Talking Out of School: Memoir of an Educated Woman

by Kass Fleisher

Humour abounds in this memoir which reads like an expose of the power structures in America's higher education Whose got it, how they're abusing it, what everyone else is willing to do to get it and the social cost of doing educational business this way."

Genres: Memoir, Nonfiction

271 pages, Paperback

First published December 12, 2008

Reviews

[Linda · Rating 5 out of 5]

Since I am already familiar with some of Kass Fleisher’s other works, and like her writing style, I was very interested in reading her memoir. From her troubled childhood to her struggles in an academic setting, Kass goes on to tell her story of what students and professors really experience. Sad and humorous, the pages keep turning. A powerful, well-written book!

[Alan Davis · Rating 5 out of 5]

Yesterday I finished Kass Fleisher’s memoir about her life as a creative writer and a woman in academia in the pre-#metoo era. What sticks is her anger and anxiety and frustration. The academic bias at the time in favor of men. The difficulty finding allies. The assumptions made on a daily basis about the value of women. She grew up lower middle class and had no clue how to play the academic power game, which has little to do with creative writing, despite the pretense, and much to do with career making. In many ways, it's a racket. She makes that very clear.

Though male, I come from a similar class and dysfunctional family background and empathize with her insecurity and anxiety. She analyzes the four tier system that ranks universities and colleges. Wealth. Privilege. Class size. Her husband, with books, makes it to tier two. After a long distance marriage, she tags along, taking crumbs. They can’t have kids. They go bankrupt. They divorce. Once she comes of age, her innermost personal life becomes mostly background atonal music in the narrative, often described in brief asides. It’s the encounters in classrooms and English Department hallways and offices (and, occasionally, bedrooms) that direct the narrative.

Fair enough, that’s the title of the book, but I hate to think of Kass Fleisher, whom I knew when she was an effervescent grad student at the University of North Dakota, as a woman who couldn’t enjoy life, because I remember her otherwise, a passionate devotee of all things literary willing to laugh at others and at herself. She said what she thought. That side of her personality isn’t absent from this book, but it gets lost in the valid complaints and the case she builds against sexism and plain old human disregard.

In other words, this is a memoir that begins with a lengthy account of family and of how she came to be who she is, warts and all, followed by a compelling narrative about her life in academia: engaging but contentious classroom debate, English Department and campus politics, the dreariness and overwork of adjunct and fixed term appointments, academic sexism and privilege, men being men, romantic merry-go-rounds, and finally her willingness to endorse an ‘anti-sexist’ male over several female finalists for a tenure-track position. That is, she remains an iconoclast to the last, known for using swear words in class and encouraging disagreement and debate, whether teaching self-righteous Mormons, urban inner city students or the usual assortment of people who show up in classrooms at state universities for every kind of reason. She was a dedicated professor with many devoted students and former students.

I read the book because I heard that she died unexpectedly and apparently only a year or so from retirement. The best way I could think of to honor her was to read one of her books. RIP, Kass.

[Laura · Rating 5 out of 5]

Did it like it was / Tells It like it is

Kass Fleisher's brilliant memoir is instructive about instruction, teaching us about the ways education structures the subject. Class and gender issues are approached fearlessly and handled adroitly: insights abound. Super to assign, especially for those who like to put the context in contest. And I haven't even mentioned the sex, or the great (flat & ferocious) writing about the (sad & dull) sex--with a teacher, of course:

"He buries beard in my neck for a moment, then kisses my cheek.
Then cock slimes out and belly yawls away.
Between my legs, mess." (204)

[Andrew · Rating 5 out of 5]

A recent title in Dalkey Archive's American Literature Series. The publisher's back cover copy begins this way: "The bitterly funny memoir reads like an expose of the power structures in America's higher-education system: who's got it, how they're abusing it, what everyone else is willing to do to get it, and the social cost of doing educational business this way." Of course, or following the course of Fleisher's mind and heart is always much more than promotional language can convey. She's one of the really interesting great ones. [close:]

[Matthew · Rating 5 out of 5]

A) The prose here scorches. B) The "story" is entirely affecting. C) The fact that the "story" is memoir--holy crap. D) The way the book questions the idea of memoir and storytelling, presenting engrossing moments of a life that, with each new moment, must be reoriented and reconsidered -- YES. E) An impressive book, in all ways.

[Jessey Nickells · Rating 5 out of 5]

A complex look on life, learning and the battle grounds of teaching. Fleisher dives into the difficult topics of sexism, racism and classism pointing out their intersections and inevitable dependence on one another for existence while also opening the paths she has walked to understand these things. This memoir is honest look at at the not so lovely sides of school, society and the self.

[Elizabeth · Rating 5 out of 5]

I picked up this book last night and read obsessively. It's painful and really funny and hits the bullseye.
Copies should be handed out to anyone who is now tottering in and out of the MLA. A scorcher.