Santa Clara University

SCU professor and author lightens up

The latest book by Ron Hansen, the Gerard Manley Hopkins, S.J. Professor of Arts and Humanities at Santa Clara University, is quite a departure from his previous work. Isn't it Romantic: An Entertainment (HarperCollins, 2003, $17.95) is a romantic comedy that proved to be a nice surprise for his readers and critics.

"Writing a screwball comedy was a short detour for me, something on the order of cross-training in sports," says Hansen, who is well known for his novels Hitler's Niece, Atticus (which was a National Book Award Finalist) and Mariette in Ecstacy. His most recent book was a nonfiction collection of essays entitled A Stay Against Confusion: Essays on Faith and Fiction. Hansen says his new book "was a new exercise, a fresh challenge, even a way of paying homage to far better comic writers like P.G. Wodehouse, Preston Sturges, and Michael Frayn. I call it an 'entertainment' because I was largely entertaining myself."

The inspiration for this book came from a long bus trip in his native Nebraska. "I noticed a bickering French couple who knew no English and seemed to have succumbed to the bleak idea of seeing America on an overland route," Hansen explains. "I was heading to a very small town where my Volkswagen had broken down, and I wondered what it would be like for them if they were waylaid in such a place. And so I dropped a similar couple into my cauldron of plot and simply watched the chemical reaction."

Hansen's latest novel has earned plenty of attention and rave reviews across the country. "Hilarious," wrote The San Francisco Chronicle, adding that the book is "irreverent and laugh-out-loud funny...further proof of the author's phenomenal range and talent." And People called the book "a treat...[Isn't It Romantic?] has both sophisticated and down-homey humor...with laugh out loud scenes."

The next project on Hansen's plate is somewhat of a return to more familiar ground for him: He is working on a novel about the Jesuit poet Gerard Manley Hopkins.