An attack on an academic colleague, in fiction and in life

In the second and third parts (about the middle third of the 1973 novel) of Richard Stern's Other Men's Daughters the protagonist, Robert Merriwether, begins to get what he deserves, or at least what he should have expected. At this point he has taken Cynthia, the college student half his age (she's 20) with him for a summer conference in Nice (he's a physiology professor at Harvard). How he in any way thought he could maintain the secrecy of their relationship - for a year or so they'd been meeting regularly in and near Harvard Square, which as Stern makes clear is an insular, gossipy academic community - is beyond me, but he's outed when a Newsweek reporter interviews Merriwether and for some not likely reason references his pretty young assistant, Cynthia Ryder. The folks back on the home front in Cambridge can read between the lines! On another front, Cynthia's father, a prominent, self-made, competitive Carolina lawyer, comes to pay a visit; I expected fireworks and an ultimatum at the least, but Merriwether charms Atty Ryder and he departs wishing them well though encouraging Cynthia to get some counseling. Well, so much for the protective dad. A good sidelight, however, is the complete breakdown and furious personal attack on Merriwether from an eccentric lesser light at the conference, a guy from the Univ of North Dakota (such a condescending novel), which some may find to be unlikely and over the top but I can attest that such attacks do happen and even wonder whether Stern was present (as I was) in Buffalo in the early 70s when the cantankerous Lionel Abel similarly trashed cerebral colleague Angus Fletcher? On returning to Cambridge, Merriwether has to deal now w/ the confusion he's caused the children (Stern writes little about these 4 children) and the estrangement and extreme (and justified) bitterness and anger from wife, Sarah - all while trying to continue this unlikely relationship w/ Cynthia, setting her up in an apartment, spending most nights there, sometimes enduring her wrath. Stern depicts her as highly intelligent, beautiful, athletic, well-mannered, wealthy - one would think she could do better than a married man twice her age, but I guess love is strange.