Irrational Man

Irrational Man

Woody Allen - USA - 2015 - 96 min.
met Joaquin Phoenix, Emma Stone, Parker Posey,…

Professor in de filosofie, Abe Lucas, is een emotioneel verwoest man die alle vreugde in zijn leven heeft verloren. Wanneer hij een nieuwe job op een kleine campus aanneemt gaat de geruchtenmolen in overdrive. Hij zou een alcoholicus zijn die er affaires met zijn studenten op nahoudt, zijn vrouw zou hem verlaten hebben voor zijn beste vriend, een andere vriend zou voor zijn ogen op een landmijn ontploft zijn in Afghanistan… Alleszins, Abe Lucas is het spannendste wat Braylin College de laatste jaren is overkomen. Hij blijkt zijn reputatie ook alle eer aan te doen, wanneer hij in een alcoholische waas ronddwaalt doorheen de campus, zijn studenten advies geeft in de trant van “much of philosophy is verbal masturbation” en hij omstaanders shockeert met een nihilistisch spelletje Russische roulette. Zijn gelatenheid trekt al snel de romantische aandacht van twee vrouwelijke creaturen. De ene, Jill Pollard, een pientere studente die Abe’s les ‘Ethische Strategieën’ volgt. De andere, Rita Richards, een ongelukkig getrouwde collega. De romances komen moeizaam op gang, maar wanneer Abe plots een moord contempleert op een corrupte rechter, vindt hij zijn levenslust en romantisch potentieel opeens terug.

http://www.studioskoop.be/film/irrational_man

Tessa McWatt Higher Ed.

Tessa McWatt, Higher Ed. Goodreads.

In her most powerful and resonant novel to date, the acclaimed writer Tessa McWatt explores the ways in which people find love in desperately uncertain times.
      Against a backdrop of 21st-century east London, where cuts and job crunches and unemployment are ugly, unrelenting realities, three very different love stories bloom. Francine, a university administrator who firmly believes that she is unattractive and unloveable, is unhinged after witnessing a tragic road accident. Cracked open, she is also on the verge of realizing that she is worth something to someone. Meanwhile Robin, a young film prof who Francine has lusted after from afar, is awoken to beauty in the form of the young Polish waitress in his local café, who cannot believe that he might love her back. And then there is Olivia, Robin's charismatic student, a mixed race girl growing up in a racist household, who thought she'd been abandoned by her father, Ed. Conducting research for a law school project on what society owes the dead, she stumbles across him working in a council office, where he's in charge of burying the indigent and unclaimed. Soon she realizes that Ed is not the kind of man who would abandon anybody.
     Thoughtful, poignant and profound, Higher Ed is a brilliantly observed novel that illuminates the human capacity for love, and lingers in the soul long after the last page is read. 

The campus novel isn’t traditionally notable for its multiculturalism, probably because until recent decades many university campuses have been fairly homogenous places. The ivory towers in Kingsley Amis’s Lucky Jim, David Lodge’s Changing Places and Philip Hensher’s King of the Badgers are overwhelmingly white, inside and out. Only in 2005 did Zadie Smith’s On Beauty breathe fresh life into the genre by depicting an academic rivalry complicated by ethnicity, culture and class.

Higher Ed injects a dose of diversity into a tale about love, loneliness and the search for belonging - The Globe and Mail

Lodge: campus novel

Stefan Collini reviews ‘Quite a Good Time to Be Born’ by David Lodge and ‘Lives in Writing’ by David Lodge · LRB 19 February 2015

