David Lansky
Published: 2013-11-25
Total Pages: 201
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The Cutting Edge, a satirical novel in two parts, presents a clear-sighted critique of the current state of academia. Set in a SUNY campus, diary entries that may or may not have been written by a student depict an environment marked by a series of contradictions guaranteed to discourage intellectual growth: a school mission statement that voices a commitment to social justice, academic freedom and a Student Code of Conduct that prohibits student demonstrations; administrative decisions to spy on students; a campus police force bent on uncovering student crime and collective punishment for residents living in dorms that are rarely cleaned; rising tuition costs coupled with declining academic standards leaving students up to their elbows in debt and ill-prepared for employment in a declining economy. Fortunately, there is a lone voice in the wilderness, a Professor who—despite knowing that he's teaching after the death of the book—continues to lay out an analysis of contemporary life where prisons, shopping malls and Walmart stores blight the landscape and barbarians run the universities. He wages the good fight for the rights of students against an administration that resembles a constitutional monarchy and budget cuts that ultimately lead to his death, yet his is the last voice the reader hears as the novel ends. In the second part of the novel, his memoir, we get the Professor's delineation of all that's wrong in present-day life. Without giving too much away, suffice it to say that finance capital, real estate speculation, and the postmodern condition are discussed. —Dawn Esposito, St. John's University The Cutting Edge is a novel of powerful imagination, rollicking humour, profound insight and deep political commitment. The novel is divided into two parts. The first is The College Essays of Jenny Delight. No one is quite sure who Jenny is. It is an obvious pseudonym since there is no student by this name at the college she attends. It is a hilarious section laced with social and personal insight as Jenny tries to understand the world around her, often using categories she's learning, sometimes the most abstract categories available, and infusing them with vivid meaning. The second section, Bill of Sale, is the posthumously-discovered manuscript of Sociology Professor Fred Snyder. It is a harrowing account of very vulnerable and often screwed-up people who are totally against their society. It is a section revealing, with extraordinary power, the ruthlessness of contemporary capitalism and its relentless destructive force. The Cutting Edge is one hell of a book! —Robert Roth, author of Health Proxy At once funny and dead serious, The Cutting Edge tells it like it is about the situation of public higher education in the early 21st-century United States. Sociology professor Fred Snyder—nostalgic for the era of Marcuse and the New Left, eternally at war with the college administration, committed to the ethical and political development of his students—is a wonderful creation. Skillfully narrated from several overlapping points of view, this satirical novel cuts to the chase in its astute portrayal of the connections between contemporary capitalism and the working-class college experience. —Barbara Foley, Rutgers University The Cutting Edge is at once a meeting of teachers and students under conditions of critical hilarity, and a deeply empathetic portrait of where the commitment to re-craft our learning environments in line with their most abiding promise might lead us if we attend closely as the author does to the poignancy of the stories all around us. It rewards readers with an insightful view on a delicate landscape often overlooked. —Randy Martin, New York University
