… the ivory tower — that is to say, an institution where all the drama is entirely self-manufactured by vain, petty people who think they’re much smarter than they actually are. That rules out most genres people actually enjoy reading right there. There’s comedy, I guess, and I considered giving that a go, but the modern university is beyond parody. Maybe Joseph Heller at his absolute apex could pull it off, but I’m no Joseph Heller. Nor am I Franz Kafka, who is the onlie begetter of the only other genre that would cover academia: Surrealist, absurdist, dystopian horror. The adjective “Kafkaesque” describes graduate school perfectly, no doubt, but if you somehow need a dose of that, just go read The Trial. Or watch the film Brazil, and imagine everyone is twice as polysyllabically self-important …
Severian, “Storytelling Fail”, Rotten Chestnuts, 2021-07-13.
