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shirtypantser's review against another edition
1.0
This book was pretty close to straight garbage, and given when it was published the offensive and outdated language is unacceptable. How are Korelitz and all the editors so out of touch?
I'd say I'd never read Korelitz again but I cannot honestly say as I'll remember their name in a week.
I'd say I'd never read Korelitz again but I cannot honestly say as I'll remember their name in a week.
kkschick's review against another edition
3.0
Dragged a lot in places but overall a pretty good read.
m_fhowe's review against another edition
3.0
2.5 stars really. Liked the writing and the story had potential but it just took too long for me.
lizdesole's review against another edition
3.0
There is a protest movement taking off at a very liberal liberal arts college in New England. This book did a good job of making you think about what your prejudices are and where you stand about identity politics, but ultimately was a frustrating read for me. Perhaps because EVERYONE is such an a**hole in it. And I found the ending a bit of a cop-out.
melkelsey's review against another edition
3.0
Book 51
An engaging, but forgettable listen about a protest at a university. The novel touches on many current social issues. Perhaps narrowing the scope would have been more effective and meaningful.
An engaging, but forgettable listen about a protest at a university. The novel touches on many current social issues. Perhaps narrowing the scope would have been more effective and meaningful.
blackoxford's review against another edition
4.0
Existential Storms in Monastic Teapots
The modern university started life in the 13th century as an extension of the medieval monastery. Its mission was to train functionaries, mainly in Ecclesiastical Law and associated writing skills, to serve the needs of the huge international clerical state. Times have certainly changed: the Church is in decline; the Law is still with us but rather more corporate than ecclesiastical; and the young people who participate in it are likely not as rigorously celibate as their predecessors.
Nevertheless, despite the secularisation of the world, its function, and its denizens, the university maintains much of its monastic origins. It remains a place apart from worldly affairs, that is to say, economics and its demands to make a living. Like all enclosed communities it intensifies familial tensions - among surrogate siblings and with the in loco parentis staff members - so that otherwise trivial conflicts become worthy as the focus for the commitment of one’s young life. And because the monastic organisational ethos is one of voluntary cooperation not hierarchical direction, it is almost impossible to manage.
The university is the institution that Korelitz knows well, in its modern form to be sure, but also in its monastic temperament. She knows that behaviour in the university isn’t governed by political correctness but by monastic mores. One’s fellow monks/students, no matter how annoying, are required to work out their own salvation. Besides, they may end up being one’s superior one day; no sense in alienating a prospective abbot or abbess.
The essence of monastic/university life is routine, everything occurs at its set time and season. As Korelitz says about her protagonist, a university president, who confronts the university as “a phenomenon that would return to bedevil her life again and again over the following years: institutional tradition.” Korelitz’s Dartmouth-like descriptions of these institutional traditions are not much different from similar descriptions from Oxford, Paris, and Bologna from 800 years ago. Term times, lecture times, tutorial protocols, examination rubrics, all constitute a liturgy which is more rigid and more rigidly defended than any other formal regulations. Weaving one’s way through such a swamp of ‘the way we’ve always done things” is as difficult for an administrator as it is for the students and teachers. Disrupting routine is the only real tool of protest available, but it’s usually effective.
Monastic establishments depend vitally on benefactors. Traditionally these were the local nobility but corporate donors have slid easily into the role. The latter exercise their influence subtly but decisively, particularly through their influential power of appointment. It is this power indeed that connects the monastery, ancient or modern, to the worldly realities of economics and meaningful politics. The issue of lay patronage over church appointments was a major issue of the Middle Ages. The Church won the battle around the end of the first millennium but lost the war by the end of the second. The result is the modern university’s tenuous formal independence. Influence not power rules. And influence is very quiet about itself.
The issues addressed within the modern universities are different in name but not in substance from those that were popular in ancient monasteries: who is to be saved and how. Perhaps the most urgent focus for this issue over the last several decades has been gender - only partly because gender touches on sex; much more because gender is a surrogate for the question of the orderliness of the universe - followed closely by race, largely because it too has been such a source of privilege, and consequently order.
Two genders (three if one includes the neuter but this has never been problematic since it refers to non-sexual beings) is the ancient presumption upon which most sacred scriptures are founded. What happens when gender is considered a spectrum rather than binary? There are also two races - white and all others. So what happens when the subtleties of race confront the meritocratic rules of white liberal society?
Monastic eruptions and explosions are what happens. Very quickly everyone becomes a fundamentalist. The fight is ostensibly about what constitutes reality: ‘Gender abnormalities are just that - abnormal’ vs. ‘Gender abnormalities are the norm.’ Similarly ‘Race distinctions are misleading’ vs. ‘Race distinctions are unavoidable.’ Students believe they know the way really is and they never like it.
The fights, conflicts, protests at university, however, are actually not about reality, what’s really there, but about the the attitude toward whatever there really is. The issues, that is, aren’t ontological but ethical. This is what gets worked out in the monastery/university environment. Problems that previously have no name are articulated and argued. It’s messy, beyond rational comprehension, and only temporary since the population is in flux. But it’s somehow effective.
