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Young Adult novelist Martin Wilson grew up in Tuscaloosa, Alabama, where much of his fiction takes place. His first YA novel, What They Always Tell Us, was the winner of an Alabama Author Award and was a Lambda Award nominee. His newest one, We Now Return to Regular Life, is a profoundly darker story, a look at what happens to a family and several communities when an eleven-year-old boy named Sam is kidnapped, held hostage for three years by a much-older man, then returned. The ensuing narrative plays out through the eyes of Sam’s sister Beth and Sam’s former friend Josh, and shows the very-current topic of being an “ally” in a fresh way. It has added immediacy when put into the context of recent, real-life, years-long abductions. 

I spoke to Wilson last month about point of view in books, media spectacles, sex scenes in books about teenagers, and the state of YA in the South.  

Gee Henry: So, why do you think you chose the two characters you did (Sam’s sister and his friend Josh) to narrate the book?

Martin Wilson: Well, when I first conceived the idea, I thought I might want to have Sam’s POV. But then I realized I didn’t want to go there. Other writers had gone there already–to the “victim’s” POV, and they had done it quite well. In these stories, I realized you rarely heard from other people affected by the tragedy, besides the parents. And those viewpoints really were of more interest to me.

Yes, not having Sam’s POV really increased the mystery of it for me.

That was the intention, I guess–that mystery that can pull the reader along. Also, I do like shifting perspectives. When I get sick of one character, then I can switch toanother’s point of view. I wanted to explore what happens after the headlines fade away. So I did a lot of thinking and these characters eventually came to me. The friend who was with him the day of the vanishing, and the older sister who let him out of her sights.

There’s a scene where the family, after Sam is returned, does an interview with a Diane Sawyer-like journalist. I know that, because of what you do for a living, you often watch human-interest interviews. Have you ever had to watch an interview of the sort that you write about in your novel?

Well, not in person—just on TV, like most everyone else. I’ve seen a ton of them, though as I’ve aged I watch less of that stuff. In fact, I loosely based this story on a true case, and I know the family was interview by Oprah. But I didn’t watch it. I find them so awkward and awful, and I hope that comes through in my novel in that scene. 

Same. Years ago, there was this family who had lost a loved one, and they were interviewed by Hannah Storm or somesuch, and I watched it. Her first question was, “How do you FEEL?” The dead guy’s brother said, “How do you THINK we feel?” After that, I’ve sort of changed the channel whenever I see that kind of laziness in journalism.

It’s so true though. It’s so cringe-worthy, and I always wonder why people subject themselves to it. In this case, I wanted the family to be conflicted about the experience.

There are so many ways to help families who’ve gone through such loss without having to see television interviewers try to milk tears out of them.

Very true. I think, for the purposes of making a dramatic story, the TV interview was the way to go. 

I know you live in NYC. Why do you return to the South for your fiction, do you think?

I think because it’s the place I know best? I haven’t lived there in over 20 years or so, but I still consider Alabama “home.” My parents live there, my brother and his family. Also, I was in high school in Alabama, and since I write YA, I want my characters to inhabit a place I can write about with authority. I was miserable in high school—as so many people are—so this is the period of my life left such an impression on me. It’s true what they say—so many writers were outcasts in their youths. Hence that turn toward the interior—in my case, writing.

You know that Carson McCullers quote where she said she visited the South every now and then to renew her sense of horror? Is there anything like that for you in writing about Alabama?

Haha, that’s a great quote. But yes, I think there’s a little bit to that. Horror might be a strong word. Or maybe not. When I visit, I do live in a cocoon of sorts–just my family, who are all pretty progressive in comparison to everyone else. But you can’t entirely avoid the “real world” down there. It’s bracing to encounter people who see the world so differently. Maybe that’s good for me to see? One thing that has always kind of bugged me is the politeness, the manners, the niceness. In some ways, that’s great, refreshing. But often this is coming from people who hate gays, minorities, etc. So it’s kind of menacing. A fake niceness.

I really like your fiction for the same reason you talked about just now. That it’s a story viewed through the prism of a family, a community. So the reader returns to a place of looking at the South through actual people, not just characters who are simplified on TV. Simplified, condescended towards…

People always assume, when I say Alabama, that I grew up somewhere rural. That’s not the case at all. So in my work, I always want to show a different but real South, the one I know. I grew up in a city, not a town, not the country. Okay, it’s not NYC, but as far a southern high school goes, there was diversity too. Not just racial, but economic diversity.  

Speaking of the South…I really love YA, but I feel like there’s very little LGBT YA literature set in the South. Is that your perception, too?

I would say yes. But I think that’s changing. Overall, there’s a ton more LGBTQ YA literature than there was even 10 years ago. My friend Chris Shirley’s YA novel, Playing by the Book, and my friend Will Walton’s Anything Could Happen–these are two examples of southern LGBTQ YA that are really well done. I liked their honesty and tenderness. And Chris’s is maybe the first YA book I’ve read that really grapples seriously with Christianity and homosexuality. Which is a big thing in the south, especially. All your life they say you’re going to hell. It’s tough. Of course, these novels are set in rural environments. I would like to see more novels from the south that address a more urban setting.

You handle the crush that Josh develops on Sam, and the brief, touching, sexual encounter they share, with such gentleness.

Thank you! I was so nervous about that scene, but I knew something like it would be there from the beginning. Readers have taken away a lot of different takes on that scene, which I find fascinating.

As a member of the YA community, do you face any blowback from people who don’t think there should be any sexual relationships at all in literature for young people?

I really haven’t–not personally anyway. In fact, in my first book there were a few sex scenes that I thought might be censored, and they weren’t. And nor was this one. Of course there ARE people who believe this. But I think books that don’t grapple with sex honestly–I think teenagers won’t let those books pass the smell test. I mean, there has been sex in YA since Judy Blume’s Forever, and maybe earlier. Honest writers deal with it.

