{"id":6491,"date":"2021-08-22T08:50:40","date_gmt":"2021-08-22T12:50:40","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.levraphael.com\/blog\/?p=6491"},"modified":"2021-08-22T10:27:19","modified_gmt":"2021-08-22T14:27:19","slug":"academic-satire","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.levraphael.com\/blog\/academic-satire\/","title":{"rendered":"Why I’ve Been Publishing Academic Satire Long Before It Was Discovered by Netflix"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"\"<\/a><\/p>\n

In my academic mystery series, I exiled professors to basement offices well before The Chair<\/em> became a series starring Sandra Oh.\u00a0 I’ve seen much worse behavior and it’s inspired my fictional English department since the 90s.\u00a0 The<\/em> New York Times Book Review<\/em> has noted that “The Borgias would not be bored at the State University of Michigan, that snake pit of academic politics.”<\/p>\n

Of course they wouldn’t.\u00a0 Academia\u00a0 has the egomania of professional sports; the hypocrisy of politics; the cruelty of big business; and the inhumanity of organized crime.<\/p>\n

But fans sometimes ask me if academia is really that bad.\u00a0 Are professors that selfish, backbiting, and ungenerous?\u00a0 Yes, they can be. Academic culture from school to school has quirks and even idiocies that make great material for satire (and crime).\u00a0 Sometimes the behavior is egregious, sometimes it’s just ridiculous. Either way, it’s great fodder for fiction.<\/p>\n

Here’s a case in point.\u00a0 At one private college where I read from one of my most successful books, I wasn’t brought in by English or Creative Writing faculty, but by a different department.<\/p>\n

I love readings.\u00a0 I have a theater background, years of experience on radio, and I’ve done hundreds of readings on three continents. I’ve also taught workshops for writers on how to do readings; they require practice, art, and planning.<\/p>\n

Only four people turned up for this particular campus reading, and the disappointed coordinator explained why.\u00a0 Whenever she brought in a speaker who writing students would naturally be interested in, English and Creative Writing professors consistently failed to do anything to promote the reading.\u00a0 They wouldn’t be co-sponsors, didn’t encourage their students to show up, and basically boycotted the event.\u00a0 Why?\u00a0 Territoriality.\u00a0 Apparently they felt that\u00a0 they’re the only ones who should be inviting authors to campus.<\/p>\n

It made me laugh, because it seemed so typical of academic pettiness.\u00a0 But it also made me sad because the writing students might have learned something and enjoyed themselves.<\/p>\n

I never obsess about\u00a0 numbers when I do a reading: 4 or 400,\u00a0 the audience deserves my best, and that’s what I gave them at this college.\u00a0 Too bad the small-minded English Department and its writing professors don’t do the same, don’t really care enough about their own students to point them towards opportunities right there on their own little campus.\u00a0 It makes you wonder how else they may be giving students less than they deserve as they jealously defend what think is their turf and nobody else’s.<\/p>\n

Lev Raphael’s latest academic mystery is Department of Death<\/em><\/a>.\u00a0 He mentors and coaches writers as well as edits manuscripts in all genres at writewithoutborders.com.<\/a><\/strong><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

In my academic mystery series, I exiled professors to basement offices well before The Chair became a series starring Sandra Oh.\u00a0 I’ve seen much worse behavior and it’s inspired my fictional English department since the 90s.\u00a0 The New York Times Book Review has noted that “The Borgias would not be bored at the State University … Read more<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[584,792,1785,2464,592,307,292,276,219,780,216,1548,1557,2465,98,2466,2463,245],"class_list":["post-6491","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized","tag-academia","tag-academic-mysteries","tag-academic-satire","tag-amanda-peet","tag-author-book-tours","tag-author-readings","tag-book-tours","tag-colleges","tag-crime-fiction","tag-higher-education","tag-humor","tag-netflix","tag-netflix-original-series","tag-readings","tag-satire","tag-sunday-blog-share","tag-the-chair","tag-universities"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.levraphael.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6491","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.levraphael.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.levraphael.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.levraphael.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.levraphael.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=6491"}],"version-history":[{"count":8,"href":"https:\/\/www.levraphael.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6491\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":6499,"href":"https:\/\/www.levraphael.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6491\/revisions\/6499"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.levraphael.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=6491"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.levraphael.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=6491"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.levraphael.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=6491"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}