{"product_id":"kate-fanslerisbn-9780449007037","title":"Kate Fansler","description":"Student riots have ravaged the distinguished New York City university where Kate Fansler teaches.  In the ensuing disarray, the survival of the university's plebeian stepchild, University College, seems doubtful. President Jeremiah Cudlipp is snobbishly determined to ax it; and as sycophantic professors fall in line behind him, the rally of Kate and few rebellious colleagues seems doomed. It is a fight to the death, and only a miracle--or perhaps a murder--can save their beloved institution. . . .\"[A] dazzling display of elegance of language.\"\u003cbr\u003e--The New York Times Book ReviewAmanda Cross is the pseudonymous author of the bestselling Kate Fansler mysteries. As Carolyn G. Heilbrun, she is the Avalon Foundation Professor in the Humanities Emerita at Columbia University. She has served as president of the Modern Language Association as well as vice president of the Authors Guild. Dr. Heilbrun is also the author of Writing a Woman's Life, Hamlet's Mother and Other Women, The Education of a Woman: The Life of Gloria Steinem, and The Last Gift of Time: Life Beyond Sixty.Though mild clear weather\u003cbr\u003eSmile again on the shire of your esteem\u003cbr\u003eAnd its colors come back, the storm has changed you:\u003cbr\u003e            You will not forget, ever,\u003cbr\u003eThe darkness blotting out hope, the gale\u003cbr\u003e            Prophesying your downfall.\u003cbr\u003e            \u003cbr\u003eOne\u003cbr\u003eThat classes at the University began, as they were scheduled to, on\u003cbr\u003eSeptember 17, was a matter of considerable astonishment to everyone. There\u003cbr\u003ewas not a great deal to be said for revolutions--not, at any rate, in\u003cbr\u003eKate's opinion--but they did accustom one to boredom in the face of\u003cbr\u003eextraordinary events, and a pleasant sense of breathless surprise at the\u003cbr\u003ecalm occurrence of the expected. Kate said as much to Professor Castleman\u003cbr\u003eas they waited for the elevator in Lowell Hall.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\"Well,\" he answered, \"I might have found myself even more overcome with\u003cbr\u003eamazement if they had not managed to put my course in historical methods,\u003cbr\u003ewhich never has less than a hundred and fifty students, into a classroom\u003cbr\u003edesigned to hold ninety only if the students sit two in a chair, which,\u003cbr\u003ethese days, they probably prefer to do. Though come to think of it,\" he\u003cbr\u003eadded as the elevator, empty, went heedlessly past, apparently on some\u003cbr\u003emysterious mission of its own, \"I don't know why students should expect\u003cbr\u003eseats at lectures, since audiences can no longer expect them at the\u003cbr\u003etheater. We went to a play last night--I use the word 'play,' you\u003cbr\u003eunderstand, to describe what we expected to see, not what we saw--and not\u003cbr\u003eonly were there no seats, the entertainment principally consisted of the\u003cbr\u003emembers of the cast removing their clothes and urging, gently of course,\u003cbr\u003ethat the audience do likewise. My wife and I, fully clothed, felt rather\u003cbr\u003elike missionaries to Africa insufficiently indoctrinated into the antics\u003cbr\u003eof the aborigines. Shall we walk down? One thing at least has not changed\u003cbr\u003ein this university: the elevators. They have never worked, they do not now\u003cbr\u003ework, and though an historian should never speak with assurance of the\u003cbr\u003efuture, I am willing to wager that they never will. Where are you off to?\u003cbr\u003eDon't tell me, I know. A meeting. What's more, I can tell you what you are\u003cbr\u003egoing to discuss: relevance.\"\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\"That,\" said Kate, \"would be the expected. As a matter of fact, I have a\u003cbr\u003edoctoral examination: the poetry of W. H. Auden. He wrote a good bit of\u003cbr\u003eclever poetry to your muse.\"\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\"Mine? Gracious, have I got a muse? Just what I've needed all these years.\u003cbr\u003eDo you think I could trade her in for a cleaning woman, three days a week\u003cbr\u003ewith only occasional ironing? My wife would be prostrate with gratitude.