Synopses & Reviews
Why is Professor Peace Porterfield trying to save Beet College? His own wife, Livi, hates the place. The Board of Trustees, led by developer Joel Bollovate, has squandered the endowment. Debutante-cum-self-styled-poet Matha Polite, an indis-criminate radical with a four-student following, wants to bring the institution down. Akim Ben Ladin (né Arthur Horowitz), a sweet-tempered terrorist hopeful and the colleges only Homeland Security major (who lives in an off-campus cave), wants to blow up the school. Faculty members, when not concocting useless, trendy courses, fly at one anothers throats. Not to mention that American higher education is already going down the tubes.
So why is Porterfield trying to save Beet?
Beats us.
Review
“Great stuff.” Kirkus Reviews
Review
“[An] uproarious debut…. Rosenblatt wields his satiric saber with skill and compassion. A-.” Entertainment Weekly
Review
“This is Mr. Rosenblatts first novel. I hope its not his last.” New York Sun
Synopsis
Roger Rosenblatt's dazzling comic gifts are on enviable display....Beet will settle the issue: is Roger Rosenblatt our most audacious comic visionary, or our most audacious visionary comic?"--Joyce Carol Oates
Beet College is doomed...and nobody really cares. The Board of Trustees, led by developer Joel Bollovate, has squandered the endowment. Debutante-cum-self-styled-poet Matha Polite, an indiscriminate radical with a four-student following, wants to bring the institution down. Sweet-tempered terrorist hopeful Akim Ben Ladin (n Arthur Horowitz) sits in his off-campus cave and dreams about blowing Beet up. Faculty members are too busy concocting useless, trendy courses to do anything about it. Not to mention that American higher education is going down the tubes, one less lesser school isn't going to matter. So why is Professor Peace Porterfield trying to save Beet? Beats us.
"Rosenblatt applies] his sharp wit to elite education."--Wall Street Journal
About the Author
Roger Rosenblatts essays for Time and The NewsHour on PBS have won two George Polk Awards, a Peabody, and an Emmy. He is the author of fifteen books, including the national bestsellers Unless It Moves the Human Heart, Making Toast, Rules for Aging, Lapham Rising, and Children of War, which won the Robert F. Kennedy Book Award and was a finalist for the National Book Critics Circle Award. He is Distinguished Professor of English and Writing at Stony Brook University. He lives with his family in Bethesda, Maryland, and Quogue, New York.