...like some spin-off Baudelaire poem rewritten by a clinical depressive...

This is a sentence from around 20 % in - I´ve read half of the book so far - but I can´t get it out of my head, and go back to it again and again. Admittely totally taken out of context, that is I provide none. It doesn´t describe the book at all, even the impression might be there, It is... funny? Hard to tell due the text itself. Hilarious it might be, funny probably not.

As with ZOMG! I´m one of three and a half people or thereabouts who will ever read Faucher´s work so nevermind, I guess?

Kudos to Bauhaus for the inspiration for my sketch.

He could not help but to ponder the potentially lateral meanings of Ezra Pound´s statement, "Technique is the touchstone of an artist´s sincerity."

lateral adj 1) of, at, towards, or from the side or sides; the plant takes up water through its lateral roots.

-[ANATOMY] & [ZOOLOGY] situated on one side or other of the body or of an organ, especially in the region furthest from the median plane. The opposite of medial.

Not that I disagree with Pound´s statement, or Faucher´s inclusion in the text, but I had to look up lateral in the (online) dictionary, and I still don´t understand the meaning of it here in context *confused look*

I´m one of the three and a half people who´ve ever read a Kane X. Faucher novel, apparently. Just took me only the better part of two years to finally pick up ZOMG!, a "social media novel". As always, any book by him is "large, cumbersome, and studded with dense verbiage" (source). Not only that, but it is also surprisingly funny. The kind of meta-irony I normally and only so far associated with Infinite Jest. Off to a good start, not very surprising, since I admire his writing ever since I laid hands on his work the first time with The Infinite Library.

And anyone who compiles a word like ´Webschmerz´ and uses it unapologetically has my full attention.

My authorial compadre at the Faculty of Information and Media Studies, Kane Faucher, did a great job of interviewing me a while back, and it appeared in print today. Seriously. on PAPER, so you know it’s legit! 

Kane X. Faucher's latest novel is a brilliant adaptation the classic Alexander Dumas tale of revenge, The Count of Monte Cristo.

I've always loved the original, and Faucher's book is a wonderful satire that cleaves to the original plot so carefully, I was continually impressed. I kept thinking, "There's no way he can maintain this!" But he did. So, I would encourage you to read the original story at some point if you already haven't, so this pleasure is not denied to you.

In Professor Montgomery Cristo: An Adjunct's Tale, Dantes is an up-and-coming academic. A PhD candidate with a glorious academic future ahead of him. But then he is wrongly accused of plagiarism (the academic equivalent of murder) and his hopes are dashed. Instead of prison, Dantes's is sent to a second-rate university, where he must toil as an adjunct professor, where he meets another sessional who will help him achieve his revenge on the jealous academics who ruined him.

All the bones of the original story are there, and then fleshed out with this wonderful satire of the unjust treatment of sessional teachers at modern universities. Sometimes called contract faculty, the life of a sessional can be tough. Particularly when you are on what is called a limited duties appointment, which is renewable term by term. This means sessional don't always know what they are teaching or even IF they are teaching next semester. The pay is low, and there are often no benefits. At many universities upwards of 40% of courses are taught by adjuncts.

All of these injustices – and many more -- are satirized by Faucher in this novel, and it is really worth your time. Now in interests of full disclosure, I must tell you that I have been, and am, a contract faculty member, and that Kane is a colleague, but this is a wholehearted recommendation. This book has the pacing of Dumas and the wicked sense of humor and genius of Faucher.