Still, it may be his fate to be celebrated as a contributor to the sub-genre now known as the ‘campus novel’ since his two best-known books must be Changing Places and Small World (1984). In the former, a British and an American academic exchange jobs (and much else) for a semester, while the latter takes the form of a grail quest pursued through a series of international scholarly conferences; both depict academic life largely in terms of comedy, sex and self-importance. Indeed, so little do the serious concerns of the scholarly world feature in these novels that some commentators have seen them as contributing, along with works such as Bradbury’s somewhat darker The History Man (1975), to the decline in public regard for universities and academic life in the 1970s and 1980s. Significantly, Lodge himself has discussed the campus novel more in terms of literary form than social effect. In a 1982 essay, he described the genre as ‘a form of stylised play … a modern, displaced form of pastoral’. That may be a helpful way to see his own campus novels (there are three if one includes Nice Work, published in 1988), while bearing in mind that pastoral usually functions as a vehicle for social criticism. It would be a mistake, however, to define his work exclusively in terms of this sub-genre: his fictional achievements are far more diverse and, in some respects, weighty than that.

Claire Messud, The Woman Upstairs.

Claire Messud, The Woman Upstairs by Claire Messud. Goodreads.

Nora Eldridge, a 37-year-old elementary school teacher in Cambridge, Massachusetts, is on the verge of disappearing. Having abandoned her desire to be an artist, she has become the "woman upstairs," a reliable friend and tidy neighbour always on the fringe of others' achievements. Then into her classroom walks a new pupil, Reza Shahid, a child who enchants as if from a fairy tale. He and his parents--dashing Skandar, a half-Muslim Professor of Ethical History born in Beirut, and Sirena, an effortlessly glamorous Italian artist--have come to America for Skandar to teach at Harvard.

But one afternoon, Reza is attacked by schoolyard bullies who punch, push and call him a "terrorist," and Nora is quickly drawn deep into the complex world of the Shahid family. Soon she finds herself falling in love with them, separately and together. Nora's happiness explodes her boundaries--until Sirena's own ambition leads to a shattering betrayal. 

Houellebecq: Soumission

 Houllebecq: Enfant terrible speelt met de angsten van Frankrijk.

In de eerste hoofdstukken introduceert Houellebecq zijn enigszins slome ik-verteller: François, een academicus die zich al decennialang verdiept in leven en werk van de Franse ambtenaar-auteur Joris-Karl Huysmans (1848-1907). Zoals bekend bekeerde Huysmans zich op het eind van  zijn leven fanatiek tot het katholicisme, na zijn decadente meesterwerk 'A rebours'. Het is veel meer dan een detail in een boek waarin godsdienst en de zucht naar zingeving een prominente rol spelen. In veel opzichten spiegelt het leven van François dat van Huysmans: de verleiding van het kluizenaarschap, de afkeer van de wereld en de uiteindelijke bekering. Zij het dat Francois finaal de islam gaat belijden. Het personage zit dicht op de huid van Houellebecq zelf: “Wat zou er gebeurd zijn met mijn leven indien ik in mijn jeugd Huysmans was beginnen lezen, vervolgens literatuur studeren en professor was geworden? Ik verbeeld me levens die ik niet heb geleid.” (interview in The Paris Review)

De 44-jarige François heeft het niet te verdrijven gevoel dat de hoogtepunten van zijn leven achter hem liggen. Hij leidt een onopvallend bestaan als weliswaar gewaardeerd professor aan de Sorbonne, waarbij hij jaarlijks – bij het begin van een nieuw academiejaar – een nieuw vriendinnetje scoort. Geleidelijk aan droogt zijn debiet aan verse dames op. Hij moet zijn bijna mechanische seksuele appetijt stillen bij prostituees of op YouPorn. (Dirk Leymans, Cobra).

Denis Johnson, In The Name of the World.

"The Name of the World'' extends its narrative line from a ragged Middle Western campus to the graffiti-webbed tunnels of Amtrak to the islands of the Aegean. It closes at the borders of Saddam Hussein's Iraq, as Mike Reed (like Denis Johnson) covers Operation Desert Storm. The world rushing by is sometimes imperfectly realized, sometimes bleak, occasionally luminous. Still, there's no doubt about the power of this writer's vision. (New York Times)

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)

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. 

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.

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

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