C.J. Farley’s Around Harvard Square is a book best read aloud. Just short of three hundred pages, it’s a side-eye retort to a certain institution that takes its earned seriousness—perhaps, too?—seriously. Set in the nineties and narrated by a Jamaican-American freshman with a torn-up knee from hooping and straight-ahead Lampoon writer dreams, Around Harvard Square is a tumult of talk: of cracks, counter cracks, arguments, debates, weed- and Zima-boosted “shitchat,” high-brow discourse and self-aware, pop-laced wit. In all of this, perhaps around it, are profound oral histories of Harvard: the American ideal/idol, cultural shorthand for merit.

A gifted and versatile writer, lover of lists, research pro, and polymath, Farley also happens to be an alum of the institution. He knows the world of his story, and understands the muchness of concerns, the challenge to self-assurance carried by many students who make academia’s center stage in an atmosphere that tempts them to take comfort on the margin. (more…)

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