By Silence Doless

Well, Hofstra is upon us once again, and as everyone starts settling back into classes, dorms and binge drinking (or starts for the first time, for all you wild and crazy freshmen), I thought it prudent to pause and reflect upon the hard work of our dedicated professors who educate the next generation each and every day. By this I mean make fun of them. For grade related reasons, I won’t target any one person but rather focus on general trends.

Have you ever had an English professor? Good, than you’ll know what I’m talking about. To them, overanalyzing a book comes as naturally as it doesn’t to anyone else. What, may I ask, is the point of a story that requires a PhD to fully understand? A statistically elitist point, that’s what.

Recently I was asked to read William Faulkner’s “The Sound And The Fury.”

There seems to be a law of physics stating that all college English professors love assigning incredibly dense and confusing books in which all the characters think extremely deep thoughts along the lines of “my life sucks.” “everybody’s life sucks” and “you suck.”

“The Sound and the Fury” was particularly confusing: half narrative, half stream-of-consciousness and no way to tell the difference between the two. Though it is lucky that chapters have handy dates to firmly ground the reader in a specific time, inside the chapters are random time jumps in the middle of sentences. Thankfully, these are indicated by italics–but not always. Most times, you just have to guess.

Despite all the mind-bending motifs, metaphors and stylistic choices, it pays off in the end as Faulkner succeeds in conveying the deep message underpinning the entire book-one which resonates deep in the core of all who read it. If you lean your ear close to the page, you can almost hear Faulkner saying, “I’m better than you.” So to entertain myself with reading, I routinely wouldn’t.

Another quirk of some English professors is that they assign students their own book (You all know who you are, and with any luck, you don’t know who I am…or perhaps you think my name is Silence Doless). More than being simply unethical, it’s downright awkward.

Picture this: you’re sitting in class and out of nowhere your professor starts illustrating a point about something he or she wrote. What if you don’t think the professor’s stuff is any good? You obviously can’t just say that (unless you happen to be writing this column…Professor Blank, I don’t like your work). Now you’re screwed into two options the rest of the semester. You could:

not talk and lower your participation grade, or

lie and say the professor’s book is so good that one day it will replace the Bible in popularity.

There is also a third option involving air freshener, thumbtacks and a live cougar, but few among us posses the iron will necessary to carry it out. And so, I say we fight back. Long enough have students suffered under the pretentious weight of college English professors. Ladies and gentlemen, it is time we take a stand! As for me, I’ll be finishing “The Sound And The Fury.”

The Mysterious and outlaw-ish Silence Doless (Andy McCarthy)