The Kingdom of Absurdities by Bruce Gatenby

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Bruce Gatenby

The Kingdom of Absurdities

Author: Bruce Gatenby

Norman Mailer famously said, "Nobody can write an interesting novel about graduate school." Like many other things, Mailer was famously wrong about this. In The Kingdom of Absurdities, Bruce Gatenby chronicles the missteps and misadventures of Chase, a stressed-out and rule-bound advertising copywriter who-missing the reckless irresponsibility of college life-quits his job pushing and pursuing the American Consumer Dream to pursue a Ph.D. in English and the so-called life of the mind at the University of Southern Arizona in Tucson, with disastrous results. A wicked (and wickedly funny) satire on the absurdities of contemporary academic life in the USA and at the U of SA, The Kingdom of Absurdities skewers the unholy academic trinity of enforced diversity, political correctness and liberal insanity. After reading, you'll agree with Lenin, who famously said, "shoot more professors."

Editions (1 of 1)

The Kingdom of Absurdities

Author: Bruce Gatenby

Paperback

3/1/2009

Createspace

ISBN10 : 1441489215

ISBN13 : 9781441489210

Reader Reviews

Review 11/17/09

Source: Amazon
Date: February 1, 2009

Bruce Gatenby's "The Kingdom of Absurdities" is an uneasy, startling, and outrageous read--it's satire of the old variety, meaning it's an impolite and necessary book in these times in which the American university has neutered itself. The fiefdoms are found in deans' and chairs' offices, where beknighted and tenured faculty protect their stations, while beneath them, an entire serfdom of graduate students, teaching assistants, adjunct faculty, and visiting instructors scramble to appease their lordships. The values of this kingdom? Orthodoxy. Safety. Conformity. Gatenby, in the tradition of Swift, Kafka, Orwell, and The Who, reminds us in this great comic novel that the new boss (in shiny post-structuralist garb) is very much the same as the old boss.

Review 11/17/09

Source: Amazon
Date: April 1, 2009

A brilliant work. TKAO reminded me a bit of Catch 22 and a bit of The Savage Detectives. The world can be a strange and cruel place and graduate school can accentuate both. I recommend TKOA to anyone who has had to suffer through graduate school, and to anyone who enjoys dark comedy

Review 11/17/09

Source: Amazon
Date: July 15, 2009

I never went to grad school with Bruce Gatenby, but after reading this novel, I wasn't so sure. It seemed as if he was describing the very professors, academic controversies and fellow students that I remembered from my own days in "the program." Unlike other academic novels, this is not a loving send-up of graduate humanities programs. Instead, it's a laugh-out-loud, drop-your-jaw peek into the "kingdom of absurdities" that frequently passes for intellectual discourse. You don't have to be a veteran of a graduate program to enjoy this book, though if you haven't done the classes, the comprehensives and the committees, you may think that Gatenby's embroidering the truth a little. He isn't. If anything, he's downplaying the craziness. Yep, this is the life as I remember it. If I'd read this book (and believed it) 25 years ago, I could have saved myself a lot of time.