And what of the recently infamous YA Twitter backlashes? Vulture (http://www.vulture.com/2017/08/the-toxic-drama-of-ya-twitter.html), among many sites and publications, have written about young adult authors being dragged and publicly shamed for books deemed to have insufficient diversity and inclusion. You’ve managed to escape being sucked into that world? [Note: Kirkus Reviews said of this novel that “Wilson also captures the diversity of one of Alabama’s larger urban centers…Beth’s friends are African-American and Latina, and the one friend that Sam made while abducted is African-American, to name a few.”]

It’s so tricky to answer this. Diversity is important to me—both in my own books and in seeing other the perspectives of diverse voices published more and more in the YA world. It’s really heartening to see the successes of Angie Thomas, Jason Reynolds, Nic Stone, Matt de la Pena, Jenny Han, and many others. Books that get a lot of acclaim but also sell. I was a white boy, but I was also gay, and there were no books for me to turn to when I was a teen that I could relate to. And I think such books can make a huge difference to young people. 

I guess what I find disheartening about some of the Twitter backlashes is that some of the fury seems misdirected.

Right now, with all the awfulness swirling around us, I really think we need to keep our eyes on the real enemies, the real threats. Not that there aren’t genuine slights and grievances that should be addressed, but I find it dispiriting when people who are NOT the enemy are treated like they are the enemy. There’s got to be a better, more genuine way to educate people who might be clueless about issues–sexism, racism, etc.–than to just shout and label them something they’re not. I hope that makes sense 

It does. Why do you think writers and readers like the “changeling” story so much? Like, the trope in literature about a child who is kidnapped and then returned, changed?

I actually wasn’t really aware that this was such a trope. I do think “missing” stories have always had some lurid appeal to everyone. The mystery in these stories is irresistible. And I think there’s something compelling about exploring how such an experience would affect someone–and also affect people close to him or her.

I really like the rollout of information in the book. Like, no one in the book ever fully knows the whole story. Sam’s mother, Sam’s sister, Josh–they all know pieces of the story. But no one, even at the end, knows what really happened to Sam. Maybe not even Sam!

Yes, very true! I think that’s pretty true to life, but maybe not satisfying to SOME readers. I wanted that ambiguity there–the not knowing everything. I think that’s more realistic, and, in some ways, more satisfying. I want there to still be a mystery that the reader thinks about after she has closed the book.

So do you ever think you might chuck YA out the window and write an adult mystery novel?

I will probably not chuck YA anytime soon! That said, I do have a piece of “adult” fiction I’m working on (and no, not “adult as in porn!). Something very autobiographical that I may never want published, though writing it is therapeutic for me. But I love writing YA. I love writing about and for teenagers. I have more stories in that realm that I want to tell.

            And but Tweed was all like, “Yo, you gotta hear this shit — this shit is stupid!” And Dig’s hanging on to his every word, like “Yeah man, give it to me,” and I’m just hanging low, leaning over the bar, staring at all these bottles of all this Blue Curacao shit and thinking, man should I do another shot? And Tweed’s jabbering away about some cat he knows, “This cap from East New York, this goomba…” But I’m lost, ’cause by this time I’m three sheets to the wind shitfaced. And I’m eyeing the one chick in this place, the goth over there with the punk belt, sitting all by herself, and it’s just about this time I notice my bladder’s full.

            So while Tweed’s arms are flapping like some drunk monkey and Dig’s staring at him like he’s hypnotized, I leave them two by the bar, and they don’t notice me move ’cause it’s like seven beers past two a.m. and who the hell notices shit at that hour? Plus, it feels good to leave ’cause I’m starting to feel like I’m wasting my life with those fools, those fucking morons, and I just need to get away. So I walk into this cloud of cigarette smoke, like someone else’s dream, though they ain’t supposed to be smoking in this place, and somewhere in the back of the cloud is a bathroom, a little stinkhole, with shit around the bowl, writing all over the walls. I whip my dick out and shoot a stream somewhere. It don’t matter where it falls. Everything’s covered with piss anyway. And it feels good coming out, like a little blow job ’cause I’m drunk and stoned, and I start reading the stupid phrases on the wall, like “Arab 4 Life!” and an arrow pointing to it saying, “Fuck all ya cocksuckers!” Plus there’s all this wack shit, like maybe in Polish, lots of Poles in Greenpoint. Some Spanish amigo stuff and the usual suck my cock phone numbers for dope. I took it all in, you know? I was just taking a piss. And like right above the toilet paper was this big black writing that said, “G, you really should stop wasting your life with those two fools,” and I’m thinking what a coincidence, right, since everyone calls me “G” and I was just thinking the same thing when I was next to shithead one and two by the bar.

            So I finished my piss and looked at my face in the cracked mirror, trying to find my eyes behind all the writing. Maybe it was the light, but I was as pale as an Eskimo’s tit. Anyway, I fumbled back to the bar, feeling like crap, totally empty. So I ordered a beer. And Tweed’s still talking about getting laid and high at some party, and there’s this funky techno the DJ’s playing, and I start thinking how odd that this crappy little bar has some DJ playing till two a.m. Even though it was like eighty degrees, the dude’s got this black hoodie over his head, and he’s huddling over the turntable like the Grim Reaper come for your soul. I try to figure him out. Probably some washout clubbie who never got his real break and now he spends his nights high on weed and music, trying to forget the person he never was. Like everyone here, all these fuckers, who’ve got nothing left except beer. The music was cool though, some funky trip hop beats, and it took me out of the mood I was in so I could concentrate on what Tweed was trying to say.

            “When she moved back in wit’ her man,” Tweed said, “that’s when the things got mad crazy.”

            “Yo, you dogged that bitch?” Dig said.

            Tweed smiled like the fucking Buddha, saying, “Man, that shit was so L!”

            They both cracked up while I sat next to them, trying to pretend like I’m into the conversation, drinking my beer and wondering what the fuck I can say to change the topic, to just add something that isn’t about weed or hos or fucking basketball. But Dig jumps in, starts talking about this party he went to, for this chick rap artist, “She passed me an L and said, ‘How you doing?’ and I said, ‘I’m doin’ just fine now…’”

           “L,” their new fucking word. Tweed and Dig pick them up like bums pick up change. And they spend them like crack whores who just won the lottery. And the fucked up thing is I start using them too. Everyone does. They’ve got a way of sneaking into your head. “L,” a blunt, a joint rolled in a cigar. “L,” sick, dope, hot, phat, like mad crazy. “L,” the fucking elevated train. Who knows what the hell it means today? We just say it. That’s how it goes here in Greenpoint.

