Ben Lerner: Leaving the Atocha Station

Leaving the Atocha Station

"Adam—at once ideological and post-ideological, vaguely engaged and profoundly spectatorial, charming and loathsome—is a convincing representative of twenty-first-century American Homo literatus."

The New Yorker

Up the Down Staircase

Up the Down Staircase

Directed By: Robert Mulligan
Written By: Tad Mosel

A serious social drama film of the type that flourished in the 1960's, Up the Down Staircase seems somewhat dated and preachy when viewed by modern audiences. The subject matter is laudable, of course: an ambitious, spirited and concerned young teacher determined to make a difference in a troubled inner city school. And there are quite a few memorable moments, including a very well-directed juxtaposition of Sylvia Barrett triumphing by getting her class excited about A Tale of Two Cities as the lovelorn and dejected Alice Blake quietly and calmly examines the classroom of the teacher she loves before jumping from a window. 

Rotten Tomatoes

Helene Uri, De besten onder ons.

Besten onder ons

Pål heeft een zwak voor taal en vrouwen. Zijn moeder neemt een prominente plaats in, maar ook niet onbelangrijk zijn de vrouwen met wie hij samenwerkt op het prestigieuze Instituut voor Futuristische Linguïstiek. Zijn hoofd is vol van verlangens naar zijn jonge collega Nanna en dromen over fonetische grafieken en eeuwige roem, maar de gevreesde en fascinerende Edith Rinkel leidt hem af van zijn werk. De vijftigjarige professor kan voor weinig zaken enthousiasme opbrengen, maar als ze ergens wel over te spreken is, doet ze dat met passie... Mooie schoenen, jonge mannen, maar bovenal haar wetenschappelijk onderzoek. Het wordt Pål duidelijk dat ze bereid is ver te gaan om haar doel te bereiken.

Uitgeverij De Geus

Helene Uri, The Best Among Us

The Best Among Us 

Reminiscent of a campus novel by David Lodge, Helene Uri’s The Best Among Us presents a picture of contemporary life in the Norwegian university scene. If anyone is familiar with this setting, it’s Helene Uri. A linguist and writer, she resigned from her university job several years ago after becoming fed up with the politics and pandering necessary to get ahead in the field. This critique in the guise of a novel focuses on Pål and Nanna, researchers at the prestigious Insitute of Futuristic Linguistics, who are at work on a very large and very important project on how language will look in the future. All goes relatively well until Pål falls for the fifty-year-old professor, Edith Rinkel, whose moral compass points in a dubious direction when it comes to satiating her passion for research. She will go to any length to fulfill her goals and, unfortunately for Pål, she happens to have a penchant for young men. One critic describes The Best Among Us as “a wealth of satirical sketches…and a sparkling source of philological humor in its broadest sense.”

Publishing Trends

Helene Uri. Forfatter og språkviter. Om Helene Uri.: 

Her novel The Best among Us (Norway's first campus novel) has sold more than 70,000 copies in Norway alone, and was on the national bestselling lists for more than a year. Her latest novel, The righteous, was published in May 2009.

E.L. James: Fifty Shades

Fifty Shades of Grey condemned as 'manual for sexual torture' 

EL James's books tell the story of the submissive/dominant relationship between billionaire Christian Grey and college student Anastasia Steele. 

Books review - guardian.co.uk

Bautman: Adventures with Russion Books

Batuman Elif, Adventures With Russian Books and the People Who Read Them

And we thought our lives were like something out of a campus novel! It's a beautiful book, funny, informed, eloquent, passionate. Only two problems: sometimes Batuman crams her essays with so much, as if she were worried her readers would stop paying attention if not entertained at all times; two, while she writes rapturously about later literature, in particular Russian and other European novels, she shows very little understanding for pre-modern, non-European literature.

Goodreads

Review: 

To study first-year French is to enter a world of savoir-faire, beauty and romance. Instructive filmstrips show master chefs whisking halos of caramelized sugar; or Versailles woodworkers restoring antique marquetry; or Gallic lovers in deux chevaux, illustrating how “to go” and “to be” while tooting off for a weekend in Marseille. But this is not the world of Russian 101. In Russian 101, you get grainy black-and-white photos of concert halls “closed for repairs,” and you learn bitter dialogues like this one: ...

see: Book Review by Elif Batuman - NYTimes.com

Academic novels: Denis Johnson and the Academic Novel(la)

Academic Novels

Perhaps it’s a cosmic message delivered through the medium of literature, or just pure coincidence, but of late much of what I am reading relates to the occupation and amusements of academic life. Not an uncommon approach, since many fiction writers too are/were academics themselves, it is nonetheless an intriguing genre in itself to see the academic at odds with the world of fiction, or the writer having to navigate the duplicitous paths of peer-reviewed academia and free flowing fiction. An academic novel, also known as a ‘campus novel’ is regarded by John Lyons as one in which “higher education is treated with seriousness and the main characters are students or professors” (1962: xvii).

