A novel that's easy to dismiss, and yet ... Richard Stern's Other Men's Daughters

Richard Stern's almost-forgotten1973 novel, Other Men's Daughters (recently reissued by the great NYRB though I'm reading a library copy of the old Dutton hardback) can easily be dismissed as a middle-aged intellectual's fantasy novel: 40-year-old Harvard physiology professor Robert Merriwether, living in one of the old Harvard Square mansions passed down from his aunt (the M's are a classic Boston Brahmin family), married to the stereotypical faculty wife - genteel, from DownEast Maine, gave up her literary studies to settle into the marriage), marriage a little dull and stale, 4 kids of at or near college age who play almost no role in the novel at least through the first 1/3 or so, encounters a beautiful 20-year-old summer student (she comes to him while he's working at an doctor at one of the Harvard clinics, seeking a scrip for the pill) who literally flings herself at him and in a short time becomes involved in a passionate relationship; the novel opens as he's about to leave his family for this young woman - whose behavior doesn't even register on the scale of credibility. No surprise that the edition I'm reading has a back-cover blurb from Philip Roth - literally the longest jacket blurb I've ever seen (I have not, though, read the blurb - never do). Stern at the time was a prof at Chicago, where Roth also taught, so this seems to be a case of some log-rolling, though I believe Roth's praise was sincere: The two authors cover a lot of the same ground, w/ the academic novel of infidelity (see When She Was Good) as do a # of other writers from in or near their generation (see Malamud, and earlier see the great novel Stoner and Wharton's The Professor's House). The difference is that Roth's characters (and the others referenced above) are far more nuanced and more credible and their dilemmas far more complex and fraught. In Other Men's Daughters (even the title is off-putting) we don't really care what happens to Merriwether as, first of all, he doesn't care for anyone but himself and, 2nd, there's not a lot at stake: He leaves the marriage or he doesn't, and either way he's a creep. All that said, Stern's writing is excellent and his intelligence is manifest: Merriwether is a scientist, and Stern goes to great lengths to discuss many facets of his scientific work (his specialty is the nature of thirst - biological what determines thirst, what signals are sent to the brain, and why) - so he gets props on this, as almost all of the academic novels focus on English professors. He also does a pretty good job establishing the tone and milieu of Harvard Square in the 1970s, w/ a bit of overemphasis on the "hippie" culture (which must have seemed to Stern so odd and overwhelming, compared with the staid climate of U-Chicago in that era); I don't know what connection if any Stern had w/ Harvard, but he certainly taps into the Harvard elitism - even putting down the "second-rate" school the young woman (Cynthia) ttends (Swarthmore! - it would have made more sense had Stern placed her in a public university rather than one of the most selective colleges in the country). One odd note: when Merriwether first encounters Cynthia after her clinic visit, she offers him a lick of her ice-cream cone. Note only is this odd, but I think it's exactly the way Roth first encounters a young woman in NYC in the recent novel that's clearly based on aspects of Roth's life. Odd.