Privilege

This week’s other featured books, “The Grass Library,” by David G. Brooks, “On Air,” by Robin Stratton and “Thornwork,” by Ruth Bauman, can be found by scrolling down below this post, or by clicking the author’s name on our Authors page.

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THE BOOK: Privilege.

PUBLISHED IN: 2020

THE AUTHOR: Thomas H. Carry.

THE EDITOR: Hannah Woodlan (Koehler Books).

THE PUBLISHER: Koehler Books, an independent, author-friendly publisher in Virginia.

SUMMARY: It’s a crime noir/satire hybrid set at an elite university. The protagonist, Professor Daniel Waite, is in a funk. He has a brilliant wife, tenure at the fabled University, and is well liked by colleagues and popular with students, who flock to his film studies courses. And he hates his life. He can’t bring himself to write, disdains academia, barely gets through his class lectures, and spends a lot of time hiding in his office in a stupor, pondering his collection of movie posters.

All that changes when his new teaching assistant shows up at his door. At first, he’s thrown by the eccentric and intense Stacy Mann, but he soon finds in her a kindred spirit of sorts: an outsider, a cynic who shares his antipathy for the University, someone receptive to his alienation and resentment. And, most importantly, her knowledge of movie trivia rivals his own. But he soon suspects she is not who she appears to be, that there may be a hidden agenda, one that threatens his very standing. Murder and mayhem ensue, all against the backdrop of the University, an ivy-covered asylum for the tenured.

THE BACK STORY: Among other professions, I spent years working in various colleges and universities, both public and private. I love the mission of higher education, but the culture of Academe can be rather vexed and vexing. It’s full of petty political battles, strange traditions, some eccentric and entitled scholars, and not a small dose of hypocrisy—in other words, ripe for satire.

WHY THIS TITLE?: Privilege is a loaded term, obviously, and also a fluid one. It acts like a form of currency at the University: some are rich in it and others fear losing it. Some even kill to protect it. In a more conventional sense, it’s the systemic access, influence, and entitlement one finds on elite campuses, the privilege machine that churns out intergenerational replicants for the affluent professional class.

WHY WOULD SOMEONE WANT TO READ IT? If you enjoy a good dose of dark humor in your thrillers—and you enjoy twisty plots and protagonists who blunder into crime—then Privilege is for you. Also, if you have a humorous take on the culture of Academe, you’ll enjoy the setting quite a bit. Finally, it is a lean thriller that leaves lingering questions. After the adrenalin rush of the pace, you may find yourself in a ponderous mood.

REVIEW COMMENTS:

Editorial reviews

“A thoroughly entertaining, spring-loaded tale of one man’s lethal remedy for middle-age boredom.”  — Kirkus Starred Review

“Take a dash of Francine Prose, a dash of Donna Tart and add a third original voice, and you have Thomas Carry’s brilliant debut novel, Privilege. It is a moving, often disturbing, sometimes humorous tale. Carry writes with black humor about an indolent university professor and his star academic wife whose lives are drastically changed within a three-day period of unexpected mayhem. With clever, skillful plot twists and elegant prose, Carry vividly shows how difficult it can be to understand another person’s intentions, and demonstrates how unfeelingly cruel, how profoundly stupid and how disarmingly disingenuous some people can be, even in academia. Privilege is a riveting read from a gifted craftsman and true storyteller who knows how to end a story.” — -Ray Carson Russell, Author of Philurius College Blues.

“In Privilege, Professor Daniel Waite has it all-tenure, well-liked, his classes in film studies full, married to the beautiful shining star of this prestigious university. Yet he has attained a mind-numbing level of apathy and misery. Then his new female TA shows up, and life changes dramatically. Set in the insulated culture of academia, this story grabs the reader early on, moves rapidly through one surprise after another, and gives a whole new meaning to the concept of tenure. The book is most entertaining and oddly disturbing; a bold and exciting new formula for a murder mystery. I look forward to more from Mr. Carry.” — John J. Jessop, Author of Pleasuria: Take As Directed, Guardian Angel: Unforgiven, Guardian Angel: Indoctrination

Amazon reader reviews:

“After cracking this novel open I could barely put it down. The storytelling is top-notch, with lovely, rich, and delightful turns of phrase. The narrative itself is engrossing, without a dull moment. If it were a song, it’d be a banger. But what really drew me in was the inner voice of our protagonist. It was like locking eyes with someone and knowing immediately that you would be lovers. The window into one Daniel Waite’s soul left me connected to follow him down the cynical, bumbling, brutal, hilarious, brilliant, and ever-surprising twists and turns of his journey.”