            So now I’m getting pissed ’cause this is my thing when I’m drunk, I get mad angry, like smash shit, except I never got mad at Tweed and Dig before, but they’re always going on and on about weed and bitches and it just gets so goddamned old, you know? I’m looking for something new and fresh, like the sound the DJ was pumping that said there was more to this bar than their stupid conversation. So I turn my eye to the punk chick in the corner, but she don’t see me or just don’t care, so I down the beer and order another. The bartender’s got this long cigarette hanging from his lip and pours me a beer like I’ve killed his mom, total lack of joy. I smoked some weed a few hours before, had more beers than I could remember, but I can hold my shit, you know? I’m no lightweight. But at that moment I felt a clear light shine in my mind, like I was sober, and I just knew right then that I needed to talk to that girl with the punk belt, that all would be well once I spoke to her.

            I thought maybe I could bum a smoke and that would be my in. So she’s sitting alone just writing in her little book, empty beer glass next to her. And I think, just a quick piss to clear my gnads, make sure I don’t have a booger hanging from my nose, and I’ll be right back. So again I walk through that dream smoke to the bathroom, close the stall door and do my thing. I start reading the walls again. Now the black writing by the toilet paper says, “G, you aren’t listening. You’re just getting fucked up every day and going nowhere. Are you going to change your life or are you just going to waste away?”

            And now this really freaks me out, and I piss on my shoe by accident. I look around the bathroom, thinking, there’s another stall, right? But there isn’t. So maybe Tweed is playing another one of his sick jokes. But, no, he’s at the bar the whole time. He’s six foot four, with a bladder like Kansas. I run my hand over the writing, just to check, but it’s dry. By the little dots at the end of each letter I can tell it’s Sharpie. I used to tag all over the five boroughs with those things. They don’t ever wash off.

            So, fuck it, I think, just some freaky coincidence. Let’s go back and talk to that chick. Maybe she’s into S&M or bondage and likes to dress up in PVC, ’cause chicks with spiked belts like hers usually do. I spring out of the bathroom and slide up to her, and all stupid-like I say, “Hey, got another smoke?” She lifts her eyes to meet mine, and I’m stunned retarded. Her eyes are all shiny, crystal blue, even in the dim smoky light, and I’m totally mesmerized as she keeps me in her stare and reaches into her purse, pulls out a long Camel Light and hands me one. So this is Brooklyn, right, and there’s no smoking in the bars anymore, but no one gives a shit after midnight, especially in this forgotten place. It’s like some prohibition speakeasy, a place of the past, at least that’s what it feels like. So I’m thinking I’m Bogart or somebody, all smooth, all Roaring Twenties, and she’s probably thinking what a dork, and anyway I’m just standing there with this butt in my mouth waiting for her to give me a light.

            Instead, she says, “Sit down.”

            My balls start tingling ’cause my mind’s racing ahead to all the nasty things she’s gonna do to me, like tie me up and spank my bare ass with her belt, and I sit down, lean over and say, “What you drawing there?”

            She turns her sketch book upside down so I can see and she shows me this real sick picture, with bodies all mutilated and demons and dragons and all sorts of evil shit, then I glance back up into her eyes and see what’s so enchanting about them — she’s got this dark power, like a well that sucks you in over the edge. And my cock goes flaccid, just like that. I’m done with her, but before I get to stand she flicks her lighter and sticks the flame before my eyes. Now I’m thinking, should I take a light from this evil girl? And why do I get the feeling like there’s something more to this than just a light? Like some deal with the devil. But, you see, cigarettes are part devil too because before my mind decided, my body’s already leaning in to get the light.

            The nicotine soothes as it goes down, and suddenly my balls are tingly again, and I start making silent excuses why I shouldn’t hate this devil girl. She smiles at me and offers me her beer. I never saw, you know, when she got a new one, but soon I’m drinking again.

            So we start talking about all this trippy shit, like alien abductions and Mayan prophesies and CIA conspiracies. She tells me her soul’s from the Pleiades, that in a past life she was Native American shaman, that she’s gone deep undercover into the Illuminati, and while she’s talking my heart is pounding and my head is spinning like I’ve been dosed with acid. And I know she knows this, this devil girl, she knows the tricks she’s playing with my head, how it’s freaking me out and how she’s sucking me into her power. So I panic. I got to get away from this chick before she destroys my mind, and I’m up in second, through the dream smoke, and back into the bathroom again. And that’s when I remember the writing on the wall.

            Now, get this, I’m not making this up. You’re probably thinking, okay he’s been smoking weed, drinking all night, talking to some crazy chick, he probably just freaked himself out. I tried to tell myself the same. But I swear the next part is true. It gives me goose bumps just thinking about it. I read the writing above the toilet paper dispenser that said, “You’re hopeless, G. Look into the bowl and just die.”

            And I know I shouldn’t. That I should run out of the bathroom and get the fuck away from the bar before I lose my mind, but I’m a tool, a loser, hopeless just like the wall said. So I look down. Before I even flush, the water is spinning, spinning, colored chunks spiraling around, and I’m ready to puke, when I feel like I’m shrinking, and I can’t tear my eyes away from the spinning bowl. It’s like some hypnotist’s spiral, with death at the center. I’ve had some bad trips back in the day, but this was nothing like those. I was ripped from my soul, flushed down that toilet like a piece of dung.

            The next thing I know I’m puking on the floor of the bathroom, my body totally cold, and the toilet above me is overflowing. Somewhere I hear knocking, voices, maybe Tweed’s, and then a boom as someone breaks the lock.

            “Holy shit, you okay, man?” Tweed screams. As he grabs me I hear this commotion at the bar. I try to stand, pushing Tweed off me.

            “It’s the writing!” I say, screaming, spitting up again. “It’s talking to me.”