Thus a university experience is inevitably moral. All concerned - students, teachers and administrators - eventually find they are challenged to look not ‘there,’ in the objective world for solutions to problems, but ‘here,’ in themselves for how they are complicit in whatever is occurring. The students are formally instructed by their in the objective realities of the cosmos, while they all are socially indoctrinated in the acceptance of the subjective responsibility for their own psychic stance towards it. It looks chaotic, sometimes nonsensical, but Korelitz understands what it’s about and she tells the story well in The Devil and Daniel Webster.
The modern university started life in the 13th century as an extension of the medieval monastery. Its mission was to train functionaries, mainly in Ecclesiastical Law and associated writing skills, to serve the needs of the huge international clerical state. Times have certainly changed: the Church is in decline; the Law is still with us but rather more corporate than ecclesiastical; and the young people who participate in it are likely not as rigorously celibate as their predecessors.
Nevertheless, despite the secularisation of the world, its function, and its denizens, the university maintains much of its monastic origins. It remains a place apart from worldly affairs, that is to say, economics and its demands to make a living. Like all enclosed communities it intensifies familial tensions - among surrogate siblings and with the in loco parentis staff members - so that otherwise trivial conflicts become worthy as the focus for the commitment of one’s young life. And because the monastic organisational ethos is one of voluntary cooperation not hierarchical direction, it is almost impossible to manage.
The university is the institution that Korelitz knows well, in its modern form to be sure, but also in its monastic temperament. She knows that behaviour in the university isn’t governed by political correctness but by monastic mores. One’s fellow monks/students, no matter how annoying, are required to work out their own salvation. Besides, they may end up being one’s superior one day; no sense in alienating a prospective abbot or abbess.
The essence of monastic/university life is routine, everything occurs at its set time and season. As Korelitz says about her protagonist, a university president, who confronts the university as “a phenomenon that would return to bedevil her life again and again over the following years: institutional tradition.” Korelitz’s Dartmouth-like descriptions of these institutional traditions are not much different from similar descriptions from Oxford, Paris, and Bologna from 800 years ago. Term times, lecture times, tutorial protocols, examination rubrics, all constitute a liturgy which is more rigid and more rigidly defended than any other formal regulations. Weaving one’s way through such a swamp of ‘the way we’ve always done things” is as difficult for an administrator as it is for the students and teachers. Disrupting routine is the only real tool of protest available, but it’s usually effective.
Monastic establishments depend vitally on benefactors. Traditionally these were the local nobility but corporate donors have slid easily into the role. The latter exercise their influence subtly but decisively, particularly through their influential power of appointment. It is this power indeed that connects the monastery, ancient or modern, to the worldly realities of economics and meaningful politics. The issue of lay patronage over church appointments was a major issue of the Middle Ages. The Church won the battle around the end of the first millennium but lost the war by the end of the second. The result is the modern university’s tenuous formal independence. Influence not power rules. And influence is very quiet about itself.
The issues addressed within the modern universities are different in name but not in substance from those that were popular in ancient monasteries: who is to be saved and how. Perhaps the most urgent focus for this issue over the last several decades has been gender - only partly because gender touches on sex; much more because gender is a surrogate for the question of the orderliness of the universe - followed closely by race, largely because it too has been such a source of privilege, and consequently order.
Two genders (three if one includes the neuter but this has never been problematic since it refers to non-sexual beings) is the ancient presumption upon which most sacred scriptures are founded. What happens when gender is considered a spectrum rather than binary? There are also two races - white and all others. So what happens when the subtleties of race confront the meritocratic rules of white liberal society?
Monastic eruptions and explosions are what happens. Very quickly everyone becomes a fundamentalist. The fight is ostensibly about what constitutes reality: ‘Gender abnormalities are just that - abnormal’ vs. ‘Gender abnormalities are the norm.’ Similarly ‘Race distinctions are misleading’ vs. ‘Race distinctions are unavoidable.’ Students believe they know the way really is and they never like it.
The fights, conflicts, protests at university, however, are actually not about reality, what’s really there, but about the the attitude toward whatever there really is. The issues, that is, aren’t ontological but ethical. This is what gets worked out in the monastery/university environment. Problems that previously have no name are articulated and argued. It’s messy, beyond rational comprehension, and only temporary since the population is in flux. But it’s somehow effective.
