Naked Came the Post-Postmodernist

The murder of Eric Davenport, a math professor at a small liberal arts college, propels this unwieldy round-robin novel by an undergraduate creative writing class at New York's Sarah Lawrence College. Grace Montoya, a student with whom Davenport had an extramarital affair, also turns up dead, leaving Harsley, a tough-talking police detective, with a double murder on his hands. Whatever plot there is devolves into a random walk through a grove of academic stereotypes: campus potheads, overwrought vegans, doubly overwrought poets, J. Crew%E2%80%93sporting preppies, angst-ridden artists, and claques of cliquish lesbians. The Sarah Lawrence student writers, who deliver a few fine sentences along with much juvenile profanity, have a great deal of potential talent, and there is an enjoyable and authentic thread of derision for all sorts of academic political correctness throughout. Unfortunately, these elements provide the only cohesion in what is otherwise a hot mess of a gargantuan writing exercise. (Jan.)