Lion and the Hunter

Footnote

Footnote

Footnote (Hebrew: הערת שוליים‎, translit. He'arat Shulayim) is a 2011 Israelidrama film written and directed by Joseph Cedar, starring Shlomo Bar'aba and Lior Ashkenazi. The plot revolves around the troubled relationship between a father and son who teach at the Talmud department of the Hebrew University of Jerusalem.

Wikipedia

Blog: Campus Novel

* University Novel * Academic Novel * College Novel * Campus Novel *: Novel Academic Novels: the Sequel by Ms. Mentor

this blog is meant as a resource for academic teachers, writers, and readers. All about academic fiction and mutations thereof--my next book project and the title of a class I will hopefully teach soon. The raison d'être of setting up this blog is to organize an international study group, a conference, to set up a mailing list, a website, publish a collection of essays etc. about this Anglo-American genre.

Abbas Kiarostami, Like Someone in Love

Like Someone in Love

The action revolves around a young student Akiko (Rin Takanashi) who is doing escort work in Tokyo, and becoming increasingly exhausted and disenchanted. When she is sent out on a job in the suburbs, her client turns out to be a gentle and grandfatherly academic, Takashi (Tadashi Okuno) who is amusingly shown distractedly taking a late-night telephone call from someone wanting some translation work done – as Akiko is coming through the door. The relationship between this ingenuous and good-natured young woman and shy old man develops in an intriguing way and Takashi winds up giving cautious advice to Akiko's garage mechanic boyfriend Noriaki (Ryo Kase) who claims to be her fiancé, and is in serious danger of finding out how Akiko picks up extra cash.

The Guardian

Zweig

Zweig, Confusion

Roland is a young student who, after spending his early university days in Berlin strolling the streets and seducing young ladies, has agreed to focus on his academic career in a provincial university. He becomes fascinated by his new professor and is inspired to concentrate on his studies. The relationship benefits both of them since Roland persuades his teacher to finish the great work of scholarship that he has been laboring at for years. Yet the professor's moods dramatically veer between enthusiasm and despair, and he disappears unexpectedly for days at a time. Furthermore, the professor's relationship with his much younger and beautiful wife is not as it should be. A puzzled Roland finds himself struggling as he tries to understand his own tenuous relationship with the couple.

NYbooks

Detention

Film scores with a genre mix

From Director Joseph “Torque” Kahn comes “Detention,” a hilarious, fast-talking and witty high school film with a stellar sound track and a serial killer named Cinderhella who terrorizes the students. (...) Like “The Breakfast Club,” “Detention” defines the younger generation by focusing on high school life. However, “Detention” is shown in such a way as to mimic the multi-tasking, texting youth of today with a complex story line that compels viewers to watch and never look away.

thedailycougar.com

The Charisma of the iPad: On Technology in the Classroom

Alan Jacobs:

Over the years a good many people have commented to me that John Keating -- the Robin Williams character in Dead Poets Society, that charismatic lover of and advocate for poetry -- surely had to be the pedagogical ideal, the teacher that every teacher, especially every teacher of literature, would want to be. No, I always reply. That would be Mr. Miyagi, from The Karate Kid. It's not easy being Mr. Keating. Many of his students aren't interested in his subject; others are interested but their parents don't want them to be. He has a lot to overcome, and though he does it by pure charisma, the achievement is costly: it's all-consuming for him and dangerous for some of his students. Too much drama is involved. I don't need that. By contrast, look at the sweet deal Mr. Miyagi has: his pupil comes to him, and is so eager for the sensei's wisdom and insight that he's willing to undertake all sorts of menial tasks in order to apprentice himself. Mr. Miyagi can just go about his business -- or rather, his leisure -- in the serene assurance that Daniel is learning the skills he wants to learn while the sensei gets his house painted and his car waxed. Everybody wins.

The Atlantic

21 Jump Street

It's also got the cliche of almost every high school film of the 1980s and 1990s - right from the nerdy but studious gang to the big deal and limo at prom night. It twists those cliches and plays with them enough for it to make both a tribute and satire of it. NY Daily News

Bully

Bully tackles the issue of adolescent peer bullying, particularly as it occurs in schools. Memphis Flyer.

