by Jacob Sconyers

As we know, Dr. Parker was on the English faculty at Northeastern.  Keeping this in mind, it's interesting to look at his descriptions of the "University" in The Godwulf Manuscript.

Chapter 1: "Three sides of the quadrangle were bordered with gray-white brick buildings... The fourth side opened onto the street, where MBTA trains rumbled."

NU's Richards Hall, the administration building (no longer containing the president's office, which is now located on the site of the first World Series), is one of three nearly identical gray brick buildings opening onto the Krentzman Quadrangle.  The fourth side faces Huntington Avenue and the Northeastern station of the MBTA's green line, E branch. 

Chapter 8: "Felton Hall was a converted apartment building, warrened with faculty offices."

This is a reference to the Holmes/Meserve office complex, home to the English department at NU and most of the College of Arts and Sciences.  Dr. Parker would have had an office here when he was on the faculty. These buildings are leftovers from the neighborhood that the University supplanted, and they are ridiculously labyrinthine.  Even veteran navigators of the Northeastern campus tend to get lost trying to locate anything within.  Interestingly, when describing Janet's office in Northeastern's English department in Wilderness, RBP referred it as being in a "converted industrial building," which I believe to be a more accurate description.

Chapter 16:  "We went to the cafeteria in the student union... [It] was modernistic as far as cinder block and vinyl tile will permit... The dining area was three stories high, with one wall of windows that reached the ceiling and opened on a parking lot."

The Curry Student Center matches this description nicely, although the "service area along one side" has been replaced by a row of fast food retailers.  The dining area is still three stories tall with a window-wall, but it now looks out on a secondary quadrangle, not a parking lot.  

Both Westland Ave. and Hemenway St. (ch. 3, 7, 13, etc.) are still home to the student population, but they have been cleaned up significantly.  The drugstore where OFG uses the phone and the Boston directory is still located at the corner of the two, across from the entrance to the Fenway.

When Spenser works out at the Boston YMCA (ch. 8, and pre-Harbor Health Club), the facility is actually on the same block as Richards Hall. 

The campus cops who, in ch. 9, "weren't wearing guns," all carry guns today.  The force is actually very professional, as NU is located on the margins of two dangerous neighborhoods.  Today's Northeastern cops spend most of their time fighting real crime, like assault, theft, and shootings, rather than surveilling campus radicals.  But I don't know what the situation was in the 1970s.

The statue of the Indian on horseback, which OFG is carving in ch. 3, is located at the MFA, about two blocks from the English department. 

The stadium in the Fenway that is the scene of the climactic showdown with Vic Harroway in God Save the Child is just across Hemenway from the Northeastern Campus.

There are many more RBP sites that are likely familiar from his days at NU, but these are the ones that spring most readily to mind.