\"\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\"Trade Clio in? Impossible. It is she into whose eyes 'we look for\u003cbr\u003erecognition after we have been found out.' \"\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\"Did Auden write that? Obviously he's never been married. That's a\u003cbr\u003edescription of any wife. I thought you were in the Victorian period.\"\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\"I am, I am. Auden was born in 1907. He only missed Victoria by six years.\u003cbr\u003eAnd don't be so frivolous about Clio. Auden called her 'Madonna of\u003cbr\u003esilences, to whom we turn When we have lost control.' \"\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\"Well, get hold of her,\" Professor Castleman said. \"I'm ready to turn.\"\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eThe dissertation examination was not, in fact, scheduled for another hour.\u003cbr\u003eKate wandered back toward her office, not hurrying, because no sooner\u003cbr\u003ewould she reach Baldwin Hall, in which building dwelt the Graduate English\u003cbr\u003eDepartment, than she would be immediately accosted, put on five more\u003cbr\u003ecommittees, asked to examine some aspect of the curriculum about which she\u003cbr\u003eknew nothing (like the language requirement for medieval studies) and to\u003cbr\u003esettle the problems of endlessly waiting students concerning, likely as\u003cbr\u003enot, questions not only of poetry and political polarization, but of pot\u003cbr\u003eand the\u003cbr\u003epill as well. Kate strolled along in the sort of trance to which she had\u003cbr\u003eby now grown accustomed. It was the result of fatigue, mental indigestion,\u003cbr\u003ea sense of insecurity which resembled being tossed constantly in a blanket\u003cbr\u003eas\u003cbr\u003emuch as it resembled anything, and, strangest of all, a love for the\u003cbr\u003eUniversity which was as irrational as it was unrewarded.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eShe would have been hard put to say, she thought looking about her, what\u003cbr\u003eit was she loved. Certainly not the administration (had there been one,\u003cbr\u003ewhich, since they had resigned one by one like the ten little Indians,\u003cbr\u003ethere wasn't). Not the Board of Governors, a body of tired,\u003cbr\u003eultraconservative businessmen who could not understand why a university\u003cbr\u003eshould not be run like a business or a country club. The students, the\u003cbr\u003efaculty, the place? It was inexplicable. The love one shares with a city\u003cbr\u003eis often a secret love, Camus had said; the love for a university was\u003cbr\u003eapparently no less so.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\"Kate Fansler!\" a voice said. \"How very, very nice. 'I must telephone\u003cbr\u003eKate,' I have said to Winthrop again and again, 'we must have lunch, we\u003cbr\u003emust have dinner, we must meet.' And now, you see, we have.\"\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eKate paused on the steps of Baldwin Hall and smiled at the sight of Polly\u003cbr\u003eSpence. Talk of the unexpected! Polly Spence belonged to the world of\u003cbr\u003eKate's family--she had actually been, years ago, a protegee of Kate's\u003cbr\u003emother's--and there emanated from her the aura of St. Bernard's--where her\u003cbr\u003esons had gone to school--and Milton Academy, the Knickerbocker dancing\u003cbr\u003eclasses and cotillions.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\"I know,\" Polly Spence said, \"my instincts tell me that if I wait here\u003cbr\u003epatiently you will say something, perhaps even something profound, like\u003cbr\u003e'Hello.' \"\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\"It's good to see you, Polly,\" Kate said. \"I don't know what's become of\u003cbr\u003eme. I feel like the heroine of that Beckett play who is buried up to her\u003cbr\u003eneck and spends every waking moment rummaging around in a large,\u003cbr\u003eunorganized handbag. Come to see the action, as the young say?\"\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\"Action? Profanity, more likely. Four-letter-word-bathroom,\u003cbr\u003efour-letter-word-sex, and really too tiresome, when I think that my own\u003cbr\u003etwo poor lambs were positively glared at if they said 'damn.' It's not an\u003cbr\u003eeasy world to keep up with.\"\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\"But if I know you, you're keeping up all the same.