is a mid-life crisis tale set at Railton College, told in the first person by William Henry "Hank" Devereaux Jr., the unlikely chairman of the English department in a badly underfunded college in a working-class American town. Hank's discontent is rooted in unresolved issues with his father, a mediocre and entitled student body, and in the fact that his department is more savagely divided than the Balkans.