            And Tweed’s like, “Yo, you just trippin’ man! Chill!”

            I stand by the sink, my whole body shaking, and splash water on my face. I look at myself in the mirror. And the fucked up thing is I’m not pale anymore. My cheeks are flushed like I just ran laps around the bar. In the broken mirror I see the graffitied stall. My stomach turns as I see the scribbling above the toilet paper roll. You’d think I had enough, right? But I have to see what it says now, so I wobble over to the toilet and read. But there’s nothing there, nothing for me. Just some fluff about Republicans liking it up the ass and a poem by Octavio Paz.

            I turn to see Tweed frowning at me, like I’ve disappointed him somehow, and I notice that his hair is different. I remember it being parted on the other side. I follow him out into the bar all shaky, my legs weak, my vision clouded like I’ve been swimming in a chlorine pool all day. The cloud of dream smoke is gone and there’s this small crowd staring at me as I emerge. One stupid kid by the bar claps and cheers. Dig gets up from his stool, finally noticing that there’s something worth his attention going on. He offers me a drink. No, I tell him, sitting by the bar and swallowing gobs of water that the bartender’s pouring by the bucketful. He’s ready and waiting to pour a new glass as soon as I finish the last. He smiles and says, “You okay, kid?” I look at Dig and notice that on his chin he’s got this little red goatee that he didn’t have fucking fifteen minutes before, and instead of talking about weed and whores he says to Tweed, “Nietzsche’s solipsism was really a dialectic with himself.” Then they start talking about shit I didn’t even think they knew, and now I’m really fucking confused because all the bottles of Blue Curacao behind the bar have been replaced with rows and rows of red Grenadine.

            While I was in the bathroom the DJ took off his hoodie and now wears a white wife-beater with the arms cut off, sweat running down his chest, and he’s mixing some trance techno shit while staring right at me.

            The punk girl still sits in her booth, scribbling into her sketch book, when she looks up to meet my eyes. She waves me over. And though I don’t want to go, though I just want to go home and sleep, I walk over anyway and sit down, like I have no control.

            “You okay?” she says.

            “Yeah. Cool,” I say, “Just too much to drink.” But it’s a lie ’cause I’m still in total dread of what just happened, and I’m shivering like it’s twenty degrees.

           “Want to see another drawing?”

            And I think, no, no fucking way, but before I speak she turns her little book around to show me pictures of angels and cherubs and flowery gardens of delight. It reminds me of something from childhood that I can’t quite remember, and my heart breaks at the sight of it. And I’m warm all of a sudden, like hot from the inside. And I start looking right down her crotch where her punk belt is. I notice it’s wrapped the opposite way it was before — I notice these things — and then I glance up into her eyes, her fucking green eyes, not blue anymore, but bright green, like leaves in spring, sucking me into them just like before, only now the feeling is pleasant, blissful, a little heaven, and I want to fall into them forever. Then she grabs my wrist, pulls me slowly towards her, and whispers into my ear, “Do you want another beer?”

Speak, Father

I became ancient in my own lifetime, 
a life now splintered into anecdotes.

I’ve bent my wisdom toward the thankless task 
of getting money, piling up the filth.

My office has no window but the mail slot, 
a leering mouth with grime around its lips.

It’s to this house of wax I nail my grievance. 
(I’m free to write this bile since none will read.)

Our forebears criticized this fallen nation 
to grant us license to dismantle it.

Speak, father. Tell me how you used to smolder. 
Recount the failure of the Leveling.

Remind me how we came, saddled with tears 
of shame, to live in cities without children. 

Sickbed of Emperor Cuitláhuac 

To see is to use and in using to find 
the tool’s end, and yours by way of it. 
Underneath layers of sheets and heavy down 
I am too hot to think and lay in languor. 
There is a thing I desperately wish to say 
but cannot find a place in which to pin it.

Legions descend on me to abuse my illness, 
surrounding my bed and posing me with riddles. 
I have no answers. I sweat and roll my eyes 
searching the purple face of my tormentor. 
The candle’s wick diminished to a nub 
issues one final belch of greasy smoke.

I am the lord and emperor Cuitláhuac, 
and I am now among the dead.

“The Chair,” the six-episode series written by actress/writer Amanda Peet and writer/academic Annie Julia Wyman, and produced by Game of Thrones duo David Benioff and D.B. Weiss, and Chair star Sandra Oh, has garnered much attention in recent weeks. Reviews mostly hailing the Netflix show as “brilliant,” “timely,” and “hilarious” have flooded the media. And the show’s release also lit up academic Twitter with a flurry of tweets that weighed in on what the series got right about academic life and what was left wanting in its depiction of the English department at Pembroke, the fictional college that provides the setting for the playing out of the culture wars on American college campuses today.

The series deals specifically with challenges faced by Dr. Ji-Yoon Kim (Sandra Oh), the newly named Chair of the Pembroke English Department––challenges made still more intense due to Kim’s status as a first-ever-woman of color to hold the position. Within a hierarchy held in place by Dean Paul Larson (David Marsh), woke students and junior professors, and their more antiquated counterparts called “dinosaurs,” play out their opposing roles on a stage defined by the elusiveness of tenure for women of color, the lack of faculty diversity, gendered salary discrepancies, competing teaching philosophies, and a dwindling enrollment. All that is missing at Pembroke is a cadre of poorly paid adjuncts and graduate student instructors who stand in for more costly tenure-line professors, and whose labor currently makes up more than 60% of the teaching in real humanities departments in the US.

The story unfolds in a plot that develops around three of Kim’s main challenges as Chair. The first: to bring Pembroke into the 21st century in terms of diversity and feminism by supporting Black Americanist assistant professor, Yaz McKay (Nana Mensah), during her run-up to tenure. Part of Kim’s plan involves suggesting that McKay co-teach Moby Dick with Melville scholar (and dinosaur), Eliot Rentz (Bob Balaban), rather than offer her own popular and heavily enrolled course, “Sex and the Novel.” Kim’s reasoning is that making such a change would most immediately solve the department’s enrollment issues by filling vacant seats in Rentz’ course with McKay’s overflow of students. Kim’s suggestion is also motivated by the hopes that it will also create a forum in which McKay can show off her talents as a teacher and her grasp of contemporary critical theory to Rentz, who is, it turns out, the head of her departmental tenure committee.  But though it is McKay who brings the students to the classroom, in Rentz’s mind it is he who is the serious scholar, and he quickly relegates his younger colleague to the level of a paper-distributing teaching assistant, as McKay had predicted he would.