“Poetic! A killer read with laugh out loud moments. I loved this book! Not a single drift away moment in the escapades of protagonist Daniel Waite. It is a must read. I only wished it were longer! The author writes scenes so well I was sure that I was watching a film as I read them. And his writing voice is absolutely unique and refreshing. Encore!”

AUTHOR PROFILE: I’ve worked as an actor, business consultant, bouncer, and pet whisperer. I’m also a recovering academic with a doctorate in an obscure topic. My first passion is writing, but am also a martial arts enthusiast and a complete film geek. I’ve resided in Manhattan for over three decades and refuse to leave.

AUTHOR COMMENTS: First and foremost, Privilege should entertain. I want the story to be the main source of the reader’s pleasure. But along the way, I hope readers will reflect on the moral ambiguity the protagonist finds himself in, and how the larger context of the University drives some of his choices. As with any good thriller, I hope it thrills. But as with any good satire, I hope the laughter it hopefully evokes is followed by reflection and insight.

SAMPLE CHAPTER:

Chapter One

I looked up from my notes and out from the lectern. The room was large, with oak and dusty plaster, sweeping up and back with fourteen inclined rows of twenty wooden chairs. The annoying patter of laptop keyboards drummed whenever I paused to throw out a question or to allow a point to sink in. The late Monday morning light struggled in through stained, drafty windows that rattled from time to time with a chilly mid-September breeze. I had a brief and irrational moment of panic, wondering if I was the actual source of the sour smell in the room—a mix of stale wood, stress perspiration, and cleaning solvents.

My course, Introduction to Film Studies, was a generally popular undergraduate class. Not because of my charismatic teaching or the students’ deep love of film history (I was no longer surprised by their film illiteracy, the mostly blank stares when I’d throw out lines from The Godfather or Manhattan). On the unsanctioned faculty review site, Tweed, students labeled me inoffensive and mildly humorous. Daniel Waite, Associate Professor of English and Film Studies, is not too hard of a grader. The course screens lots of movies, some even interesting. Moderate workload, a midterm and a final essay.

Enrollment was robust, most students checking off the humanities requirement box, several taking it as the prerequisite to the film studies major. The latter group could be the most vexing; God, had I been that pretentious as an undergraduate? Foucault discursively coupling with Norman Bates, something about fluidity, intersectionality, and power. This from Gary Fallis, a pompous, bloviating film major, who was droning on to my question about Psycho’s opening credits, citing every post-something theorist he’d likely never read.

Yes, I was perhaps touchy on the subject. I’d been obsessed with Psycho’s opening since discovering the film as a child, cross-legged in my bedroom, my face peering into the old black-and-white, an oracle of secret worlds to which I had private entry. With no cable connection in my room, the makeshift antenna’s shaky reception only added to the otherworldliness, the little screen a looking glass into a silvery land of shimmer and static. I remember first bearing witness to the credit’s linear patterns, sliced by those iconic sharp string chords, assembling and disassembling rapidly

and madly. The whole landscape of Norman’s mind visually told in a tight, manic algorithm, a code I desperately wanted to break.

“The opening sequence prevents the gaze of the other, it marginalizes. It’s containing the viewer with linear force, except for that of the privileged, heterosexist subject, who is totally empowered here by that reified aesthetic. It’s so line-logical.” I gave a thoughtful nod. For fuck’s sake. Idiot. And what was he doing wearing a leather biker jacket? He’d never ridden a motorcycle in his life, I was sure of that. And that pathetic attempt at a goatee. It looked like the initial sprout of an adolescent’s pubic hair.

“That’s, ah, an interesting perspective. Does anyone want to comment on that? No?” Please? I scanned the rows; no takers, all busy with avoidance strategies.

“Okay . . . um, so you’re saying that the aesthetic of the opening credits somehow privileges the male gaze because of its linear nature. That’s a bit general, Gary, so can you drill down a bit?” Christ, please don’t. Before he could respond, the door to the room came unstuck with a loud scrape. A reverse baseball cap head popped in and sheepishly withdrew, an early student for the next class.

Gary’s puckered mouth, framed by the pubic goatee, was set to pass gas. I made quick note of the time on the large clock on the wall, directly above him. Five minutes. Why not finish a bit early? My flow was gone, the class showing its restlessness now. And I relished cutting Gary off. I took small victories where I could.

