- Hardcover: 340 pages
- Publisher: Harper; First Edition edition (19 Jan 2010)
- Language English
- ISBN-10: 0061670901
- ISBN-13: 978-0061670909
- Product Dimensions: 21.8 x 13.8 x 2.9 cm
- Average Customer Review: 4.5 out of 5 stars See all reviews (2 customer reviews)
- Amazon Bestsellers Rank: 274,005 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)
The Professor
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Customer Reviews
Most Helpful Customer Reviews
6 of 6 people found the following review helpful
Format:Hardcover|Amazon Verified Purchase
I first came across Terry Castle (described on the back of this book as 'a Jedi knight of literary exploration and lesbian scholarship') from her articles in the London Review of Books. They were so well-written and entertaining that I wanted to read more.
"The Professor" is a collection of essays and one book-length memoir. The essays cover topics such as World War I, the jazz saxophonist Art Pepper, Susan Sontag, and the world of interior design magazines. There are also travel pieces on Sicily and the author's trip to Santa Fe with her mother. The essays combine critical analysis with personal recollection to create a frank, entertaining, and intellectually stimulating read.
Castle is often hilarious, with brilliant cutting descriptions, for example her dachshund is 'as slutty and insouciant as Private Lyndie England. All she needs is a dangling cigarette and a tiny pair of four-legged camouflage pants'; members of a radical feminist group in the seventies all bear 'self-perpetuated names like Artemis Longstocking, Sarah Margaret-child, and Pokey Donnerparty'. Finally Castle's description of the catacombs in Palermo is spot on:
"Imagine all Balzac's characters come to life--the whole roiling human comedy--then instantly dead again. Not only dead, but in the skankier stages of dissolution. Skulls that aren't quite skulls yet, Still Too Much Going On."
Her piece on her relationship with Susan Sontag had me laughing out loud at its magnificently bitchy portrait, which at the same time impressed on me what a unique woman Sontag was and how her work demands reading. Even subjects which I didn't think would be of interest, such as the essay on Art Pepper, immediately had me hooked and wanting to find out more.
The final piece, 'The Professor', is Castle's account of an obsessional life-changing affair she had at the age of 22 with a cruel and charismatic college professor. Castle quotes from her journals at the time (a very brave thing to do) and paints a heartbreaking picture of her younger self. Thirty years on she has enough maturity, emotional distance, and plenty of humour, to write a brilliant moving memoir which is about a lot more than being young, deluded, and in love.
"The Professor" is a collection of essays and one book-length memoir. The essays cover topics such as World War I, the jazz saxophonist Art Pepper, Susan Sontag, and the world of interior design magazines. There are also travel pieces on Sicily and the author's trip to Santa Fe with her mother. The essays combine critical analysis with personal recollection to create a frank, entertaining, and intellectually stimulating read.
Castle is often hilarious, with brilliant cutting descriptions, for example her dachshund is 'as slutty and insouciant as Private Lyndie England. All she needs is a dangling cigarette and a tiny pair of four-legged camouflage pants'; members of a radical feminist group in the seventies all bear 'self-perpetuated names like Artemis Longstocking, Sarah Margaret-child, and Pokey Donnerparty'. Finally Castle's description of the catacombs in Palermo is spot on:
"Imagine all Balzac's characters come to life--the whole roiling human comedy--then instantly dead again. Not only dead, but in the skankier stages of dissolution. Skulls that aren't quite skulls yet, Still Too Much Going On."
Her piece on her relationship with Susan Sontag had me laughing out loud at its magnificently bitchy portrait, which at the same time impressed on me what a unique woman Sontag was and how her work demands reading. Even subjects which I didn't think would be of interest, such as the essay on Art Pepper, immediately had me hooked and wanting to find out more.
The final piece, 'The Professor', is Castle's account of an obsessional life-changing affair she had at the age of 22 with a cruel and charismatic college professor. Castle quotes from her journals at the time (a very brave thing to do) and paints a heartbreaking picture of her younger self. Thirty years on she has enough maturity, emotional distance, and plenty of humour, to write a brilliant moving memoir which is about a lot more than being young, deluded, and in love.
Format:Hardcover
Terry Castle is an esteemed literary critic, but this is a book of memoirs. Half the book is composed of shorter pieces about her obsession with World War I, her obsession with jazz saxophonist Art Pepper, her travels in Sicily, her obsession with Susan Sontag (not the most flattering of portraits!), her obsession with interior decorating, and travels with her aging mother. The second half is the title piece, about her romantic obsession, as a student, with a female professor. These are writings obsessed with the author's obsessions...
Interesting, thoughtful and funny throughout, the book's first half nonetheless feels like a clearing of the mental decks before getting down to the main work, the cathartic picking over the bones of her first love at thirty years' distance. Castle is disarmingly candid and self-critical, always ready to give others their due (now, if not in her youth) even as she pokes fun at her own failings. Her writing is liberally sprinkled with famous names and cultural allusions: if many of them soared over my head, they were at least harmless!
Not too challenging a read, but smart, pleasing and endlessly engaging.
