It came out in 1984 and it was his first book and he hates it and only brought it back into print because he didn’t want people paying hundreds of dollars for it on eBay.
I thought it would be cool to read him writing something short and funny instead of a 900 page techno-adventure, but it’s definitely his worst book.
It’s about kids playing pranks at a college based on Boston U.

There’s also Jeffrey Eugenides’ The Marriage Plot, set in college in 1982 and featuring one character based off of Eugenides and another based off of David Foster Wallace, but his other two books were way better.

Uh, those are the two books I’ve read set in college in the early 80s.