Galbraith Writes Third Novel

Walburg Professor of Economics Emeritus John Kenneth Galbraith's texts are usually nestled somewhere between Adam Smith's The Wealth of Nations and Karl Marx's Das Kapital. But come this winter, Harvard's preeminent economist may be competing for shelf space with James Michener and Jackie Collins.

Set for release February 25, Galbraith's third novel, A Tenured Professor, revolves around the life of Montgomery Marvin, a fictional junior professor of economics at Harvard. Marvin invents the Index of Irrational Expectations (IRAT), an economic formula that allows him to make a fortune.

Despite the apparent similarities between Galbraith and the book's protagonist, both the professor and his editor at Houghton Mifflin Publishing Co. said the novel is not autobiographical.

"It involves much more financial adventure than I would enter into," Galbraith said, chuckling.

Joseph A. Kanon '68, who edited the manuscript of A Tenured Professor, said the telling details of a Harvard professor's life are the only autobiographical elements of the book.

"I had never known, for example, what it's like to have lunch at the long tables in the Faculty Club," Kanon said.

Galbraith's two previous novels were The Triumph, the story of a Central American dictator, and The McLandress Dimension, a tale of an inventor who, among other projects, creates a method of classifying people by the amount of time they spend not thinking about themselves.

Because of a State Department rule demanding complete anonymity of ambassadors' writings, The McLandress Affair, published while Galbraith was the U.S. Ambassador to India, was printed under a pseudonym.

Galbraith said he prefers writing novels to producing economic studies. "Writing novels is wonderful and very relaxing," he said. "You shape a world and live in it."

Kanon described the book as light and humorous. "It's delicious. It's very much Ken. It's charming," he said.