The Professor and Other Writings
By Terry Castle
3.5/5
()
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About this ebook
“[Terry Castle is] the most expressive, most enlightening literary critic at large today.” —Susan Sontag
From one of America’s most brilliant critics and cultural commentators, Terry Castle, comes The Professor and Other Writings: a collection of startling, gorgeously-written autobiographical essays and a new, long-form piece about the devastation and beauty of early love. James Wolcott, contributing writer to Vanity Fair, calls Terry Castle a “Jedi knight of literary exploration and lesbian scholarship,” and The Professor and Other Writings “a greatest-hits package of show-stopping monologues and offhand-genius riffs.” The Professor and Other Writings is a hilarious and heartbreaking exploration of gender, identity, and sexuality in the grand tradition of such feminist luminaries as Susan Sontag, Camille Paglia, and Joan Didion.
Terry Castle
Terry Castle was once described by Susan Sontag as ""the most expressive, most enlightening literary critic at large today."" She is the author of seven books of criticism, including The Apparitional Lesbian: Female Homosexuality and Modern Culture (1993) and Boss Ladies, Watch Out! Essays on Women and Sex (2002). Her anthology, The Literature of Lesbianism, won the Lambda Literary Editor's Choice Award in 2003. She lives in San Francisco and is Walter A. Haas Professor in the Humanities at Stanford University.
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Reviews for The Professor and Other Writings
4 ratings3 reviews
- Rating: 1 out of 5 stars1/5Have you ever started to read a book and realized that it brought you a bit out of your comfort zone and frankly, was a bit over your head? This was one of those for me. I stuck with it though and it provoked many thoughts, feelings, and useful tidbits.
Terry Castle was once described by Susan Sontag as "the most expressive, most enlightening literary critic at large today." She is the author of seven books of criticism, including The Apparitional Lesbian: Female Homosexuality and Modern Culture (1993) and Boss Ladies, Watch Out! Essays on Women and Sex (2002). Her anthology, The Literature of Lesbianism, won the Lambda Literary Editor's Choice Award in 2003. She lives in San Francisco and is Walter A. Haas Professor in the Humanities at Stanford University.
The Professor and Other Writings is a collection of autobiographical essays that while I found often entertaining, came off at times as incredibly pretentious to me. I get that she is a well-known literary critic, but her constantly using French words and her naivety at the times she is writing about, hardly made me want to respect her. Or even like her for that matter.
I mentioned the nuggets of wisdom & entertainment….
“I’ve come to believe more and more about both writing and music making: that in order to succeed at either you have to stop trying to disguise who you are. The veils and pretenses of everyday life won’t work; a certain minimum truth-to-self is required. “ (in the essay, My Heroin Christmas)
Simply said, be who you are or you are going to fail. A lot of us, even in blogland, try to emulate other successful people as opposed to being ourselves. It is tough work and you can’t keep it up.
The essay, Home Alone, was a hilarious introspective on why we are all obsessed with shelter magazines. Castle refers to is as “house porn” and it kind of is.
I wouldn’t recommend The Professor and Other Writings by Terry Castle unless you are way more cultured and cooler than I am. - Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5The Professor consists of seven essay/memoir pieces, the longest and last about Castle's sexual relationship as a grad student with a woman professor. It's a profoundly disturbing relationship and Cast le spares neither the professor nor herself in the telling of it. Castle is neurotic, needy, desperate, the professor cruel, disassociative, manipulative. I didn't like the way Castle wrote about lesbians of the seventies, with a limited, dismissive view. Another piece is called "Desperately Seeking Susan," and is about herself and Susan Sontag. She possibly nails Sontag in some ways, but still there is an aura of snarkiness about the writing. The fact that Castle acknowledges her own failings, including a tendency to nastiness, doesn't alleviate the sense of mean-spiritness that seeps in.
- Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5Castle's essays are extraordinary -- rollicking, erudite, hilarious, captivating.