial dignity". The only (somewhat oblique) reference in the novel to the student takeover at Cornell occurs when the women protesters are depicted as being inspired by thoughts of what black students might do in a takeover situation similar to theirs. In The War Between the Tates, moreover, the repercussions are strictly personal, it is Brian Tate, not Dibble, whose professorial pomposity is punctured. Tate gets mixed up in the demonstration, at first on the side of the women and then, by unadvisedly trying to rescue his colleague, the terrified Dibble, from their blockade of his office. Some of Tate's mixed motivations are described this way:
Tate's attempt to help Dibble escape out of the window goes hilariously awry and attracts a large crowd. When Tate is discovered trapped together with Dibble, everyone mistakenly assumes that the demonstration was aimed at him and not Dibble, thus Tate inadvertently acquires the reputation of sexism, while Dibble, who really is a sexist, ironically escapes with no consequences. Dibble then resigns from the university in high dudgeon. Like the Tates' own children, who direct their wrath at a public library and at education in general, the protesters at Corinth University are depicted as misguided and obtuse and as choosing the wrong targets for their rebellion.
and Richard Crenna
. Rolling Stones lead singer Mick Jagger
appeared in a cameo role as campus radical Joe Freedom.
Campus novel
A campus novel, also known as an academic novel, is a novel whose main action is set in and around the campus of a university. The genre in its current form dates back to the early 1950s...
by Alison Lurie
Alison Lurie
Alison Lurie is an American novelist and academic. She won the Pulitzer Prize for her 1984 novel Foreign Affairs. Although better known as a novelist, she has also written numerous non-fiction books and articles, particularly on children's literature and the semiotics of dress.-Personal...
that takes place an elite university during the upheavals of the late sixties and gently and deftly skewers all sides in the turmoils and conflicts of that era — opposition to the Vietnam war, the start of the feminist movement, the generation gap, sexual liberation, experimentation with drugs, and student unrest.
Plot summary
The novel takes place in 1969. Erica and Brian Tate are a seemingly happy and successful academic couple. At least, Brian Tate is successful: he is the holder of the endowed Sayles Chair of Political Science at Corinth University in upstate New York. As he reaches his mid-40s, he begins to undergo a mid-life crisis. He is an admirer and scholar of the work of George KennanGeorge Kennan
George Kennan may refer to:* George Kennan * George F. Kennan , diplomat and historian; the explorer's great-nephew and architect of the U.S. containment over confrontation policy during the Cold War....
, the diplomat who devised President Harry Truman's policy of containment of the Soviet Union at the start of the Cold War
Cold War
The Cold War was the continuing state from roughly 1946 to 1991 of political conflict, military tension, proxy wars, and economic competition between the Communist World—primarily the Soviet Union and its satellite states and allies—and the powers of the Western world, primarily the United States...
. Brian is depressed, however, because Kennan's reputation and influence are in abeyance, and he also realizes that his own ambition of writing a world-altering book will probably never be realized, and that in consequence, he will probably never be called to serve in Washington, D.C. His wife Erica, 40, is also not quite content with her lot. She has a degree from Radcliffe and has published some children’s books but has basically given up any ambition she may have had for a life of full-time motherhood and giving and attending faculty dinners. Now, as their children approach adolescence, Brian and Erica realize they can't stand their own offspring — their music, their rudeness, and their selfishness.
Meanwhile, Brian Tate has been pursued and has gotten involved with a young grad student, Wendy, who to his gratification, admires him greatly. When Erica finds out, Brian breaks off with Wendy, but he soon resumes the affair and impregnates her. The despairing Wendy now considers suicide; an abortion (New York State legalized abortion
History of abortion
The practice of abortion, the termination of a pregnancy so that it does not result in birth, dates back to ancient times. Pregnancies were terminated through a number of methods, including the administration of abortifacient herbs, the use of sharpened implements, the application of abdominal...
in 1970, but it had become easier to get one immediately prior to this); or whether to raise the baby, the carrier of precious Tate genes, which, she feels, should be nurtured for the sake of humanity. She has the abortion, but then gets pregnant again and Brian is terrified he will have to marry her, but fortunately she goes off to live in a commune in California with a younger boyfriend.
Erica’s situation is paralleled by that of her friend Danielle Zimmern—recently divorced from her husband Leonard, Danielle has become involved with Women’s Liberation.
Erica embarks on an unsatisfying affair with an old friend—Zed, whom she once considered too homely to take seriously. He had pursued her when they were undergraduates at Harvard and now he runs a counter-cultural bookstore in the town. Zed invites her to participate in an LSD trip.
Brian, meanwhile, ends up helping a group of young women—he is attracted in particular to one, the beautiful young student Jenny—who want to protest the sexist attitudes of Professor Dibble, a highly conservative colleague in Brian's Department. Brian ends up futilely attempting to support both sides in this battle, to his own discomfiture. We learn that in the war between men and women, as in other wars, when the two sides are extremely polarized, there can be no middle ground.
The War Between the Tates as a roman à clef
When The War Between the Tates was published in 1974, Lurie was a part-time adjunct teaching English at Cornell UniversityCornell University
Cornell University is an Ivy League university located in Ithaca, New York, United States. It is a private land-grant university, receiving annual funding from the State of New York for certain educational missions...