\"\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\"Of course I am. I'm taking a doctorate. In fact, I've almost got it. Now\u003cbr\u003ewhat do you think of that? I'm writing a dissertation for the Linguistics\u003cbr\u003eDepartment on the history of Verner's Law. Please look impressed. The\u003cbr\u003eLinguistics Department is overjoyed, because the darlings didn't know\u003cbr\u003ethere was anything new to say about Verner's Law until I told them, and\u003cbr\u003ethey've been taking it like perfect angels.\"\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eKate smiled. \"I always suspected an extraordinary brain operating behind\u003cbr\u003eall your committee-woman talents, but whatever made you decide to get a\u003cbr\u003ePh.D.?\"\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\"Grandchildren,\" Polly said. \"Three chuckling little boys, one gurgling\u003cbr\u003elittle girl, all under three. It was either hours and hours of\u003cbr\u003ebaby-sitting, to say nothing of having the little darlings cavalierly\u003cbr\u003edumped upon us at the slightest excuse, or I had to get a job that would\u003cbr\u003ebe absolutely respected. Winthrop has encouraged me. 'Polly,' he said, 'if\u003cbr\u003ewe are not to find ourselves changing diapers every blessed weekend, you\u003cbr\u003ehad better find something demanding to say you're doing.' The children, of\u003cbr\u003ecourse, are furious, but I am now a teaching\u003cbr\u003eassistant, very, very busy, thank you, and only condescending to rally\u003cbr\u003eround at Christmas and Easter. Summers I dash off to do research and\u003cbr\u003eWinthrop joins me when he can. But you look tired, and here I am chatting\u003cbr\u003eaway. Let's have lunch one day at the Cosmopolitan Club.\"\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\"I'm not a member.\"\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\"Of course not, dear, though I never understood why. Why are you looking\u003cbr\u003eso tired?\"\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\"Meetings. Meetings and meetings. We are all trying, as you must have\u003cbr\u003eheard, to restructure the University, another way of saying that we, like\u003cbr\u003ethe chap in the animated cartoons, have looked down to discover we are not\u003cbr\u003estanding on anything. Then, of course, we fall.\"\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\"But everybody's resigned. The President. The Vice-President. We've got an\u003cbr\u003eActing President, we're getting a Faculty Senate, surely everything's\u003cbr\u003elooking up.\"\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\"Perhaps. But the English Department has discovered there is no real\u003cbr\u003ereason for most of the things they have been happily doing for years. And\u003cbr\u003ethe teaching\u003cbr\u003eassistants--where, by the way, are you being a teaching assistant? Don't\u003cbr\u003etell me the College has reformed itself sufficiently to be hiring female,\u003cbr\u003eno-longer-young ladies, however talented . . .\"\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\"Not them; not bloody likely. I'm at the University College. Very\u003cbr\u003eexciting. Really, Kate, you have no idea.\"\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eKate, looking blank, realized she hadn't.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\"Really,\" Polly Spence said, \"the snobbery of you people in the graduate\u003cbr\u003eschool! We're doing splendid work over there . . .\"\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\"Didn't the University College used to be the extension school? Odd\u003cbr\u003ecourses for people at loose ends like members of labor unions who only\u003cbr\u003ework twenty hours a week and housewives whose children are . . . ?\"\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\"That was a hundred years ago. There are no more courses in\u003cbr\u003ebasket-weaving. We give a degree, we have a chapter of Phi Beta Kappa, and\u003cbr\u003eour students are very intelligent people who simply don't want to play\u003cbr\u003efootball or have a posture picture taken.\"","brand":"Fawcett","offers":[{"title":"Default Title","offer_id":46301048537317,"sku":"NP9780449007037","price":7.99,"currency_code":"USD","in_stock":false}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/1842\/7735\/files\/9780449007037_b13c5a5b-37c5-4468-95ff-e371647ce245.jpg?v=1730746679","url":"https:\/\/k12savings.com\/es\/products\/kate-fanslerisbn-9780449007037","provider":"K12savings","version":"1.0","type":"link"}