“Okay, we’ll stop here. Stay warm on this unusually cool day, and for those of you who still haven’t, please post your response papers by this evening, okay? I won’t mark them as late.” I gathered my notes from the lectern and slipped them into a worn manila folder with a half-moon coffee stain in its center. I made my way for the door, ping-ponging between students with questions, concerns, and triggers.

***

I stared at the empty space on my wood-paneled office wall, adjacent to my desk. Should I hang another movie poster? I had a first-print German poster of Goldfinger in storage (“James Bond ist Wieder in Aktion!”). Maybe it would be too busy. My office was cluttered already, and I’d been meaning to straighten things out, remove the stacks of paper and books that hadn’t been touched in months. Unkempt. But the thought was fatiguing. I noticed my fingernails. I should cut them soon. I picked up my iPhone and read one new text on the screen, Paul wanting to meet for lunch in the faculty dining room. I replied affirmatively. I looked out the window at students milling around like sheep on the green. Mostly looking at smartphones, walking in patterns, their shoulders stooped and chins tucked, as if their necks were too weak to carry the weight. Some hustled around a noisy group of chanters with signs yelling something indecipherable beyond the glass of the window, but the tone conveyed the message well enough: indignation, conviction, fear, and judgment. Good for you, I thought. Fight the power, stop the oppression, end the transgressions against the world you think you’re owed. Get it out of your systems before you graduate to the professional class, join the firms, become an alumni donor, and pave the way for your offspring’s legacy admissions.

Plodding among the sheep were the supposed shepherds: professors with awkward marionette bodies transporting heads to classes or to department meetings where nothing would be resolved but frivolous battles would be fought, or perhaps to institutes and centers mounting vanity projects.

I despised them, the arrogant entitlement, the sandbox hierarchies, the blindness to their ineptitude beyond their narrow, dissertation-defined lanes. I know—don’t bother calling me a hypocrite: I was one of them. When properly motivated, I was a conspiring Brahmin in the caste, performing my rituals and sticking to the plan. I placed my peer-reviewed articles on the altar, did my departmental duties, gave my lectures, puckered up for the right asses, and completed my final induction into the tenure fold with the requisite overly narrow University Press book (Giving Credit: American Film Credits and the Aesthetics of Preemption, 1945-1970). How did I get here? Abbie, of course. I was, after all, a spousal hire, she being the real prize. I just came with the package (and thus avoided an exile offer in Nebraska). But that was fine—people liked me!

I first met her at the new-student meet-and-greet, recently admitted PhD students mingling with faculty and current students, compensating for nerves with peacocking intellects and ingratiating conversation. There she was: Abbie Stein holding court. One year in, she was already higher education royalty in lineage at the University. Two generations of academics preceded her there, both in medicine, both uniformly successful. “Pioneers in their fields” was a phrase I heard a lot, like it was an official title. But they were emperors, running research fiefdoms for the University, rich in grant cash and independent in authority. I was not a pioneer in my field. I had not been a star in my doctoral program, not like Abbie. The path on which I stumbled to graduate studies was not a linear one. In fact, each step of the way carried a sense of mishap, as if I had ended up lost and wandering in a large and imposing academic building, looking for the exit, but instead found myself stumbling into a classroom full of people who seemed to expect my arrival, had been patiently waiting to shout “surprise!” with perfunctory cheer. I would join the room, accept with resignation the pats and welcomes, pretend it was all my planned destination. After all, it wasn’t all totally unfitting; I’d been an excellent student in my western Pennsylvania high school, taking honors classes. Okay, it wasn’t Andover, but even so, I did well. I suppose I got that from my Polish-American mother, who taught social studies in the town’s elementary school. She quickly saw my aptitude and worked hard to nurture it. My father, of Irish-German descent, was a union electrician and viewed me with both pride and suspicion. I even served as editor of the school’s literary magazine, Book Bears, named for the school mascot. “Hey, book bear!” my brothers would yell, leading to inevitable brawling and laughter (a high school wrestler, I usually bested them, joining in the howls).

A late arrival to the meet-and-greet, sipping from a plastic cup of sour California wine, I broke away from a stultifying conversation with a bad- breathed Victorian scholar and circled the outer perimeter of the cluster around Abbie. Her long black hair was perched back in a stylish clip. She was tall—just shy of six feet—and both willowy and athletic, half sitting on the arm of a chair, ready to spring up. She has a brown mole next to her right eyebrow. I thought it added an attractive fault to an otherwise symmetrical face—equine, Middle European, confident. She was striking, both in appearance and voice, which was rich and mellifluous. Her simple white blouse and chocolate pants were casually expensive.

