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1 of 1 people found the following review helpful:
4.0 out of 5 stars
I loved it!, November 19, 1999
By A Customer
This review is from: The Meade Solution (Hardcover)
The dean of my college gave me a copy of this book because he thought I could relate to the problems TAs have, as narrated so expertly in this masterpiece. I could, and I loved this book! Anyone who wants to read a highly intellectual account of what is going wrong in our nation's English departments should read a boring (and they all are) and useless dissertation. This book is meant for those who want some lighthearted reading and the chance to live out their imaginations through the actions of Mr. Meade. The Meade solution may well be the best laugh you'll get out of school-related material for a long, long while. Enjoy!
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1 of 1 people found the following review helpful:
4.0 out of 5 stars
An amusing short satirical novel., May 27, 1999
This review is from: The Meade Solution (Hardcover)
Highly recommended as escapist fiction for the overworked graduate teaching assistant. At 144 pages, it's a quick read and can easily be sandwiched in between the 1000+ pages you need to read for your graduate classes and grading those 500+ essays and quizzes from your teaching assignment. And the subject of the book, the removal by various methods, including murder, of selected faculty members will fulfill the secret wishes of many a harried graduate student. The main fault of the novel is that it is dated. That the time frame of the novel is the 1970s is apparent from several overt clues. The cokes in the vending machines are in bottles. The characters listen to records. A female graduate student wants to write her dissertation on Rod McKuen. Not only do most of the characters smoke; they do so in the English department halls, their offices and even in the faculty lounge---an activity that has been illegal on most college campuses for the past several years. And there are slightly more subtle clues. While quite a bit of sexual high jinks goes on, there is no mention of HIV/AIDS. Some of the sexual couplings involve faculty and students, yet there is no mention of sexual harassment lawsuits. While at a MLA conference in Houston, one of the faculty members wanders into a seedy neighborhood near downtown. Instead of being the victim of a gang drive-by as he would be today, he is offered a flower and the comfort of a communal Christian cult by a pair of what used to be known as Jesus freaks. This could be remedied by the addition of the phrase, "In the fall of 197-..." at the start, which would help the reader more quickly place the action of the novel in the correct historical and mental context. Having been a Teaching Assistant, albeit in a different subject field, I recognized many of the academic character types among both the faculty and graduate students portrayed in this novel. Readers over 40, especially those who were graduate students during the 1970s, will probably enjoy this book more than younger readers do. Although the scene where the Head of the department must take over teaching a sophomore literature survey class will bring a wry smile on the face of any past, present or future TA. ""You're not going to like me," he said. "I am an intellectual snob. And I love literature. I know that you do not even like literature. I know that you are only in this class because you have to take it for your degree programs. You would rather be anyplace else than in this classroom. But while you are here, you had better make me think that you love literature, because I love literature, and I have the grade book." ... Out in the classroom, among the sophomores, genuine terror prevailed." Been there, wished that.
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0 of 2 people found the following review helpful:
1.0 out of 5 stars
Misogynous, Vicious and Vulgar, July 26, 1998
This review is from: The Meade Solution (Hardcover)
Misogynist, Vicious, and Vulgar: All of these sins we would forgive, if only the novel were funny. Its failure to amuse results, in part, from the fact that the author has not bothered to flesh out his story. He initiates a scene and then inserts three dots and skips to another without creating a coherent narrative. We have an outline of a parody of contemporary graduate English studies with no substance. An equally serious failure is the author's unawareness of the state of English departments in today's universities. The job market did not collapse because senile professors were holding on to tenured positions, as Conley suggests, but rather because University administrators determined that they could no longer afford to pay people to worry about the number of syllables in a line of Chaucer. Undergraduate English is taught by adjunct part-time faculty members while graduate English departments are dying by attrition. There is good grist for parody's mill in this! situation, but Conley has not taken advantage of it. The situations and characters in this novel are simply not recognizable. Good parody requires an intimate knowledge of the subject. This book seems to have been written about another time and place. For a very funny parody of the traditional graduate English department, see A. S. Byatt's Possession.
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