(she later became the second woman ever to ever to be awarded tenure at Cornell) where her husband was a full professor. The fictional Corinth University, with its setting of creeks flowing through deep gorges, gracious but not always comfortable academic buildings, and its shabby college town, is obviously modeled on Cornell.
In a recent interview in the Cornell Chronicle, Lurie maintained that her novel had been a composite:
The events in The War Between the Tates, her 1974 roman à clefRoman à clefRoman à clef or roman à clé , French for "novel with a key", is a phrase used to describe a novel about real life, overlaid with a façade of fiction. The fictitious names in the novel represent real people, and the "key" is the relationship between the nonfiction and the fiction...
of the marital (and extramarital) travails of a professor and his wife, 'happened to people I know, but it happened at three different universities.'" Nearly twenty-five years later her colleague, Jonathan CullerJonathan CullerJonathan Culler is a class of 1966 Harvard graduate and Professor of English at Cornell University. He is an important figure of the structuralism movement of literary theory and criticism.- Background and career:...
, jokingly mentions the fear in the Cornell English department that she might write a sequel to The War Between the Tates.
Lurie's novel, in fact, is only loosely based on the real people and events of the tumultuous sixties, and her characters are the more devastating for being types rather than recognizable portraits. Although she was at Cornell during the famous protests by black students in April 1969, the topics dealt with in her book are feminism, the woes of parenthood, infidelity, and academic pomposity— not race relations. At the fictional "Corinth" there is instead a very funny takeover of the office of political science Professor Dibble by his irate female students. The character of Dibble, a reactionary and sexist with a heart condition, is thought to be based on the young Allen Bloom. In the novel, the character Dibble is outraged because the administration has failed to call for military assistance to deal with the protesters, in his mind thereby compromising "professorial dignity". The only (somewhat oblique) reference in the novel to the student takeover at Cornell occurs when the women protesters are depicted as being inspired by thoughts of what black students might do in a takeover situation similar to theirs. In The War Between the Tates, moreover, the repercussions are strictly personal, it is Brian Tate, not Dibble, whose professorial pomposity is punctured. Tate gets mixed up in the demonstration, at first on the side of the women and then, by unadvisedly trying to rescue his colleague, the terrified Dibble, from their blockade of his office. Some of Tate's mixed motivations are described this way:
Brian felt some sympathy for Jenny's cause. After all, Dibble probably had made some foolishly unprofessional remarks. He was a boor and a reactionary and Brian's longstanding enemy [Brian is a liberal], while Jenny was a beautiful young girl who admired him and would be grateful if he helped her to defeat their common enemy; Brian had already imagined some of the forms this gratitude might take.
Tate's attempt to help Dibble escape out of the window goes hilariously awry and attracts a large crowd. When Tate is discovered trapped together with Dibble, everyone mistakenly assumes that the demonstration was aimed at him and not Dibble, thus Tate inadvertently acquires the reputation of sexism, while Dibble, who really is a sexist, ironically escapes with no consequences. Dibble then resigns from the university in high dudgeon. Like the Tates' own children, who direct their wrath at a public library and at education in general, the protesters at Corinth University are depicted as misguided and obtuse and as choosing the wrong targets for their rebellion.
Main characters in The War Between the Tates
- Brian Tate, a pompous Political Science professor at Corinth University
- Erica Tate, his brittle, resentful wife
- Wendy Gahagan, a weak-willed, promiscuous graduate student at Corinth
- Sanford Finkelstein, aka Zed, a timid bookshop owner
- Leonard Zimmern, his wife Danielle, and their daughters Roo and Celia
Film, TV, or theatrical adaptations
In 1977, The War Between the Tates was made into a TV movie starring Elizabeth AshleyElizabeth Ashley
Elizabeth Ashley is an American actress who first came to prominence as the ingenue in the Broadway play Take Her, She's Mine, which earned her a Tony Award as Best Featured Actress in a Play.-Early life:...
and Richard Crenna
Richard Crenna
Richard Donald Crenna was an American motion picture, television, and radio actor and occasional television director. He starred in such motion pictures as The Sand Pebbles, Wait Until Dark, Body Heat, the first three Rambo movies, Hot Shots! Part Deux, and The Flamingo Kid...
. Rolling Stones lead singer Mick Jagger
Mick Jagger
Sir Michael Philip "Mick" Jagger is an English musician, singer and songwriter, best known as the lead vocalist and a founding member of The Rolling Stones....
appeared in a cameo role as campus radical Joe Freedom.
External links
See also
- 1960s1960sThe 1960s was the decade that started on January 1, 1960, and ended on December 31, 1969. It was the seventh decade of the 20th century.The 1960s term also refers to an era more often called The Sixties, denoting the complex of inter-related cultural and political trends across the globe...
- Allen Bloom
- Culture wars
- Campus novelCampus novelA campus novel, also known as an academic novel, is a novel whose main action is set in and around the campus of a university. The genre in its current form dates back to the early 1950s...
- Alison LurieAlison LurieAlison Lurie is an American novelist and academic. She won the Pulitzer Prize for her 1984 novel Foreign Affairs. Although better known as a novelist, she has also written numerous non-fiction books and articles, particularly on children's literature and the semiotics of dress.-Personal...