the U

The U is the university that anchors the early careers of Auden’s parents: Robert arrived as an assistant professor, and Auden’s mother later built a prominent academic career there. Its significance is both professional and domestic, as their changing standing at the university became part of the strain Auden witnessed at home.

Career Beginnings

Robert and Auden’s mother came to the U straight out of graduate school after Robert was offered an assistant professorship. At the time, he had also found a publisher for his first novel, The Narwhal Horn, while Auden’s mother was pregnant with Hollis and trying to finish her dissertation. The university thus entered their lives at a moment when both were beginning demanding, overlapping careers.

Four years later, when Auden was born, Robert was leading the creative writing program. His novel had received critical and commercial success, including a place on the New York Times bestseller list and a National Book Award nomination. Auden’s mother, meanwhile, was caring for a young child and described herself as lost in diapers and self-doubt.

Unequal Professional Fortunes

When Auden entered kindergarten, her mother returned to academia with renewed force. She secured a visiting lectureship and a publisher for her dissertation, became one of the department’s most popular professors, obtained a full-time position, and published two more books. She eventually received an endowed chair, a prestigious appointment.

Robert’s position moved in the opposite direction: his publisher dropped him. The contrast between his wife’s growing recognition and his own professional setback coincided with a deterioration in their relationship. The university is not described as the sole cause of their conflict, but its professional hierarchy and the couple’s uneven success form a clear part of the background to the arguments Auden overheard.

Narrative Significance

The U is presented through the family’s changing fortunes rather than through a physical description of its campus. It is the setting of their shared academic beginnings and the institutional backdrop against which their roles shifted: Robert once led a creative writing program, while Auden’s mother moved from interrupted study to a celebrated professorship and endowed chair. That reversal gives the university’s career milestones a private consequence, linking public achievement and disappointment to the marital tension that shaped Auden’s childhood.