On the specific genre of the 'campus novel': the tradition from Lucky Jim through A.S. Byatt's Possession through Elif Batuman's The Idiot, the campus novel is a peculiar container for certain kinds of intellectual comedy and certain kinds of romantic/erotic subplot that can't quite exist in other settings. The campus produces an artificial intensity — people living in concentrated proximity, organized around ideas — that is useful for novelists.

The best campus novels work because they take the ideas seriously. Lucky Jim is funny about academic pomposity but it also knows what the pompous academics are talking about. Possession is a romantic thriller about Victorian poetry that requires you to care about Victorian poetry. The Idiot is a coming-of-age novel that takes the experience of learning to read as a genuine subject.

The campus novel that doesn't take the intellectual life seriously is just a setting, not a genre.