Appeal to Campus Life

'The Art of Fielding' certainly isn't the first novel to explore campus life. Author Nicholas Delbanco examines the literary appeal of campus grounds. chicagotribune.com

Maya Arad

An academic novel

I keep my eyes open and collect inspirational moments. Then something clicks, and all those moments fall into place and are arranged into a plot. “Seven Moral Failing” – an academic novel, my first prose book – was inspired by a picture by (Andrea) Mantegna at the Louvre museum, showing Minerva driving away the seven moral failings. I looked at it and thought of all the graduate students and professors I knew throughout the years, all the sloth, ignorance, etc. – and within a few hours I had an outline of a plot.

Clevelandjewsnews

College Leadership Crisis:

Jann M. Contento & Jeffrey Ross, College Leadership Crisis: The Philip Dolly Affair. Rogue Phoenix Press, 2011.

What made you want to write about college life? Jeff: We have always been intrigued by community college work life and the Campus Novel genre. We were aware very little community college fiction exists. We have written several academic articles about certain “challenging” community college issues. At some point, we decided that fiction, comic fiction, might be a better way to articulate our “contrarian” views about the community college experience.

FictionWriting

Daan Heerma van Voss

Daan Heerma van Voss, Zonder Tijd te Verliezen

"...twee vrienden uit Amsterdam besluiten na hun eindexamen een tijd naar Italië te gaan, om uit Nederland weg te zijn, om iets van de wereld te zien, om zich zelfstandig te voelen. Ze gaan naar Perugia, omdat ze zich daar kunnen inschrijven aan de universiteit voor buitenlanders, zodat ze toch nog iets van een kader hebben waarbinnen ze zullen leven. Ze nemen op goed geluk hun intrek in een appartement dat hun wordt aangeboden door een Zweedse jongen. In de dagen vóór de inschrijving brengen ze hun tijd door met rondhangen in bars, naar muziek luisteren, tochtjes maken met andere buitenlandse jongeren. Dan begint de studie, dat wil zeggen voor één van hen, Daan. De ander, Xander, ziet het studeren niet zo zitten en zegt dat hij liever het leven in de praktijk leert. Literair Nederland

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.

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

The Philip Dolly Affair

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

Slumdog Literacy

Movie analysis: The heros journey in Slumdog Millionaire - by Melissa Miles McCarter - Helium

Slumdog Millionaire demonstrates the interactions between postmodernism, post-colonialism and discursive practices that reveal how orality and literacy function within certain communities. Specifically, language functions within the movie to illuminate postmodern notions of community. According to Diane Davis, communitarian literacy is not about exclusions, even though in many cultures, literacy can be seen as a way to stratify people and organize them in specific dynamics which prevent true connection beyond notions of identity, class, or other social categories. This stratification can be seen in Slumdog Millionaire in the social pressures that the young characters face, whether it is trying to survive the slums they grew up in, escape the control of gangsters or function within a corporate dominated worldall situations determined by the social conditions of first colonialism and then postcolonialism.

Helium.

John McGregor

Jon McGregor, This Isn't the Sort of Thing

The stories in This Isn't the Sort of Thing…, by contrast, are often very funny. But it's nervous laughter: McGregor never lets us relax entirely. In "Wires", we are comfortably settled in what feels like the start of a campus novel when things start to get very weird indeed. Likewise, he pulls the rug out from underneath us at the end of "We Were Just Driving Around", and performs a brilliantly black tail‑twist at the end of "The Last Ditch".

The Guardian

Detachment

Detachment

It is a shame that Detachment is not going to be a popular film. But with the twin forces of genre and tone lined up against it, this thoughtful film is destined for the sidelines. Drama is not popular these days. It seems like ever since 9/11, the studios have decided that future entertainment is comedy and fantasy. Really, the word says it all: entertainment is not depressing; entertainment is not critical. Detachment is a scathing look at the progress we’ve haven’t made with No Child Left Behind. An old and tired Adrien Brody joins Lucy Liu on the edge of a breakdown, pill-popping James Caan and sobbing Marcia Gay Harden for three weeks at a fringe school that is catch all for teenage misfits and trouble makers. In a wonderfully soupy timeline, Brody tries to provide some semblance of hope to kids who’d rather be angry and the world and each other than risk failure by genuinely caring. Director Tony Kaye uses chalkboard imaginations, black and white documentary footage, an unspecified interview room and grainy, urban visuals to show how easy it is for teachers to break under the pressure when the world casts blame and assigns praise based on test scores. These teachers are the hulls of idealists with only so much fight left. Detachment is a critique not many will want to hear. There is no bright spot at the end of the tunnel, the film offers no solution. It is simply a window into the endless, thankless toil of the human beings struggling to mold the citizens of tomorrow. Human beings who have to maintain emotional distance because to care too much is to put their own mental health at risk. It’s a window we all need to look through, if we’re actually going to make any progress to provide a real education. Nypress