Wallace Will Be Big Name on Campus

First, an It Boy of literature signs on to teach at Pomona College, where the number of English majors with a creative writing emphasis is a sweet 10--underwhelming enough to persuade shy novelist David Foster Wallace to leave Bloomington, Ill., for Claremont. Then the 12-member English department snaps up another buzzed-about novelist. Then the new "best colleges" list is released. ...

"We're 120 years old," English professor Rena Fraden said of Pomona College, "and I think we're finally coming into our own." Or, at least, with two hip novelists on board, Pomona is beginning to emerge from the shadow of the country's top creative writing programs such as the University of Iowa's. (Graduates of Iowa's master's degree program have included a dozen Pulitzer Prize winners, and the faculty includes another precocious literary craftsman--novelist and short story writer Ethan Canin.)

Wallace, arguably the most lionized writer in a post-Thomas Pynchon coterie of younger novelists and essayists, is best known for his serio-comic 1,079-page novel, "Infinite Jest" (Little, Brown & Co.), which was published in 1996. In a phone interview, Wallace said he accepted the college's offer after a three-day visit. "This is what happens at these really good little schools: non-neurotic, laid-back niceness, combined with everyone being really sharp, smart and interested in stuff," Wallace said. "It was just a really nice vibe ....It really seems like a rare place." (He couldn't resist adding: "I know the old trick--you keep the scary ones bound and gagged in the closet.")

Pomona--part of the Claremont Colleges' consortium of seven campuses--is known for its academics and its intimate classes. The student-faculty ratio is 9 to 1. Last year's freshman class had median SAT scores of 710 in math and 720 in verbal. (By comparison, in 2001, the national median SAT scores for college-bound seniors was 510 in math and 500 in verbal.) Famous graduates include dance legend Twyla Tharp and the late U.S. Sen. Alan Cranston.

In the latest spate of good news, Pomona tied for fifth on the annual U.S. News & World Report list of top-ranked liberal arts colleges, after Swarthmore College, Wellesley College and other well-known institutions. (Pomona has finished fifth in the controversial rankings in eight of the last 10 years.) Also, this fall, acclaimed novelist Janet Fitch ("White Oleander," Little, Brown & Co.) begins her stint as the Moseley Fellow in Creative Writing. Fitch will teach an advanced fiction writing course.