Sense and Nonsensibility
Lampoons of Learning and Literature
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- $16.99
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- $16.99
Publisher Description
Two widely published humor columnists and "bad boys" of academia take their wit and wisdom to dazzling new lows in this irreverent send-up of highbrow literary culture.
At last, the thinking person's take on the life of the mind in today's increasingly mindless age. Sense and Nonsensibility pokes fun at everyone from spoof-proof scholars to pompous professors; from anal-retentive authors to plagiarizing poets; from snake-oil therapists to bestselling illiterati.
This singular collection by Professors Lawrence Douglas and Alexander George brings together their most popular pieces, along with many brand-new ones, including:
• The Academy Awards for novels -- with categories for "Best Female Protagonist -- Doomed," "Best Narrator -- Unreliable," and "Best Novel -- Unfinishable by Reader"
• Home Shopping University -- offering the greatest ideas in Western history at rock-bottom prices
• I'm Okay, I'm Okay: Accepting Narcissism -- the best in "Self-helplessness books"
• The Penis Orations -- Iron Man's answer to The Vagina Monologues
• "Ask the Academic Ethicist" -- their notorious advice column, which has shocked higher education
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
From book awards to Brian Lamb to professorial pretensions and foibles, two professors at Amherst College take aim at the worlds of literature and academia. Douglas and George, who also write humor columns for the New Yorker and the New York Times Book Review, propose that the National Book Awards add new awards to rival those of Hollywood, and suggest accolades for "Best Supporting Character" and "Best Female Protagonist-Doomed" (finalists are Emma Bovary, Anna Karenina, Lily Bart and Antigone). The authors' erudite whimsy is not for everyone, but it will entertain those similarly inclined. Their imagined literary counterparts to eBay and A.A., for example, are hilarious. (In "Graduate Students Anonymous" the dissertation-bound learn to look into the mirror and say, "I will never get a tenure-track job.") Most anyone who has spent any time in the worlds of literature and the academy will laugh, and occasionally wince, at the barbs thrown here.
