Monday, December 08, 2003

Developments in academia, second series. "A group of students seized the Frank J. Bellhope memorial aquarium to protest the treatment of Roberta, the manatee savant. The protest was a failure. I called a symposium on the history of student seizure of campus buildings. The symposium was a success." -- Jonathan Lethem, As She Climbed Across the Table.
[As She Climbed Across the Table, by Jonathan Lethem, Doubleday, 1997. A love triangle between an anthropologist, a physicist and a yearning artificial void, which is also -- you'll have to trust me on this -- 2001: A Space Odyssey restaged as a campus novel. Tends to have Don DeLillo's voice where now you'd expect Lethem's, although that doesn't make it any less fun.]

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