donderdag 18 december 2014

Schumacher: Dear Committee members

Julie Schumacher, Dear Committee Members. Harper Collins


Jason Fitger is a beleaguered professor of creative writing and literature at Payne University, a small and not very distinguished liberal arts college in the midwest. His department is facing draconian cuts and squalid quarters, while one floor above them the Economics Department is getting lavishly remodeled offices. His once-promising writing career is in the doldrums, as is his romantic life, in part as the result of his unwise use of his private affairs for his novels. His star (he thinks) student can't catch a break with his brilliant (he thinks) work Accountant in a Bordello, based on Melville's Bartleby. In short, his life is a tale of woe, and the vehicle this droll and inventive novel uses to tell that tale is a series of hilarious letters of recommendation that Fitger is endlessly called upon by his students and colleagues to produce, each one of which is a small masterpiece of high dudgeon, low spirits, and passive-aggressive strategies. We recommend Dear Committee Members to you in the strongest possible terms.




Goodreads: academia

Goodreads | Favorite Novels About Professors or Academics (262 books)

zaterdag 6 december 2014

Words and Pictures

Words and Pictures (2013) - IMDb

An art instructor and an English teacher form a rivalry that ends up with a competition at their school in which students decide whether words or pictures are more important. 



zondag 4 mei 2014

John Carey

John Carey, The Unexpected Professor: An Oxford Life in Books.

Best known for his provocative take on cultural issues in The Intellectuals and the Masses and What Good Are the Arts?, John Carey describes in this warm and funny memoir the events that formed him - an escape from the London blitz to an idyllic rural village, army service in Egypt, an open scholarship to Oxford and an academic career that saw him elected, age 40, to Oxford's oldest English Literature professorship.He frankly portrays the snobberies and rituals of 1950s Oxford, but also his inspiring meetings with writers and poets - Auden, Graves, Larkin, Heaney - and his forty-year stint as a lead book-reviewer for the Sunday Times. This is a book about the joys of reading - in effect, an informal introduction to the great works of English literature. But it is also about war and family, and how an unexpected background can give you the insight and the courage to say the unexpected thing.



woensdag 30 april 2014

Joost De Vries, De Republiek

Joost de Vries verrassende winnaar van Gouden Boekenuil - Boeken - De Morgen

"Zijn bekroonde roman 'De republiek' kun je lezen als een hoogstaand intellectueel, speels avontuur in academische kringen. De dood van popfilosoof en professor in de Hitlerstudies Josip Brik zet een bitse opvolgingsstrijd in gang. Zal zijn rechterhand Friso De Vos de nalatenschap naar zich toe trekken?"



Academic: Laughing at Us

The Historical Society: Laughing at Us: Academic Novels: Randall Stephens, Laughing at Us: Academic Novels.


Natsume Sōseki

Natsume Sōseki, Botchan (坊っちゃん?) is a novel written by Natsume Sōseki in 1906. It is considered to be one of the most popular novels in Japan, read by most Japanese during their childhood. 
In "Botchan" (坊っちゃん)[12], dat hij schreef in 1906, keert Sōseki terug naar zijn leven als leerkracht.


Jonathan Dresner said...
I don't think of the academic novel as a recent development, because the academic novel was among the first wave of modern novels written in Japan at the beginning of the 20th century. Natsume Soseki's Kokoro and Botchan are both centered on the experience of university students and graduates. The former is a tragedy, the latter a comedy, but even Kokoro's commentary on the academic enterprise is wry and detached.

December 23, 2010 at 12:18 PM

The Historical Society: Laughing at Us: Academic Novels