zondag 26 februari 2012

While the Sun Shines by John Harding

While the Sun Shines
is a campus novel, but you shouldn't hold that against it: it's actually quite good. The campus novel in England has been in serious decline of late. There's certainly nothing to compare with recent American examples of the genre, such as Philip Roth's The Human Stain, which begins in college, but which is able to obtain an exeat into wider society and culture. The besetting sin of the English, of course, is our bathos, and ever since Lucky Jim, the campus novel has been up to its ears in it: universities are a joke, full of idiot students, sexual predators, misfits, malcontents, and professional time-killers. There are precisely three perfect examples of the form: Lucky Jim itself, Malcom Bradbury's The History Man, and David Lodge in omnibus edition - books which transcend their own limits. Professor Michael Cole is approaching his 50th birthday. He teaches English literature at some nameless "third division" university, and his specialism is John Donne. Like Donne, he is obsessed with sex and death. Unlike Donne, he sleeps with his female students, smokes dope and snorts cocaine. Fortunately, he does not write poetry. One of Professor Cole's students announces: "Fuck me, Professor Cole, fuck me!" The book has some intellectual content and pretensions, but WG Sebald it is not. The Guardian.

"Blue Angel" by Francine Prose

Blue Angel
Prose has taught writing at numerous colleges and is clearly appalled by the puritanical mood on campus today. Yet her dissection of the chilly campus climate goes way beyond simple p.c.-bashing. Things weren’t so good in the old, pre-feminist days, either; Swenson’s wife, Sherrie, the college nurse, has seen enough students “destroyed by faculty Romeos.” But nowadays the students seem oddly childish and fearful. At the heart of the malaise lies an odd sense of entitlement — the students’ insistence that they don’t have to hear anything they might find disturbing or that might make them feel “unsafe.” Salon

Alisa Cox


INTERVIEW WITH AILSA COX

TSR: WHAT ARE YOU WORKING ON NOW?
AC: More stories - and I also have a long term fiction project called The Institute, which forms very satisfactory parallel world to my everyday life. Okay, I confess - it's a campus novel.

Monsieur Lazhar

'Monsieur Lazhar' is the story of an Algerian immigrant substitute teacher who brings emotional stability to a Montreal middle school class shaken by the suicide of their well-liked teacher.

Khari

Tabish Khari, How to Fight Islamist Terror from the Missionary Position.
New Delhi: ‘Islamic’ terror is a much-hyped, written and debated topic the world over, but not many writers have successfully attempted to write fiction on the issue. It’s in this context that literati have quite a lot of expectations from Tabish Khair, whose much-awaited novel, “How to Fight Islamist Terror from the Missionary Position” is due to be released in April this year. According to interviews given to the media by Tabish Khair, who is a professor at Aarhus University in Denmark, the novel is a satire on both ‘Islamic’ terror and Western response to the issue. In spite of this the first thing which is going to catch your attention about the book is its title which says something on ‘Islamic’ terror and not surprisingly media has highlighted the novel that way alone. According to Siyahi, a literary portal, “How to Fight Islamist Terror from the Missionary Position” tells the interlinked stories of three unforgettable men – the flamboyant Ravi, the fundamentalist Karim and the unnamed and pragmatic Pakistani narrator – whose trajectories cross in Aarhus, and are complicated by the Danish Prophet Mohammad cartoon controversy. In the book, which is a love story set in Denmark featuring Indian and Pakistani youths in the background of the Danish cartoon of the Prophet, the Bihar born writer has brought together and played with the thematic elements of crime thriller, the immigrant novel, the campus novel, and the young adult romance to produce a stinging satire on ‘Islamic’ terror and the way West reacts to the issue. Two Circles.

zaterdag 18 februari 2012

Adventures in Pop/Culture: Popular pictures of professors

Popular pictures of professors as pitiful pedants: Puh-leez
He is The Professor — and nothing more has to be said, because The Professor rarely varies from one movie to the next. WildeBoomerz

Smart People

Smart People (2008)
Into the life of a widowed professor comes a new love and an unexpected visit from his adopted brother.
Quote:
Lawrence Wetherhold: [stilted date conversation] We respond to literary texts using precisely the same fundamental interpretive categories that authors and poets use to create them. So there's no need to posit any kind of unstable ontology, or ruptured consciousness. You following me? imdb

zondag 5 februari 2012

The Philip Dolly Affair

New kind of review: Two friends discuss our new community college campus novel. Youtube