The inevitable complexity of this strange-bedfellows merger isn’t the sole cause of Kim’s defeat in her struggle to bring the department into the 21st century. Her plan to select McKay for the year’s Distinguished Lecturer Award is soon derailed by Dean Larson, who, seeking to appeal to alumni and donors, instead taps celebrity and former Yale ABD Beckett scholar, David Duchovny (played by himself), for the honor––though he had left the profession 30 years ago. Though Kim does manage to convince Duchovny to withdraw his candidacy, she doesn’t do it quite fast enough to head off a job offer from Yale to McKay, an offer which comes with the promise of an endowed chair, an expedited tenure process, and a hefty salary. McKay, of course, considers the offer, accusing Kim of abandoning her mission to diversify the faculty by kowtowing to an antiquated academic structure and value system.

Kim’s second and central challenge as the new Chair arises from her dealings with the charming and popular professor, Bill Dobson (Jay Duplass), who after arriving late and quite hung over for the semester’s first meeting of his course, “The Death of Modernism,” performed a cocky mock Seig Heil gesture while defining fascism as a cause for modernism’s demise. His students, with cell phones at the ready, snap photos of him in mid-gesture. Eager to identify a scapegoat and to publicize Dobson’s faux pas (in a way that seems ironic in their quasi-fascistic use of PC language and behavior), they cast him as an anti-Semite in the memes they create on the spot and post on social media even before the class has ended. Predictably, “No Nazis at Pembroke” protests break out immediately among students. This terrifies the Dean, the board, and the donors, already worried about low enrollments and thus more attentive to student discontent. Make a public apology, they tell Dobson, or lose your job. But–and here’s the rub–it isn’t enough for the students that he apologize for offending them. He must apologize for being a Nazi, or minimally, for being anti-Semitic. Enter Cancel Culture at Pembroke!

Seeing both accusations as unfounded and untrue, Dobson resists the demand for apology, and thereby puts his job in jeopardy. Doing so, he compromises the legitimacy of his colleague and current boss, Kim, whose advice to Dobson’s TA—to not answer any questions from reporters–comes off as a gag order issued in an attempted cover-up.  Ironically, all her efforts to stave off notoriety gets her is a front-page cover-photo and an above-the-fold story in the campus newspaper.

As if that weren’t enough, Kim’s difficulties as a first woman of color in her position are further complicated by her private life as a single mother of a smart, charming, but rather difficult adopted daughter, Juju (Every Carganilla). The Chair’s depiction of Kim’s work/life balance signals the stress that working mothers face when childcare is not provided by the university, babysitters outside the workplace are in short supply, and parents must depend on resistant grandparents and/or friends to watch their children, sometimes with no advance notice.

Kim is faced with the additional stress of her unresolved romantic relationship with Dobson, former peer, former boss, and current subordinate. Recently widowed, he assuages his pain by self-medicating with every drug and drink known to man in an attempt to “get his shit together.” In the meantime, Dobson’s antics compromise Kim’s need to maintain professionalism with the Dean and impartiality with department members.

And this series is supposed to be funny? 

Well, in fact, it is funny. Very funny. Aside from the humor sparked by the show’s realistic treatment of academic politics, Kim’s personal relationship with Dobson often plays out like a zany rom com. The show highlights their undeniable chemistry and the banter that attests to their clear enjoyment of one another, even through their mighty disagreements. Similarly, Kim’s struggles with Juju, who terrorizes babysitters, befuddles teachers, and worries her amused, though understandably exhausted mother, often spark guffaws.

But the heartiest laughs are prompted by Kim’s third challenge—her attempt to locate a proper workspace for the tenured medievalist professor, Joan Hambling, brilliantly played by Holland Taylor. Hambling, a bawdy, outspoken 70-year-old, has recently been moved to the basement of the Athletic Department, following an administrative decision to make room for young blood by inciting older professors to retire. Hambling’s attempts to be restored to an above-ground office by means of a Title IX claim, her burning of her negative student evaluations in a waste basket bonfire in her office, and her successful flirtatious conspiracy with a newly acquired IT buddy to “out” an outrageously ageist and misogynist “Rate my Professor” critic––are easily the most hilarious moments of the season.

But as entertaining, heartwarming, and poignant as the series is, and as apt as its depiction of the mindsets, policies and politics of academia seem to be, I found the show to be nonetheless somewhat wanting. Or, perhaps, it’s better to say, I found myself wanting––for a bit more. As a former English professor in a respected university suffering from some of the same problems, the shock of recognition and the agony of the situation having been captured exactly as it unfolded in my experience, elicited not only my laughter but also my frustration. I found myself wishing the show had been bolder in its treatment of the complexity and sometimes thorny aspects of some of the behaviors it depicts. The question that remains for me is how the portrayal might have been done more effectively and more successfully.

I’d been impressed with the way a comment by McKay added to the representation of her situation, and humorously, to the critique of racism in the department. However, I found myself longing for a more obvious denouncement of the students’ series of actions following Dobson’s ‘Heil Hitler’ joke and dismissal. The Chair’s writers did a splendid job in composing the zinger that McKay delivers, in which she points to the absurdity of Kim’s protection of Rentz, in his loss of stature, at the expense of his junior, Black woman colleague. “I can see why you feel sorry for him . . .  he only got to rule the profession for the last forty years,” she snaps. I applauded the critique of racism and cronyism of academe that the script levels in that comment. Unfortunately, however, there was no such challenge leveled at Dobson’s students’ own brand of absurd behavior in his class or at his town meeting beyond a straightforward depiction of the scenes.

