​The campus novel is a sub-genre with an inbuilt tendency towards navel-gazing since literary fiction is by and large written by graduates for graduates. Setting this one in Iowa City, home of the Writers’ Workshop, risks an inflammation of this tendency. Sensibly, Brandon Taylor pulls away from roman à clef territory and a hall-of-mirrors effect by ignoring practitioners of fiction and introducing a poet, Seamus, in the first section of The Late Americans.Seamus is a disruptive element in his seminar group, prone to giggles as he mentally critiques the work being examined (‘This variety of...…​The campus novel is a sub-genre with an inbuilt tendency towards navel-gazing since literary fiction is by and large written by graduates for graduates. Setting this one in Iowa City, home of the Writers’ Workshop, risks an inflammation of this tendency. Sensibly, Brandon Taylor pulls away from roman à clef territory and a hall-of-mirrors effect by ignoring practitioners of fiction and introducing a poet, Seamus, in the first section of The Late Americans.Seamus is a disruptive element in his seminar group, prone to giggles as he mentally critiques the work being examined (‘This variety of...WW…