Ivory Gutter Shining Bright: Two Decades of Short Stories About America's Phoniest Institution - Softcover

Harris Ph.D., John R

Softcover

ISBN 10: 1090397550 ISBN 13: 9781090397553

Verlag: Independently published, 2019

Inhaltsangabe

In the author’s own words, “This is a humorous book because it is an angry book.” The collection’s twenty-five short stories share the fruit not just of three decades of teaching in college classrooms, but also of the half-decade Harris passed in earning three degrees (accomplishing what most of his professors considered a speed record). Virtually every story generalizes this paradox of “Dr. John’s” personal experience: the paradox, that is, of a student mentality perfectly suited to the meditative life colliding with workplace realities of cutthroat self-promotion and political gamesmanship. In other words, the stories are not what Professor Harris calls “chronicles”: we find in them no plodding, objective scrapbook of memorable students or newsworthy campus occurrences down through the years. Their tendency is just the opposite, toward the explosively allegorical. Many are almost moral fables, with boldfaced character types engaged in acts of spectacular folly, arrogance, duplicity, vengeance, or cowardice.And in these morally outlandish scenarios, our professorial players become ridiculous. “I won’t make any bones about it,” confesses the author in his Preface: “in my opinion, far and away the most animating force in academe is egotism. The Ivory Tower is eaten up with it, like an old log by termites.” He soon adds, “Self-importance is always at least implicitly humorous.” At least implicitly—sometimes overtly. A Spanish professor on a mission to sever literary classics from the curriculum is chased out of a public park by Don Quixote on a bicycle; an English professor who aspires to exile all reading and writing from education pursues Sasquatches (and their female pursuers) in the dark; four high-power female administrators of the feminist persuasion end up in Hell—literally—sabotaging each other’s plans for promotion per saecula saeculorum. These are not exactly everyday events, yet Harris believes that they portray the psychological truth of today’s academy.Of course, we also find humor in a milder vein and in more familiar environments. The abysmal quality of student writing and cultural awareness is center-staged in “Next Door Burned Ucalegon” and “The Steamrolled Kaleidoscope”, while we glimpse how skillfully certain students can dominate their professors in “Spontaneous Overflow” and “The ‘A’ in ‘Team’”. The poor Ph.D. at the rostrum actually garners some sympathy at these moments. The agony of the young professor facing tenure rejection turns to strange burlesque in “Go Tell the Lacedemonians”, yet retains great poignancy in “Memento Mori” and “Window Without a View”. The final piece, “Pseudo-Artificial Intelligence”, has a stunningly sci-fi finish that finely parodies the contemporary academy’s adoration of technology; but the earlier “Fish in a Barrel” and “Third Degree” convey a realistic campus setting, and present us, perhaps, to the collection’s two most down-to-earth, irresistibly likable characters.In short, these stories are not uniformly acerbic or grotesque or unsympathetic. Far from it: many are written with great compassion for their Ivory Tower subjects, even as most find a way to ridicule their presumptuous lifestyle. All the same, readers will smile the broadest who have “survived” academe at some level. Those who are immersed in it, day in and day out, probably won’t appreciate the view offered by such an unflattering mirror.

Details zur Ausgabe

• Verlag: Independently published
• Erscheinungsdatum: 2019
• Sprache: Englisch
• ISBN 10: 1090397550
• ISBN 13: 9781090397553
• Einband: Taschenbuch
• Anzahl der Seiten: 384
• Kontakt zum Hersteller: Manufactured by Amazon on behalf of the author; https://www.amazon.de/hz/contact-us; ; c/o Amazon Media EU S.à.r.l., 38 Avenue John F. Kennedy; Luxembourg; L-1855; Luxemburg