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E. M. Dadlez
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The Sleep of Reason Kindle Edition

by E.M. Dadlez (Author) Format: Kindle Edition
5.0 5.0 out of 5 stars 5 ratings
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Jane Fairfax is a professor of English at a small college in Kansas, whose department is thrown into turmoil when the chairmanship is usurped by deranged postmodernist Virginia Borensen. Deep in the confidence of the Vice President of Academic Affairs, Borensen promises to aid him in his nefarious plan to streamline the curriculum by eliminating academic departments and replacing required courses with a series of pay-per-view multiple choice exams. The first step in an administrative agenda geared toward the outright sale of baccalaureate degrees, Vice President Flood's long term project relies upon the elimination of Jane's department as a crucial first step.

Are Borensen and Flood destined to succeed? Is Virginia Borensen's affiliation with the college's Vice President but the initial sign of a vast extraterrestrial conspiracy to subvert the academy nationwide, as her students suspect? Will Jane and her colleagues foil the scheme? Will they instead be driven forth to become lowly adjuncts, living in garrets and subsisting on dog food?

Such is the dilemma of THE SLEEP OF REASON, an academic farce that lampoons higher education in America, ruthlessly deploying not only the postmodernist idiom, but the noisome patois of the academic bureaucrat. Peopled by faculty, students, dogs, administrators, a lovelorn waiter who moonlights as a hitman, and a self-described Clinic Bomber for Jesus, THE SLEEP OF REASON offers a heady opportunity for revenge fantasy to the denizens of every college and university community.
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  1. Print length
    265 pages
  2. Language
    English
  3. Sticky notes
    On Kindle Scribe
  4. Publication date
    December 9, 2011
  5. File size
    703 KB
  6. Page Flip
    Enabled
  7. Word Wise
    Enabled
  8. Enhanced typesetting
    Enabled
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Editorial Reviews

From Kirkus Reviews

A satirical story on the inner workings of a university and its reflection on higher learning.

Lead protagonist Jane Fairfax, one of the cogs in the wheel of the English department, relieves her job-related frustrations by writing various novel plots featuring her psychotically unbalanced colleague Dr. Virginia Borensen and the nefarious Wallace T. Flood, vice president of Academic Affairs. Flood, a man of questionable background, is focused solely on converting the current education process into a strictly online venture—a plan that is being met with extreme faculty resistance. Flood’s utopian digital environment would not only greatly reduce the need for human educators but also decrease the value of higher education as a whole by allowing for the purchase of a degree rather than the earning of one. Setting his sites on the elimination of Jane and the rest of the “useless” Liberal Arts department as his first order of business, Flood recruits the much despised Borensen by skipping all proper channels and making her department chair; allowing such an unstable woman to wield power over her colleagues should help to quickly weaken the ranks—or at the very least their resolve. Dadlez (Mirrors to One Another, 2009, etc.) clearly shows her range from a serious philosophy professor to a witty novelist, successfully rendering compelling characters who meld perfectly together to create a clever, farcical tale. Subtle allusions to classic literature are scattered like Easter eggs throughout; such as the evil, insect-eating dog named Reinfeld. Of note is Dadlez’s interesting habit of not so much introducing her characters but rather throwing them right into the mix. Although this works in most instances, there are moments when it feels like the reader missed something, and, within the context of the passage, failed to have the implied familiarity with a particular character who, in actuality, had only just been introduced.

Though certain plot lines felt a little too drawn out and exhaustive, Dadlez succeeds in crafting an entertaining story by shining a humorous light on the backdoor politics and self-serving agendas in the world of academia

Product details

  • ASIN ‏ : ‎ B006KHBSLW
  • Publisher ‏ : ‎ Amazon Digital Services (December 9, 2011)
  • Publication date ‏ : ‎ December 9, 2011
  • Language ‏ : ‎ English
  • File size ‏ : ‎ 703 KB
  • Text-to-Speech ‏ : ‎ Enabled
  • Screen Reader ‏ : ‎ Supported
  • Enhanced typesetting ‏ : ‎ Enabled
  • X-Ray ‏ : ‎ Not Enabled
  • Word Wise ‏ : ‎ Enabled
  • Sticky notes ‏ : ‎ On Kindle Scribe
  • Print length ‏ : ‎ 265 pages
  • Customer Reviews:
    5.0 5.0 out of 5 stars 5 ratings

About the author

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E. M. Dadlez

E. M. Dadlez

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Eva M. Dadlez is a Professor of Philosophy at the University of Central Oklahoma. She received her Ph.D. from Syracuse University. She writes on issues at the intersection (often at the collision) of aesthetics, ethics and epistemology. She has written two books on the preceding: What's Hecuba to Him? Fictional Events and Actual Emotions (Penn State University Press, 1997) and Mirrors to One Another: Emotion and Value in Jane Austen and David Hume (Wiley-Blackwell, 2009). She is also a feminist ethics dilettante, and the author of a mean-spirited academic satire.

Customer reviews

5 out of 5 stars
5 out of 5
5 global ratings

Top reviews from the United States

Amazon Customer
5.0 out of 5 stars You know you've finished a good novel when you don't want the novel to end
Reviewed in the United States on April 9, 2016
Verified Purchase
You know you've finished a good novel when you don't want the novel to end. Professor Dadlez should take her characters on the road to visit the absurdities of higher education everywhere in the country, and they'd be on the road a long time. I won't add a plot spoiler here, but it wouldn't make any difference in any case, because the reader knows where the insanity is headed by the end of a story of a corrupt provost and an English department rebellion. The fun, high and low comedy, is the source of suspense, the motivation for the reader to keep moving start to finish. And Dadlez has a lot of fun on her long, strange journey with satirizing social insanity off campus, also. I'd rank "Sleep of Reason" up there with "Pnin," "Scone," "Moo," "A New Life," "Groves of Academe," and "Herzog," among others. Barry Roberts Greer
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Dr. L
5.0 out of 5 stars Laugh-out-loud funny
Reviewed in the United States on October 20, 2012
Verified Purchase
Want a peek at the absurdities that college and university academic departments must endure every day? Read Dadlez' book! This hilarious satire pokes great fun at the educational fads embraced by administrators to save money and eliminate troublesome academics and hard-working clerical staff. And it does so without denigrating students, which most fiction about higher education does. The plots are many, the characters incredibly well-drawn, and Dadlez offers so many entertaining zingers that I laugh whenever I think of her book. Highly recommended for all readers, and a must-read for those familiar with the concept of "Digital Education" and the sometimes nefarious intentions of top administrators.

 The Sleep of Reason
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Jakebnto
5.0 out of 5 stars Read this for the writing alone and get the bonus of a terrific story!
Reviewed in the United States on December 13, 2013
Verified Purchase
Terrific story - great plot, funny characterizations, pithy writing, tons of fun references for the reader to puzzle over. Mz. Dadlez hits it out of the park!
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M. Stroud
5.0 out of 5 stars Rings so very true.
Reviewed in the United States on March 6, 2013
Verified Purchase
...I knew so many of these people while in college. Fantastically funny satire that mocks the crap out of post-modernists, as everyone should at every opportunity.
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Shona
5.0 out of 5 stars The Sleep of Reason by Eva Dadlez
Reviewed in the United States on January 23, 2012
The writing is witty, sharp, and immensely entertaining! Eva Dadlez captures and acutely satirizes the follies and foibles of academics, especially in English Departments and Humanities disciplines. This is a book that the writer truly enjoyed writing, I would say, and her chortling bubbles over into the matrix of this work and to its readers.  The Sleep of Reason
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