In today’s universities, when PC responses by students in English departments are so typical that neither guffaws, nor awareness of the absurdity of a situation are guaranteed responses for viewers, lampooning these normalized behaviors might require more work than the use of hyperbole. If critiques of students’ inability to either distinguish between a joke and a slur, or resist a questionable orthodoxy, are points “The Chair” is interested in promoting (though to what extent they are is perhaps still the question), the choice to include a critical or humorous visual or verbal response from an unconvinced onlooker could help. Perhaps a non-conformist student’s point that Dobson’s gesture was made while illustrating a link between fascism and absurdism would have offered a viewer an alternative to students’ certainty of Dobson’s commitment to Nazi politics and identity. Perhaps a student’s use of feminist theory for a humorous woke-on-woke critique of protestors’ misrepresentation of Dobson, could have provided a clearer critique of the students for putting a Nazi cap on his head in their memes. And, lastly, adding an awestruck professor to the group at the town meeting might have shed light on the consequences of not challenging what Anne Applebaum calls Modern mob justice techniques in her recent Atlantic article, “The New Puritans”––such as students chanting memorized lines in sync with each other and with their choreographed moves to insist on only one truth– that Dobson is a Nazi because it serves their purposes, and because they say so. There are never enough of such faculty members in real English Departments; but there is always at least one.

And could that one be introduced in Season Two? 

If not, the series could be wanting for a slightly more obvious satirical stance when it comes to the students, so as not to reproduce the fear provoked by cancel culture in the actual telling of this story.  As it stands, the series critiques the easy issues well—the ones with which most people agree. It succeeds at condemning ageism and coerced retirement, a lack of faculty diversity, the dreaded “Rate My Professor” website, gendered wage discrimination, and the lecture as valid pedagogy on its own.

But, speaking of pedagogy, where was a critique of McKay’s? Unless there is a spoofing too vague to notice, I did not catch a satirical tone taken about her competence vs. her marketability. And the story could benefit from something more than incessant praise for her pedagogy, even considering her beyond rapturous response to the students’ theatrical performance of Moby Dick. I am a lover of using drama and the arts in the classroom, and engaging students in creating responses to comprehend and more easily relate to older literature especially. But, while the students are engaged and have ostensibly learned some things creating the pieces, the exercise cries out for a follow-up to that experience if it is to warrant applause. University students need to go further, and for them, this Hamiltonesque coverage of the novel is seriously wanting as it stands. Would Yale really be satisfied with this lightweight coverage of Moby Dick accompanied by neither necessary reflection nor discussion from its newly endowed chair, or is that question being deliberately–yet clearly too faintly–raised by the show’s writers? I found it hard to tell. The brief rack focus documentation of Rentz’s stunned reaction to McKay’s lesson was the sole response registered and could easily have been interpreted as an indictment of Rentz as the un-woke “dinosaur.”

In addition to issues with her lesson plan, McKay’s demonstrated questioning style, designed for only the response she is after, is problematic without a critique clearer than the juxtaposition of her style with Kim’s open questions and subsequent brief discussion with her class in the final episode. McKay is hailed as brilliant by Kim on about five occasions over the six episodes. And reviewers across the board have also emphasized her brilliance, most likely echoing Kim’s fictional endorsement. But where is the brilliance evidenced in her teaching in the show– the one place we could have seen it?  Or are we meant to question her success based on alternative perspectives possibly running through viewers minds? – the idea that women of color currently enjoy an edge over white contenders in being hired or promoted in the academy– despite holdover statistics?  If so, we have been given no indication of that. All we know is that the writers provided the opening for a critique, and then didn’t take it up.

That said, I do understand that the brevity of the series and the writers’ desire to be humorous as well as heady are reasons for not taking up extremely controversial political topics. That and the risk of being canceled themselves as racist, sexist, or anti-Semitic. Also, some possible real world opposing issues––complaints of “token” hirings and promotions and/or accusations of lowered requirements and expectations for women and minorities––are impossible to lampoon in today’s environment. This is true however clearly stated or masked such feelings may be on college campuses, or however appropriate they may be for a satirist focusing on campus wars. It is also difficult for creators to achieve a balance between representing a reality and including jibes to spoof that reality in the smartest way. This is especially true when the series is ongoing and when episodes are likely in development for future seasons, with opportunities for the inclusion of much that I am wanting for– to be introduced later. 

I will admit, however, that I was encouraged that my desire for a stronger critique of complicated politics was partially fulfilled at the end of Episode Six. This occurred at the final hearing on Dobson’s fate, when his value to the English department is set in stark contrast to the committee’s concern for endowments and the college’s obsession with its latest US News and World Report rankings–concerns that only breathe life into cancel culture.  And, I was especially encouraged by the cautionary statement Kim made to the committee at the end of the hearing, following her decision not to vote for Dobson’s dismissal.

“If you think Bill is a Nazi, by all means fire him,” she said. But, “firing Bill isn’t going to change the culture here or stop what’s going on out there.”

In conclusion then, I find that I am willing to wait and see.  I am also optimistic that with a slightly clearer satirical tone to complement great storytelling, humor, a terrific cast, and a realistic commentary on university life and its current challenges on all sides, Season Two, and others that I expect to follow it, will be more satisfying.

Therefore, re-engaged and curious, I am moved to follow up on Kim’s last cautionary statement with the question that it prompts. A question that may, in some way, guide successive episodes: 

What will change the culture here at Pembroke––and beyond?

The Year of the Tyrant 

Follows on the heels 
Of a half-dozen passes. 
It could easily stun 
Any one. 
It could easily scare 
Away the would-be years 

Whatever fresh claim, 
Whatever new interpretation, 
Is an amazing grace. 
That titanic figure, 
Invents interpretation, 
But remember, we are articulate. 

Am I making my point?

Let’s assess his intrusion. 
Every aspect of what comes close, 
Is just his chosen narrative. 
All of our cranked tendencies, 
Are a cradle to the grave. 
There is no closer deity 
Then the devil before us. 
This is not hyperbole. 

We are standing up to the grand,  
With shoehorns of hope, 
And a future, 
Created by claim. 

We, the damned, 
Are more concerned about the people 
Selfless, unnerving,  
We are not flawless, 
And we are not  
Always good-hearted, 
But we are smart enough  
To not dismiss the lies. 

