What can I say, as an English PhD with over ten years' worth of teaching experience, but that I can relate to some of this work's aesthetic representations. A Marxist critic would have much to say about the traditional sex role of a wife doing most of the cooking (I'm sure Hank's roast took time and effort, as well). I'm not a Marxist critic.
There are some problems, of course, but they're easily bypassed. The acting skill is there (wow). It's just in need of more sophisticated, technical writing in places.
This is overall a good and promising work, I think, and in many respects, because it speaks to the decadence of our times. I mean, what would Nietzsche say about such characters simply living their lives with maximal prestige and no lasting intellectual input (in print, at least, because these are fictional characters--meant, we can imagine, to target real individuals, such as extant academics in humanities departments going about their business, today).
All this speculation shows how the subject area has great potential. Just me feeling upset by the work, on many levels, and wanting to talk about it is a good thing, as I see it.
My suggestions: this could have several seasons and become more interesting over time (and relevant to the current situation), if it also (a) represented (aesthetically but also from an empirically informed vantage) academic life as less socioeconomically contingent upon, and revolving around, the upper classes--i.e., the landed gentry, the lawyer's kids' needing something to do, as well as the real philosophy that's ongoing in many departments); (b) got deeper into real humanities subjects and ongoing debates, in philosophy and literary theory (as opposed to some imaginary philosophy professor's sexual explorations, which would be--I imagine--an anachronism, if it happened in the original novel, which I have read, in part, but that I know is highly outdated, simply because this character's sexual interests aren't really representing philosophy proper, in my mind, but rather more along the lines of what some professors might do with their free time, if they had that much free time, such as the likes of Distinguished Prof. Prinz, whose works I admire yet find fault with on moral and empirical grounds, in places); and (c) tried to depict the backbone problems intrinsic to academic function, these days, as they currently operate at the state and private levels, in both cases, that is, as incorporated bodies behaving like businesses, with funding concerns, lobbying, race-based-economics (a dean at University of New Mexico is unlike one at Princeton, we might imagine), class-based economics (lower classes getting the poorest showing and the most pushback, hiring committees' nepotism, classism, culture war dogmatism, as well as related fiefdoms, etc., along with, I should stress as a type of (d) depicting the socioeconomic burdens placed on adjunct faculty, sexism, culture waring nonsense, etc.).
There are some problems, of course, but they're easily bypassed. The acting skill is there (wow). It's just in need of more sophisticated, technical writing in places.
This is overall a good and promising work, I think, and in many respects, because it speaks to the decadence of our times. I mean, what would Nietzsche say about such characters simply living their lives with maximal prestige and no lasting intellectual input (in print, at least, because these are fictional characters--meant, we can imagine, to target real individuals, such as extant academics in humanities departments going about their business, today).
All this speculation shows how the subject area has great potential. Just me feeling upset by the work, on many levels, and wanting to talk about it is a good thing, as I see it.
My suggestions: this could have several seasons and become more interesting over time (and relevant to the current situation), if it also (a) represented (aesthetically but also from an empirically informed vantage) academic life as less socioeconomically contingent upon, and revolving around, the upper classes--i.e., the landed gentry, the lawyer's kids' needing something to do, as well as the real philosophy that's ongoing in many departments); (b) got deeper into real humanities subjects and ongoing debates, in philosophy and literary theory (as opposed to some imaginary philosophy professor's sexual explorations, which would be--I imagine--an anachronism, if it happened in the original novel, which I have read, in part, but that I know is highly outdated, simply because this character's sexual interests aren't really representing philosophy proper, in my mind, but rather more along the lines of what some professors might do with their free time, if they had that much free time, such as the likes of Distinguished Prof. Prinz, whose works I admire yet find fault with on moral and empirical grounds, in places); and (c) tried to depict the backbone problems intrinsic to academic function, these days, as they currently operate at the state and private levels, in both cases, that is, as incorporated bodies behaving like businesses, with funding concerns, lobbying, race-based-economics (a dean at University of New Mexico is unlike one at Princeton, we might imagine), class-based economics (lower classes getting the poorest showing and the most pushback, hiring committees' nepotism, classism, culture war dogmatism, as well as related fiefdoms, etc., along with, I should stress as a type of (d) depicting the socioeconomic burdens placed on adjunct faculty, sexism, culture waring nonsense, etc.).
Tell Your Friends