An author with his treasures (courtesy of Rich Novotney)

For several years, I’ve known that fellow Valparaiso University alum Richard Novotney was working on a fictional memoir grounded in his collegiate experiences and the years that immediately followed.

Well, it turns out that Novotney has been working on this book for some twenty years, and he’s now sharing it with the world. The published result is The Four Jacks: Annotated, Uncensored (available via Amazon and Bookshop), penned by “Robert Pavchick” (nom de plum), an eventual graduate of one Villahaven University, and “edited” by Mr. Novotney.

I very much enjoyed reading it. In fact, the book did such a number on me that the night after I first dove into it, I had some weird, impressionistic dreams featuring my own alt-college experiences. The Four Jacks definitely has struck a chord.

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In a nutshell, The Four Jacks depicts college life, post-college life, friendships, loves and lusts, deep discussions, budding creative minds and intellects, drinking, eating, smoking, card playing, and (because it’s Pavchick, as explained right below) eliminating.

Pavchick is a thinky type with intellectual aspirations, exploding post-adolescent hormones, and a remarkable ability to see the world through a scatalogical lens. On the latter point, he assigns to virtually every major site on and off campus, and many inanimate objects, rather poopy nicknames.

In a mild spoiler, I’ll share that Pavchick starts college as an engineering major but quickly abandons that path — er, more accurately, the university does that for him based on his academic performance. No matter, because Robert’s real passion — besides Britta, a fellow English major and aspiring writer — is to become a man of letters. Early in the book, he gets himself appointed an editor of the alternative campus literary journal, largely due to the fact that he showed up to a meeting.

In addition to Britta, others in Pavchick’s immediate orbit include fellow Villahaven students Cliff (his cerebral, misanthropic, and oft-annoying friend), Paul (a genuine intellect and one of a few students of color on Villahaven’s very white campus), and Diane (his faith-devoted, not-Britta love interest). Also part of the pack are Warn (not his given name), Cliff’s steelworker pal who can hold his own with anyone talking about books and ideas, and Nicole, a smart, wise young woman who spent a semester at Villahaven before taking her leave.

Compare/contrast

Like Valparaiso U then and now, Villahaven U is a small, Lutheran-affiliated, private university located in Northwest Indiana, about a 90-minute drive from the heart of Chicago. Like Porter County, Indiana of that time, Pavchick’s Villahaven is set in a small, conservative city with a rural flavor, located on the edge of communities where the Great American Jobs Machine was in sharp decline, thanks to a shrinking steel industry labor force. Like Novotney’s Valparaiso days, Robert Pavchick is attending college during the late 70s through early 80s, a much quieter stretch on America’s campuses that contrasted notably to the tumultuous times of the 60s and early 70s.

Because I know several of the individuals who at least loosely inspired the major characters in the book, I’ll stop with the comparisons. With a few exceptions, I’m not certain where Novotney’s Valparaiso experiences and Pavchick’s Villahaven experiences truly overlap. Thus, it’s probably best to give all of the book’s real-life counterparts a healthy benefit of the doubt concerning assorted details. As for any true stories that made their way into The Four Jacks, what happened at Villahaven, should stay in Villahaven, right?

A raw, satirical Gen Jones coming-of-age novel…with footnotes!

Let me confess that even though Novotney and I had several friends in common during our Valparaiso days, my own collegiate experience was infinitely less adventurous than the lives of Villahaven U’s leading characters. Nevertheless, I found myself deeply drawn into book’s stories and setting, and not only because the fictionalized surroundings felt familiar. Basically, I love how The Four Jacks captures a certain place and time.

The book is loaded with mentions of contemporary and historical events and of popular movies, TV shows, books, and other cultural markers. Editor Novotney has used the device of academic-style, textual footnotes to help explain many of these historical and cultural references. The notes are a useful reminder of shaping events and prevailing mindsets during those years.

Generation Jones is that ‘tweener sub-generation of late Boomers and early Gen Xers born roughly between 1954 and 1965. Many of us who attended college during the time period covered in the book were born smack dab in the middle of that range. Against this backdrop, I consider The Four Jacks to be a quintessential Gen Jones coming-of-age novel. It really nails the era.