Interesting, thoughtful and funny throughout, the book's first half nonetheless feels like a clearing of the mental decks before getting down to the main work, the cathartic picking over the bones of her first love at thirty years' distance. Castle is disarmingly candid and self-critical, always ready to give others their due (now, if not in her youth) even as she pokes fun at her own failings. Her writing is liberally sprinkled with famous names and cultural allusions: if many of them soared over my head, they were at least harmless!
Not too challenging a read, but smart, pleasing and endlessly engaging.
Most Helpful Customer Reviews on Amazon.com (beta)
Amazon.com:
8 reviews
11 of 13 people found the following review helpful
Brilliant Work
6 Jun 2010
Format:Hardcover|Amazon Verified Purchase
This is a terrific book. Castle is funny, perceptive, self-aware and a superb story teller. Her honesty is bracing in the way that the candor of all the great self-examiners--Montaigne through Proust and beyond--is bracing. She has guts. (I don't think it's about masochism, as some fellow reviewers seem to suggest. It's about honesty.)
The long concluding piece on the professor / lover is impossible to put down. And there are three essays here that may last as long as smart, literate essays are read (however long that will be): the piece on the jazz great Art Pepper, the one on Castle and Sontag, and (perhaps) best of them all, the one about TC and her mother off rambling, shopping, squabbling, and connecting in Santa Fe. This isn't just a book for profs--it's a book for people who value excellent prose and remarkable narrative powers.
The long concluding piece on the professor / lover is impossible to put down. And there are three essays here that may last as long as smart, literate essays are read (however long that will be): the piece on the jazz great Art Pepper, the one on Castle and Sontag, and (perhaps) best of them all, the one about TC and her mother off rambling, shopping, squabbling, and connecting in Santa Fe. This isn't just a book for profs--it's a book for people who value excellent prose and remarkable narrative powers.
10 of 12 people found the following review helpful
Shorter pieces win out in this collection
30 July 2010
Format:Hardcover
I finished this book is a flurry, reading it for hours at a time during a short beach vacation with my family. Now, this wouldn't have been my obvious choice for a beach read (even for me, a wanna-be academic), but it was engrossing, addictive, and titillating in all the ways a good beach read should be.
As others have pointed out, Castle is honest and she doesn't soften the edges much on anyone (even herself or her current partner), but she is also gracious. In her essay on Sontag, although she spends much of the time sketching a character you're not sure you'd want to meet, she ends with a sincere appreciation for Sontag's contribution to 20th century feminism.
I have to admit, though, that I enjoyed the first re-published essays more than the longer one on the Professor. In the shorter pieces, I was thrilled by her ability to weave separate threads into one coherent piece, showing connections where you thought there couldn't be one. Her piece on the Professor worked with the same idea, but meandered here and there, trying to scoop up all of her early academia and sexual exploration/experience in to one cohesive narrative anchored by her experience with the Professor. For me, this was too much; I felt bogged down with too much detail, and almost lost interest half way through this piece (although I was glad I pushed on as it found its momentum again quite soon). I appreciated the succinctness of her other pieces, and that, I think, was lost in this piece.
Yes, this is written by an academic, and there is no way around this. It infiltrates every page because that is who she is, and she is writing honestly and openly. It won't be everyone's idea of a good beach read, but, I have to say, I kind of like this kind of academic and can't wait to find more written by her. I'm still shaking my head wondering how I hadn't heard of her before finding this book.
As others have pointed out, Castle is honest and she doesn't soften the edges much on anyone (even herself or her current partner), but she is also gracious. In her essay on Sontag, although she spends much of the time sketching a character you're not sure you'd want to meet, she ends with a sincere appreciation for Sontag's contribution to 20th century feminism.
I have to admit, though, that I enjoyed the first re-published essays more than the longer one on the Professor. In the shorter pieces, I was thrilled by her ability to weave separate threads into one coherent piece, showing connections where you thought there couldn't be one. Her piece on the Professor worked with the same idea, but meandered here and there, trying to scoop up all of her early academia and sexual exploration/experience in to one cohesive narrative anchored by her experience with the Professor. For me, this was too much; I felt bogged down with too much detail, and almost lost interest half way through this piece (although I was glad I pushed on as it found its momentum again quite soon). I appreciated the succinctness of her other pieces, and that, I think, was lost in this piece.
Yes, this is written by an academic, and there is no way around this. It infiltrates every page because that is who she is, and she is writing honestly and openly. It won't be everyone's idea of a good beach read, but, I have to say, I kind of like this kind of academic and can't wait to find more written by her. I'm still shaking my head wondering how I hadn't heard of her before finding this book.
1 of 1 people found the following review helpful
"Desperately Seeking Susan" is worth the price of the whole book
15 Oct 2011
I agree with some of the reviewers who have preferred the shorter pieces here to the long title memoir, though not one of Castle's essays is without interest. But "Desperately Seeking Susan" is a small masterpiece -- Sontag as "a great comic character," i.e., a comic monster, comes alive as she never does in the more reverential treatments of her by other writers. Castle doesn't spare herself, either; her deadpan descriptions of her humiliation at an art-world dinner party, and of her abject longing for Sontag's approval and friendship, are rich in humor and full of rueful insight. Likewise her descriptions of her crazy stepbrother. Much of this book stands up well to rereading, which always seems like the truest test of a book.
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