It is a true act of sorcery. 
Or secrecy. 
Only a tyrant insists he is right.  
Only a tyrant reaches the wide 
Without running, 
And without speed, 
Only to say his fall was measured 
And planned, but don’t believe your eyes. 
We are seeing this. 
This glimpse into a reality unknown. 
Praise what comes 
Because the impossible is possible. 
For only a tyrant feels they are praiseworthy 
This is nothing new, 
The year of the tyrant.

Of Tyrant 2

I heard the church choir 
on West 71^st street. 
I felt: angels  
& then, 
 

despair.

Put on a happy face, Darlin, 
says a man  
while I walk  
with groceries in hand. 
I glare 
& I flare 
then I sooth 
my pocks & 
my strays. 
What do I have  
to hold on to, 
but hardness? 
The constraints, 
are open-mouthed 
with squawk.  
He is everywhere. 
thumbing hate into Sunday.

“Can anyone guess what caused this boulder to split in two?” Eduardo mumbled through clenched teeth as he rifled through his backpack. From his mouth, a poorly wrapped joint hung above the dusty earth below. 

Our once pasty, now reddening faces turned from our pint-sized tour guide and toward the enormous halves, just centimeters apart from one another. 

“Lightning?” I asked, eager to move on and find refuge from the relentless Bolivian sun. I had already endured enough pain in this desert.

Eduardo did not acknowledge my response and only smiled to himself upon discovering the hot pink Bic he had been searching for.

“Some Stone Age tool?” the now blistering, once handsome Swede beside me offered.

“All good guesses, but no,” Eduardo replied absentmindedly. His attention was consumed by the spark-spitting lighter hidden behind his small, tanned hand. After a few more flicks, a weak flame emerged and grasped the tip of the joint. “The Clam Shell, that’s what this formation is called, was actually formed by rain.”

We all stood in silence, staring up at the ten-foot-tall stone masses. Before any of us could reply, he took the joint from his lips and, holding it out before him like the hand of God, gestured towards someone in our group.  

“Lauren, do you want a hit? It will help with the altitude sickness.”

Lauren passed our wall of sunburnt flesh, strengthened by the idea of possible relief. Unlike the rest of us, the sun favored her skin. It gave her the appearance of someone in much better health.  She took the joint in her mouth and inhaled deeply.

“But we’re in the desert,” she rebutted, smoke pouring from her lips. “How was there enough rain out here to break it in half?” 

“It took millions of years and countless little droplets filling a microscopic crack at the top. It was gradual but then…. CRACK!” Eduardo proclaimed with a clap for dramatic effect.

I glanced over at Lauren, both hopeful and scared that we might catch each other’s gaze. 

***

I woke up on the night of my twenty-fifth birthday to the sound of unfamiliar laughter coming from another room. It took a moment to realize that I wasn’t in my own bed. I was on a couch in Sophia’s living room surrounded by empty prosecco bottles and frosting-coated paper plates. Across the room, a large suitcase lay open on the floor with its stretchy, polyester contents spilling out over the sides. The laughter stopped and was replaced by the sound of footsteps coming towards me. 

The suitcase’s owner glided into the room with her golden blonde hair flowing behind her like a cape. She was beautiful in the way I imagined the president of a sorority might be. In high school, we would never have been friends.

“Oh, you’re awake,” she said without enthusiasm. 

“Yeah,” I replied before clearing my throat.  My voice was gravelly from too many cigarettes earlier in the night. “You’re Lauren, right? Nice to finally meet you.” 

“Same. Sophia’s told me so much about you.”

We smiled politely as our shared apathy filled the room. It was suffocating.

“Okay, well I better head home,” I said, desperate to escape. “See you around and welcome to Chicago!”

“Thanks. Night.”

***

“Do you realize that today is our one-year anniversary?” I asked breathlessly as I tossed the last of the gold balloons into the pile at our feet. 

“Jesus, that’s right,” Lauren replied. “Props to Sophia for forcing us to hang out.”

 “I still can’t believe you didn’t tell me that we had the same birthday last year.”

Despite our rocky start, Lauren had evolved into something that had previously seemed impossible to secure as an adult: a best friend. After leaving New York, I had begun to feel like my loneliness was unsolvable. All my childhood friends had drifted away, and I hadn’t replaced them. I knew people, of course, but always from a respectful distance. I believed that children alone — being free of all the shame, pride, and fear of abandonment that comes with adulthood — could open up enough to get past a surface-level friendship. But Lauren didn’t have those hangups. She was fearless and always told you exactly what she was thinking. She proved I was wrong about people.

 “So, did you invite him to our party?” 

“Yes, and don’t be a bitch. You know his name is Tyler,” she said, unafraid of sounding critical unless it related to her on-again, off-again, undefined, whatever he was.

“I know, I know. I just don’t get his appeal.”

“You don’t get the appeal of anyone unless they’re a pretentious foreigner,” she replied, driving her knife deep into a wound that still hadn’t healed. 

“Sorry, you’re right,” I said, eager to smooth things over. “I wasn’t trying to be judg-y.” 

I turned away, pretending to play with the floating two and six balloons behind me. I didn’t want her to see my tears eagerly lining up. I wasn’t over my ex, who had dumped me eight months prior. But that’s not what hurt. I was scared that she might leave me as well.

***

“Happy twenty-seventh birthday!” I shouted into my phone. I held my screen close to my face, framing only what I wanted her to see. The sparse state of my unpacked room was too depressing to broadcast.

“Yesterday was our birthday.”

“Okay, happy belated twenty-seventh birthday then!”

As we had planned, we both lifted champagne flutes to our screens and cheers-ed but with differing levels of enthusiasm. Lauren was openly annoyed that I had forgotten to text her back on our actual birthdays, and I pretended nothing was wrong. 

My sudden move back to New York the month prior had put a big strain on our already tense friendship. My continued hatred of her gym-rat boyfriend probably hadn’t helped. I would tell her that I didn’t trust Tyler and that he was beneath her. She told me I was projecting, that I was too proud to talk about the fact that I was still hung up on my ex. 

