3) Have fun!  Remember, if you study less during the day than you were planning on, nothing will happen!  Except for eternal shame.

TRIVIAL PURSUITS

Another work of fiction set at Harvard, also released this year, serves as telling counterpoint to “Penelope.” “The Red Book” by Deborah E. Copaken Kogan ’88 centers around four best friends and roommates from the class of ’89 who return to Harvard for their 20th reunion in the throes of the economic recession. The novel takes its title and its structure from a publication that arrives at the doorsteps of Harvard alums once every five years. The Harvard Red Book, sent out by the Class Report Office, contains essays and contact information submitted by class members. The slogan of the novel presents its theme: “There’s the story you tell the world, and then there’s the real story.”

While Kogan’s novel, unlike Harrington’s, subscribes to the traditional view of education as a decisively formative experience, it seems to show that the experience is not a seamless, straightforward transformation. “We’re all just these fumbling, imperfect, silly people stumbling along in the dark trying to make our way in life. And unfortunately, having a Harvard degree means nothing when it comes to figuring oneself out,” Kogan says. “That’s the work that has to be done on your own, slowly and painfully through trial and error and lots and lots of mistakes.”

Both Kogan’s and Harrington’s novels challenge pre-existing ideas about Harvard and the broader genre of campus novels, but ultimately “Penelope” is the more shrewd of the two. Does it sincerely represent the undergraduate student body? Hardly. Did we expect it to, with its hot-pink cover emblazoned with a rare breed of Veritaffle containing not the Veritas shield but rather a large H? Not for a second. The best part about Harrington’s novel is how it does not attempt to be something it is not. Perhaps the lack of pretension and glamour surrounding the collegiate experience in “Penelope” is something to learn from. “It’s just a series of experiences,” Harrington says. “Some of them are okay. Some of them are not okay. And the stakes are pretty low no matter what.”

—Zoë K. Hitzig can be reached at zhitzig@college.harvard.edu.