PG-13 or NC-17?

The Four Jacks is not for polite company. In fact, at first, I found its frequent scat references to be excessive. By the end, however, I was howling out loud at some of the more, umm, gaseous passages. Pavchick’s gift of description simply wore me down, reaching into the primal core of my inner 13-year-old.

In addition, the book details a variety of imagined, successful, or interrupted conjugal hook-up attempts, mainly featuring Pavchick. These narratives suggest a deep familiarity with the “letters” sections of certain men’s magazines quite popular among male undergraduates of the time, thus adding to the novel’s, well, generational authenticity.

It’s not all about collegiate debauchery

Given the tales I’m alluding to here, one might think that The Four Jacks summons comparisons to the 1978 hit movie “National Lampoon’s Animal House,” which no doubt inspired many college students of my day to spend their years at old alma mater (uh, that’s assuming they graduated) drinking and carousing at fraternity parties.

But that assumption doesn’t apply here, for at least three reasons. First, the novel centers on “GDIs” (G*d Damn Independents) who eschewed the Greek fraternity and sorority system. I can attest that independent status at schools like Valparaiso/Villahaven made for a much different college experience, where piecing together one’s social life and connections could be a more haphazard process.

Second, half of the novel takes place after graduation. Only one major character, Britta, has decamped for graduate school. Pavchick is hanging around northwest Indiana, doing odd jobs for Villahaven professors and other low-paying gigs. The Four Jacks portrays well the immediate post-graduate life of the English major without definite career plans, a sort of rustbelt bohemian living on a shoestring budget and facing an uncertain future.

Finally, and perhaps most importantly, The Four Jacks does not end in a humorous state. Reckoning with personal miscues and loss, several of our main characters find themselves in a reflective place. Pavchick himself begins to question how his own male gaze and desires have affected his relationships. Change is afoot.

AI on the Gen Jones college novel

The Four Jacks made me curious about what other books might be called Generation Jones college novels. So I couldn’t resist typing an inquiry into Google AI. This is what I got:

Novels capturing the Generation Jones college experience (born approx. 1955-1965) often explore coming-of-age in the post-Vietnam 1970s, blending idealism with pragmatism. Key novels reflecting this cohort include Meg Wolitzer’s The Interestings and Jeffrey Eugenides’ The Marriage Plot, which often depict their shift from youth into midlife compromises.

Key Generation Jones College/Coming-of-Age Fiction

• The Marriage Plot by Jeffrey Eugenides (2011): Set in the early 1980s, this novel follows students at Brown University, encapsulating the intellectual and romantic turning points of the era.
• The Interestings by Meg Wolitzer (2013): Portrays an ensemble of friends who meet at summer camp in the 1970s and follows their lives through college and into middle age, focusing on themes of ambition and compromise.
• Bright Lights, Big City by Jay McInerney (1984): Represents the early 1980s post-college era in New York for many Gen Jonesers, defining the “Brat Pack” literary scene.
• The Invisible Circus by Jennifer Egan: Explores a young woman coming of age in the 1970s, dealing with the aftermath of the 1960s idealism.
• A Visit from the Goon Squad by Jennifer Egan (2010): Features midlife characters navigating the, now adult, realities of the Generation Jones demographic.

These stories are often characterized as bildungsromane of characters born between the baby boom and Generation X, often reflecting a sense of irony and a shift away from the radicalism of the 1960s.

Recommended

I know that for Rich Novotney, this book was a passion project and a personal exploration of a deeply influential chapter in his life. On the latter point, I can strongly relate. In fact, I devoted the previous post to this blog to a reflection upon my years at Valparaiso. For reasons that I haven’t quite figured out, that chapter of our lives has had an interesting, long-term hold over some of us, with our views still evolving decades later. Indeed, it makes eminent sense to me that Novotney spent twenty years working on this book.

I know that I’ll be rereading Novotney’s novel sooner than later. That’s a sign of a good book. To those whose curiosities have been piqued by this short review and commentary, I especially recommend The Four Jacks.