“That’s brilliant! You must be excited to work with Professor Weinrich. And how about you? What are you going to focus on?” She was interviewing the group around her, the host of her own talk show, and they were smitten. I grinned, still on the periphery and enjoying the spectacle. As she talked, her eyes would alight on me, very briefly and in sync with the rhythms of her sentences.

This went on for several minutes. I held my post, a silent, grinning sentinel, until she finally landed on me, turned fully and said in that resonant voice, “Welcome!”

“Hi.” “We were just talking about our areas; let me guess . . . Modernist?” “American lit, mostly. Twentieth century, lit and film, actually.” I suppose I was still grinning, by the way her eyebrows shot up. The rest of the group silently watched, heads at a tennis match. “Film!”

“Yes.” A pause. “I like to watch.”

Uncomfortable silence. No one ever got the reference to my favorite film, Being There. Her slight smile dropped suddenly; she looked at me as if I were the small print of an instruction manual; and then, just as quickly, she matched my grin, then bark-laughed, tilted her head to the side, and came down from her perch.

Walking toward me, she said: “This wine is terrible. Do you want some more? Oh, look—there’s Professor Bonner; trust me, she’s as frightening as she looks. Come! Let’s get some wine. What’s your name? I’m Abbie. Oh, good—there’s some cheese left. I’m starving! You’re not from here, are you?” By evening, we were a couple.

***

“There’s the Tickler with his new victim.” I looked up from my soup. Paul did a subtle head nod to his left, to a deuce top against the wall of the dining room.

“Run to the exit now!” he stage-whispered. Paul Vartan was the closest thing I had to a friend and ally (friendships had never been a top priority for me). Two decades older, he’d introduced himself at my new-faculty orientation, where he’d given a humorous, even cynical, welcome. As he spoke, he caught the conspiratorial gleam in my eye and the suppressed smile and knew he had me hooked as an apprentice to friendship. He was one of the powerful University dons, so I was lucky to have his patronage. Old-school gay, sharp-tongued and stylish, he was fast to friends, a cutting opponent toward adversaries, never forgetting a slight or worse—an Armenian gypsy with a blood feud, for whom revenge was a duty. Paul also had the institutional memory of an elephant and knew where all the bodies were buried on campus.

I played along with Paul’s theatrical gestures and looked past him to the esteemed Mark Pettersen, professor of early modern European history, author of many books I had not read, his blunt, chubby frame leaning forward on elbows as he spoke in secretive tones to a twenty-something graduate student. The Tickler, so called because of the many rumors about his proclivity to tickle his grad assistants. Despite the student’s efforts to put on her best game face, she looked like a cornered lemur. I had a momentary, sharp urge to intervene and rescue, but you’ve probably discerned I’m not that kind of protagonist, and the moment quickly passed. Pettersen continued to mumble at her, licking his thin, pale lips in between bites of his sandwich. Something white and viscous was on his chin and it made me queasy. I looked away, put my spoon down and scanned the dining room. Mumbled conversations, some solitary diners; a few disheveled adjuncts hoping the brilliant light of the tenured would shine a miracle their way; a line of faculty at the dessert table, some gleamy-eyed, others resigned to paunchy swells. The white tablecloths, large-windowed views, silverware, and cushioned seats couldn’t disguise the room’s true identity as a cafeteria.

“So, things patched up with Abbie?” Here we go.

“Well, we didn’t really need to patch anything. She’s still on me, if that’s what you mean. And I don’t blame her. I just think her expectations have to be more grounded. I’m not her. I just don’t care about the game as much—or I know I can’t really compete in it the way she’d like me to. I don’t know.”

“Well, you haven’t exactly been Johnny Lively lately,” Paul said. “I don’t know why; things are going well for you! You don’t have to go out and win a Nobel. I don’t think anyone’s saying that.” He looked at me with a mix of concern and expectation, trying to mask it with a casual lightness while fussing with his napkin. “I see your class is well enrolled—how is that going?”

“Seriously?”

“Well, come on! You have to get motivated for something. You just need to get your groove back.” I’d never had a groove and didn’t want one now. “Are you working on that article?”

“If by working you mean rewriting the same paragraph, every day, for the past two months, then yes.”

“Give me a break. What am I going to do with you? Are you going to the conference with Abbie?”

“Again, seriously? Of course I’m not.”

“It’s Santa Monica—it will be pretty! You really need to stop this. You’re becoming a big, fat bore. Well, not literally fat. Don’t give me that hurt puppy look.”

