School: A Novel

by Ray Levy

Both an exorcism of contemporary academia and a comedic portrait of an artist seeking the means to survive
 
At once angry and jubilant, Ray Levy’s School is a curse on a dying system and an incantation for transforming pain into a vessel for capacious, creative selfhood.

A dissertation manuscript possessed by the spirit of Marquis de Sade; a lecture on psychoanalysis delivered as stand-up comedy by a dysphoric graduate student; a review of a found-footage horror movie that’s also a YouTube video of a conference presentation on French theory; an interview with an avant-garde filmmaker that’s really an invocation for conjuring your demon brother; oversharing and withholding, chanting and channeling, School is a slapstick roast of Derrida’s corpse and a mystical vision of a life in which you have not lost.

174 pages, Paperback

Published October 12, 2023

Reviews

[Sorbus aucuparia · Rating 4 out of 5]

The only and I mean ONLY reason I did not give this 5 stars is simply that it is not in the genre of books I usually read. I was lucky enough to be a student of Dr. Levy and gain invaluable experience from his teachings. I could reread this book a dozen times and still find new meaning and more intrigue in concepts that demand my attention. From that, I highlighted several sections I keep going back to.



Pg. 10, par. 3; "Because good students cannot betray that they aren't seduced by the professor's analysis."

pg. 11, sec. 1; "Well, sometimes people with authority become hysterical when they're ashamed. They get angry. Then they get vindictive... no amount of seduction or persuasion or intimidation was going to work on me."

pg. 55, par. 2; "High on philosophy and art, he could recognize the world by glancing at it."
"I despised the sight of me, and he never allowed me to turn away."

[Joe Sacksteder · Rating 5 out of 5]

The speaker of Ray Levy's novel "School" specifically satirizes this rhetorical move, but here's a book that is *simultaneously* tragic and uproariously funny, acidic and utopian, cerebral and embodied, a cathartic invective about the experience of a trans student metastasizing / being metastasized by the type of grad program that can be more than a little masochistic—plus the "lucky" thralldom of landing a job at failing liberal arts institution.

At the orientation for my R1 PhD program, we did not go around the room and introduce ourselves. Two professors who make six figures started things off by giving us consecutive lectures about not being "narcissistic attention-sucks." Welcome to the community! I came to love my time in the program, but it would have been more helpful and densely informative if they'd just given us Levy's new novel.

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[Sal · Rating 3 out of 5]

THIS BOOK! TOOK FOREVER
I feel like the reason it has such little ratings is because it drives the reader to absolute madness!! Such complex themes yet I cannot for the life of me make sense or decipher the hieroglyphs that fill the pages of this fine piece of literature. That is the only reason I give this read 3 stars, BECAUSE I STILL CANT SOLVE THE PUZZLE THAT IS THE MEANING OF THIS BOOK! I must read this again come fall, my soul yearns to understand the basis of this novel!