Renata Adler's Speedboat (Amazon | NYRB Classics) chronicles the misadventures of a student at a woman's college who (illegally) owns an alligator, the Celtic knot of French wait-in-this-line-to-wait-in-this-line bureaucracy, a speedboat journey that leads to a broken back, and the inability of bougie under-40s to contribute meaningfully to charitable work. I could just as easily say that Speedboat examines the artifice of the campaign trail, the circle-jerk of academia, and the odd line that dictates male…