Campus Life, Imitating Art

If you haven't read it, there is much in my novel, Campusland, that was borrowed from real life. Our nation's fatuous universities provide so much raw material.

But, in other cases, things I just made up came to pass. 

One plot line in Campusland revolves around a professor who teaches 19th Century American Lit. During a discussion of Mark Twain, a student, in a set up, reads aloud a passage from Huck Finn that uses the n-word. Other planted students feign outrage and march out of the lecture hall, all the while an accomplice films the incident. They post it on social media, blaming the professor.

Will he keep his job? You'll have to read it to find out.

Hannah Fischthal

Preposterous, right?

Just a few days ago, as reported by Dana Kennedy in the New York Post, a longtime adjunct professor at St. John's University named Hannah Fischthal was fired for essentially the same thing. She read a passage verbatim from Twain. 

It had that word. 

She actually warned students first and explained the context and why that mattered. The book, Pudd'nhead Wilson, is actually a statement against racism and slavery.

It didn't matter. Several of her Red Guard wannabe students reported her, saying that just hearing the word caused them harm.

Fischthal, the daughter of Holocaust survivors, was summarily executed. Er, sorry, fired. (Getting ahead of myself again.)

Some critics of Campusland thought the satire was too over the top. What they didn't know is that I frequently dialed back reality because I didn't think anyone would buy it, even when presented as satire.

That's how screwed up things are.

Post Script: Twain is now getting banned in many schools and libraries, but this isn't Twain's first go-around with cancel culture. In the 19th Century, he was also banished from many libraries, and also for matters of speech. But what offended people then was his use of a rural patois; Twain wrote how real people spoke in the real world, something groundbreaking at the time. Before Twain, authors were expected to use the Queen's English only.