Faculty Towers: The Academic Novel and Its DiscontentsI have been a character in academic fiction at least twice, Elaine Showalter writes, once a voluptuous, promiscuous, drug addicted bohemian, once a prudish, dumpy, judgmental frump. I hope I am not too easily identified in either of these guises . . . although I can tell you that I preferred being cast as the luscious Concord grape to my role as the withered prune. In the days before there were handbooks, self help guides, or advice columns for