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TRIBULATIONS
OF A FRENCH PROFESSOR
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TRIBULATIONS OF A FRENCH PROFESSOR By
ISBN 1-931948-93-3 2008 |
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"Tribulations of a French Professor" by Raphael Obermann, analyzes the social stumbling block that new assistant professors face and discover upon their hiring at any university in the USA. The protagonist, Julien, a Frenchman, examines in depth the critical apparatus of the social complex relationship amongst colleagues. The author, Obermann, brings the currently fashionable subject of the harassment taking place in any higher institution in the name of research. The narrator invites the reader to reflect on the hypocrisy and deception by those who claim to have a "high" publication record at the expense of the new teaching assistants who do all the research in order to survive in this competitive society. In following the thought of Jean-Paul Sartre, a French existentialist during Postwar era, Julien justifies his achievement of what is good or bad faith in his colleagues' behaviour. In a Sartrien interpretation of rightful insights, the narrator against this interpretation of what is a voluntary action, it is maintained that: (a) willing is not an action existentially caused by an act of the will; (b) a voluntary action, it is not an action existentially caused by an act of the will; (c) the will is not a mental experience or a psychological event; and (d) a voluntary action is an action originated by 'me'. The arguments developed in the novel lead to the thesis that the will is not a faculty -- or operative principal -- of the soul generated by intellectual force but a need to crash the other in order to survive in this very competitive society. The novel has some comic perspectives in that way that Dean Pinocchio, the head of the faculty of the "College of Liberal Pansies," is described in Notre Grand Prix University, as a character of his own like his son, a laughable buffoon who adds to the irony of the novel, is constructed no more less than la Grande Marquise, another buffoon who adds ridiculous spice to the story of the novel. The tone of the novel, carefully well-written, is sensual and voluptuous with various uses of the term imagination with the purpose of throwing light on the ability of the imagination in order to produce colorful and interpretative metaphors. The balance of the text is a highly useful and well-edited introduction to moral reading, strongly recommended for those who are going into higher education in the pursuit of Ph.D. or other doctoral pursuits. In no doubt, the author possesses a sizable knowledge of French Literature no more less than of art history; for, the narrator makes constant allusions to art works. The author makes excellent selection of annotated texts from various branches of French Literature. " Tribulations of a French Professor" is an excellent work and could be considered as a "roman à clef" like "Les Liaisons dangereuses" by Choderlos de Laclos. The novel is fluid and offers intellectual assortments for the avid of French culture: "Tribulations of a French Professor."
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