The Professor and Other Writings
By Terry Castle
3.5/5
()
Currently unavailable
Currently unavailable
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.
Read more from Terry Castle
The Professor and Other Writings Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsClarissa's Ciphers: Meaning and Disruption in Richardson's Clarissa Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5FearMaker: Family Matters Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratings
Related to The Professor and Other Writings
Related ebooks
Ill Feelings Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsAs Consciousness Is Harnessed to Flesh: Journals and Notebooks, 1964-1980 Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Forty-one False Starts: Essays on Artists and Writers Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5The Dead Ladies Project: Exiles, Expats, and Ex-Countries Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5The Trip to Echo Spring: On Writers and Drinking Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Unfinished Spirit: Muriel Rukeyser's Twentieth Century Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsOut of Sheer Rage: Wrestling with D. H. Lawrence Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Essays One Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Stories About Storytellers: Publishing Alice Munro, Robertson Davies, Alistair MacLeod, Pierre Trudeau and Others Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsJackie Under My Skin: Interpreting an Icon Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5My 1980s and Other Essays Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Women of the Left Bank: Paris, 1900-1940 Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsReading Style: A Life in Sentences Rating: 3 out of 5 stars3/5We Need Silence to Find Out What We Think: Selected Essays Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5A Poetics of Neurosis: Narratives of Normalcy and Disorder in Cultural and Literary Texts Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsSome Girls Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsDeath Kit: A Novel Rating: 3 out of 5 stars3/5I, etcetera: Stories Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Mourning Diary Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5The Writing on the Wall: And Other Literary Essays Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsA Susan Sontag Reader Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Knife Party Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5My Brilliant Friend: The Graphic Novel: Based on the novel by Elena Ferrante Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsSpring and All Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsThe Bill from My Father: A Memoir Rating: 3 out of 5 stars3/5The House of Early Sorrows: A Memoir in Essays Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsMentors, Muses & Monsters: 30 Writers on the People Who Changed Their Lives Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5
General Fiction For You
The Priory of the Orange Tree Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Dante's Divine Comedy: Inferno Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5The Fellowship Of The Ring: Being the First Part of The Lord of the Rings Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5The Covenant of Water (Oprah's Book Club) Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5A Man Called Ove: A Novel Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Cloud Cuckoo Land: A Novel Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Life of Pi: A Novel Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Beartown: A Novel Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5The City of Dreaming Books Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5The Silmarillion Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Shantaram: A Novel Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5The Lost Flowers of Alice Hart Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Mythos Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Jackal, Jackal: Tales of the Dark and Fantastic Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5The Unhoneymooners Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5The Ocean at the End of the Lane: A Novel Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5You: A Novel Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5The Canterbury Tales Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5My Sister's Keeper: A Novel Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5It Ends with Us: A Novel Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Recital of the Dark Verses Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5The Dry: A Novel Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5The Labyrinth of Dreaming Books: A Novel Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5The Alchemist: A Graphic Novel Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Ulysses: With linked Table of Contents Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Nettle & Bone Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Pet Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5The Other Black Girl: A Novel Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5The Iliad of Homer Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Babel: Or the Necessity of Violence: An Arcane History of the Oxford Translators' Revolution Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5
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.