Besides an occasional foray into the topic of weight loss, our conversations centered around those men. Gone were the days when we pored over travel blogs seeking out the best and cheapest way to get around Croatia, Belize, or Laos. Instead we stared at old texts from men who hurt us, endlessly dissecting them until they ceased to mean anything at all. Our relationship was like a television show a couple seasons past its prime. All the good jokes had been used up, the characters had become caricatures, and the writers had forgotten what the show was about in the first place. That was us.

“So what did you end up doing for your birthday dinner?” I asked, trying to maneuver our conversation into a safe zone.   

Before Lauren had a chance to respond, if she even wanted to, the scream of her buzzer halted our discussion. 

“That’s Tyler. I should go.”

***

Lauren and I were both living in New York by our twenty-eighth birthdays but we decided not to do a joint party. We had our own friend groups from past lives, and it felt like too big of a task to overlap them. If I’m being honest, I was happy with the arrangement. I didn’t care for her friends. I found them vain, boisterous, and generally overwhelming. They traveled as a herd, their heels echoing through the halls of impossible-to-get-into restaurants as they sipped their sixteen dollar cocktails purchased by boorish, former jocks. By contrast, my friends sported Birkenstocks and preferred spending their time in dark Greenpoint bars where Lauren felt out of place. To keep the peace, we made an unspoken pact to keep everyone on their own side of the Williamsburg Bridge.

But I was happy Lauren was back in my life. Now that Tyler was no longer in the picture, it seemed possible to get back to where our friendship had been in the beginning. Maybe it was because we were both single again or because our futures felt unknown, but something was different. 

“Should we do our birthday dinner on your side of the bridge or mine?” I asked the night before our private celebration. I felt like I already knew the answer. 

“Meet in the middle?” Lauren replied through my speaker phone. 

“Palma?!” we both shouted in unison before bursting into fits of laughter.

Yeah, we were back in that honeymoon period.  Things were turning around. We had a chance to rebuild our foundation and throw away the messy combination of over-discussed and under-acknowledged topics that had been causing our friendship to rot away beneath the surface. 

***

“How was your birthday?” I asked Lauren over squid ink pasta from the same Italian restaurant we had gone to the year prior. It was a few weeks past the actual date but this was our first chance to grab dinner since I’d gotten back from Mexico City. “Better than mine, I hope.”

“It was good. Charles took me to dinner…. It’s really weird you didn’t tell me you were in the hospital.”

“I didn’t tell anyone. There wasn’t anything for you to do. I had Montezuma’s Revenge. I didn’t want visitors at home or in the hospital.”

“Noah was there… You could have at least said something. You were totally MIA. I thought you were backing out of our South America trip.” 

My desire not to discuss my stomach issues wasn’t  a lie, but Lauren wasn’t wrong about my anxiety over our upcoming trip, either. We had booked our tickets three months prior when things weren’t as bad, but even then, a growing part of me feared that traveling to Bolivia and Chile together would be a big mistake. 

***

After another twenty minutes discussing the Clam Shell, our tour group was in the car and back on the non-existent road. Despite my frequent motion-sickness, I opted to take the dreaded back row, a place where gravity seemed forever in flux, to get as far away from Lauren as possible. 

“So how did you two wind up in Bolivia?” the handsome Swede asked, swiveling his head around to speak to me and gesturing towards Lauren as he did so. 

“Uhh… Lauren and I planned the trip about six months ago,” I replied as quietly as I could. I knew that she wouldn’t want to hear her name coming out of my mouth. “I had suggested we come here for our birthdays, so we wound up splitting the trip instead of getting each other presents this year.”

“It wasn’t your idea,” Lauren said from the front seat. Her face was pressed against the cold window to reduce her reemerging nausea. “I was the one that suggested we come to Bolivia and Patagonia”

“Oh,” I replied, dumbfounded. Lauren had not spoken a word to me, or even joined a conversation I was apart of, in over twenty-four hours. “Yeah.”

The conversation ended there. The Swede apparently decided that a moment of friendly banter with me was not worth being my middle row, human dam protecting me from the continuous flow of rage rushing my way. I didn’t blame him. No one wants to be casualty. 

By the time Lauren and I had left Bolivia and arrived in Patagonia for the second leg of our trip, an onlooker might assume our situation had improved. In reality though, we were just exhausted. We had been worn down by the countless flights, the lack of showers, the endless flow of vomit, and the thought of spending one more moment with each other. 

But it would be wrong to blame all of this on the trip. Our continental divide occurred far above the Southern Hemisphere. I knew it as we were boarding our flight from JFK. I kind of knew it when we booked the tickets. Our friendship had been replaced with a knock-off a long time ago. From the outside it looked like the real deal, but if someone had actually inspected the lining, anyone could tell something was off.

Lauren and I immediately parted ways when we landed at JFK, opting to take separate lines at customs. There was no way we would survive an hour-long line together at 5AM. 

By 5:05AM, I was fully submerged in the line and finally able to breathe. Despite spending the majority of the past twelve days outside exploring some of the most beautiful places that nature has to offer, I had been suffocating. Almost every day served me a mixture of feeling attacked, alone, at times genuinely scared for my life (not entirely because of Lauren but mostly), exhausted, and desperate to escape. By 6:15AM, I was waiting in line for a taxi and gulping in the fresh, New York air, thinking that the worst was over.  

But then the following week brought a fresh, new type of pain; heartbreak. It finally occurred to me that I had lost one of my best friends. As it turns out, losing Lauren was a million times worse than any breakups I’d had with past boyfriends, even the ones I took forever to get over. And while this ending was harder than others, I did eventually get over it. Now, I can finally appreciate our relationship for what it was; a perfect birthday cake that came with an expiration date. I chose to ignore the date, so it’s on me for getting sick after it went sour, but damn did it taste great in the beginning.

Anyways, our thirtieth birthday is coming up in two months. I know we won’t spend it together. I wonder if she’ll text me “Happy Birthday.” I don’t know, maybe I would text back if she did.

Chilled Fork

Low Cover

Flat Earther in Repose