Thus a university experience is inevitably moral. All concerned - students, teachers and administrators - eventually find they are challenged to look not ‘there,’ in the objective world for solutions to problems, but ‘here,’ in themselves for how they are complicit in whatever is occurring. The students are formally instructed by their in the objective realities of the cosmos, while they all are socially indoctrinated in the acceptance of the subjective responsibility for their own psychic stance towards it. It looks chaotic, sometimes nonsensical, but Korelitz understands what it’s about and she tells the story well in The Devil and Daniel Webster.
bookliz's review against another edition
4.0
Great. Loved the characters and setting. Wish the president had forced Omar to sit down and talk with her. Surprised that she just tried contacting him by email to set up appointments to talk.
missmesmerized's review against another edition
5.0
She has never strived for this job, but Naomi Roth has become the first female president of Webster College almost 20 years ago. With her daughter Hannah she has moved to the small place and turned the school into a competitor of the Ivy League Colleges. Admittedly, she was proud when also her daughter decided not to choose one of the big names but her college for her studies. When the popular lecturer Nicholas Gall is denied tenure track, students organize protest against the college’s administration. What Naomi welcomes first as a sign of caring and standing up for your believes gradually transforms into the worst crisis the college has ever seen. The leader of the student group is a young Palestinian student, Omar Khayal, who not only is charismatic and can thus easily gather people behind him but also has a history which is embraced by the media to cover the story: he fled the Israeli bombings which killed his family and made his way to one of the top schools, and now they want to expel him because he is fighting for his teacher – who is of African-American descent. A scandal is quickly produced and Naomi not only has to sail against the wind of the board but also of her own daughter who positions herself on the opposite side.
Jean Hanff Korelitz’s novel starts slowly, we get a thorough picture of Naomi and Hannah’s life and relationship and also an idea of how Naomi’s situation at Webster was before the crisis. She appears to be strong and clever and cannot easily be shaken. Yet, this situation brings her to the brink of professional destruction and personal despair. The way the relationships become increasingly complicated is narrated in a convincing way. It is not only between mother and daughter, but also between Naomi and long-time friends that things get ever more difficult until all the years of their friendship are questioned. I really liked the protagonist because she is depicted as a complex character who is not without flaws but has clear convictions and a strong sense of justice and objectivity. On the other hand, she is also doubting and asking herself if she really can live up to her ideas and actually treats the students in a fair way.
Apart from his interesting study in the characters, the most striking aspect of the novel is how the truth can be bent according to one’s necessities. It is clear from the beginning that Nicholas Gall not only is culpable of plagiarism but also lacks all academic standards, neither did he publish something nor does he show adequate behaviour. Yet, Naomi’s morals hinder her from revealing anything of the secret tenure track process and she does not want to publish the lecturer’s misconduct. Without this knowledge, things seem to be quite different for the students and the media. However, the witch-hunt really starts with the story of the poor, heart-breaking Palestinian who had to go through so much in life and deserves to be supported not to be thrown out – but again, the public is not aware of Omar’s poor academic results and like in any other case, the college has to take action. Who can you defend your decisions if your strongest arguments cannot be said out aloud?
It wouldn’t a novel by Jean Hanff Korelitz if there wasn’t a lot more to be revealed. Towards the end, the author has some nasty surprises for the reader which again offer another perspective on how things really are. I really appreciate her skill of playing tricks on the reader since it is great entertainment to uncover the different layers of the story.
Jean Hanff Korelitz’s novel starts slowly, we get a thorough picture of Naomi and Hannah’s life and relationship and also an idea of how Naomi’s situation at Webster was before the crisis. She appears to be strong and clever and cannot easily be shaken. Yet, this situation brings her to the brink of professional destruction and personal despair. The way the relationships become increasingly complicated is narrated in a convincing way. It is not only between mother and daughter, but also between Naomi and long-time friends that things get ever more difficult until all the years of their friendship are questioned. I really liked the protagonist because she is depicted as a complex character who is not without flaws but has clear convictions and a strong sense of justice and objectivity. On the other hand, she is also doubting and asking herself if she really can live up to her ideas and actually treats the students in a fair way.
Apart from his interesting study in the characters, the most striking aspect of the novel is how the truth can be bent according to one’s necessities. It is clear from the beginning that Nicholas Gall not only is culpable of plagiarism but also lacks all academic standards, neither did he publish something nor does he show adequate behaviour. Yet, Naomi’s morals hinder her from revealing anything of the secret tenure track process and she does not want to publish the lecturer’s misconduct. Without this knowledge, things seem to be quite different for the students and the media. However, the witch-hunt really starts with the story of the poor, heart-breaking Palestinian who had to go through so much in life and deserves to be supported not to be thrown out – but again, the public is not aware of Omar’s poor academic results and like in any other case, the college has to take action. Who can you defend your decisions if your strongest arguments cannot be said out aloud?
It wouldn’t a novel by Jean Hanff Korelitz if there wasn’t a lot more to be revealed. Towards the end, the author has some nasty surprises for the reader which again offer another perspective on how things really are. I really appreciate her skill of playing tricks on the reader since it is great entertainment to uncover the different layers of the story.
antessmer's review against another edition
I tried my damnedest to finish this novel. I wanted to say, "Now that was an interesting read." I mean, I've seen some of the underbelly of collegiate politics and thought I would find some iota of interest in this book, but ... alas, I'm done. I'm not reading another page because it's literally making me dread reading... When a book makes you not want to read anymore, then it's time to put it down and move on.
It's going on my shelf and I may return to it at another time, or maybe I won't... Oh well.
It's going on my shelf and I may return to it at another time, or maybe I won't... Oh well.