“Well, my pants are a little tighter—why do you think I’m having soup and salad for lunch? See, I’m not totally unmotivated. Proud of me? And no, I’m not going to troll around the conference carrying Abbie’s books. She doesn’t want me there anyway. I’m an unnecessary distraction.”

I had hated academic conferences ever since my first one as a doctoral candidate, getting out there for the pending job market and giving a paper on movie credits. The three days of panels and meetings left me with a feeling akin to severe iron deficiency. At the end, a vortex of pinched faces and endless jargon-speak culminated in a reception and dance for the conference participants: gyrating, spastic academics undermining simple pop beats. Sweating, undulating, flailing with abandon, horrifying. I still bore emotional scars.

“Oh, boohoo. Who’s going to change your diaper when she’s gone?” “Are you offering?” “Please—at my age, I need to worry about my own diapers.” “I’m sure they’re top brand and stylish. Okay, I have to shove off; want

to walk out with me? The film program is sending over a replacement TA and I think she’s supposed to drop by my office later. I should probably be there. You know, show basic interest.”

“Oh, yes. Hopefully not a ward of the asylum like the last one.”

My short-lived previous TA was a young man seemingly attempting to revive ’90s goth. He was pale, nervous, and dressed in black or dark grey. He perspired regardless of temperature and was implacably consternated. After the first day of class, he went to the center of the campus green and

began to scream, piercing and shrill, all while walking in a slow, clockwise circle. This went on for almost thirty minutes until befuddled public safety officers cut through the growing crowd of spectators and intervened. A dean of student affairs promptly sent a template wellness email to the student body. My former TA is currently on medical leave.

“Well, what do you expect from the MFA program? You have to document instability to be admitted. And how are the newlyweds?”

“Ah, Roger and his child bride.”

Roger Croup was the chair of my department, and he also taught dramaturgy in the MFA program. The University has a policy against consensual student-faculty relationships, especially with undergraduates. Nonetheless, Roger had recently wed a newly graduated major from the department—two weeks after commencement. It was either an extremely fast romance, or their courtship had begun when she took his seminar.

They now showed up together at academic and social events where he introduced her with the flushed excitement of a boy who’d finally nabbed the present that eluded him for so many birthdays. She, saucer-eyed and talkative, was never unattached from his arm. The general counsel of our esteemed institution has the authority to grant faculty-student relationship exceptions—his extensive background in jurisprudence had equipped him with vast and nuanced insights into the ways of love—and the rumor was he had blessed Roger’s. The thought of our diminutive, octogenarian general counsel reviewing and advising on various sexual and romantic practices was fodder for ridicule by many. (Paul, for example: “Should I ask Counsel what he thinks of my fellating technique? I hope it hasn’t faltered through the years.”) I suppose it was necessary. Attend the streets around campus, and one found not a few aging male professors pushing baby strollers around with exhausted resignation, an accepted concession to their marital trade-ins for much younger graduate students.

Paul and I strolled out into the briskness, each of us chuckling with the familiarity of an old couple and pointing out colleagues to be mocked. We parted after a while, he headed home, me back to my office. As I walked, I was weighed down by a sense of loneliness. The air chilled me, leaving me uneasy from fall’s early arrival, intrusive and taunting.

***

I stared at the blank spot again, contemplating poster options. Loud exhales broke my trance and I turned from the wall. She stood in the office doorway, flushed and catching her breath. Had she taken the stairs up to the sixth floor? Unkempt and dramatically red hair sat asymmetrically atop her head, shaved on the right, rebelling on the left. Her expression, on an angular, freckled face almost severe in its lines, was concurrently stern, open, and comical, like a skeptical toddler in on a prank. Her eyes were a very dark brown. She wore blacks and purples, vintage clothing–store fashion, flowing and form-fitting on a medium frame. She stared at me as if in response to a challenge, one she would most certainly meet, then raised her eyebrows and said in a full but nasal baritone, “Professor Waite!”

I was thrown. “Hello!” I replied. Why was I shouting? “How can I help you?” I gestured to the seat across from my desk. She sat down, posture erect

and still, her expression now disquietingly blank. “I’m your TA,” she announced.

LOCAL OUTLETS: Any bookstores that stocks indie presses.

WHERE ELSE TO BUY IT: Amazon: https://www.amazon.com/Thomas-H-Carry/e/B088HFTBDY/ref=dp_byline_cont_pop_ebooks_1 Barnes & Noble: https://www.barnesandnoble.com/w/privilege-h-thomas-carry/1136767588 Indiebound: https://www.indiebound.org/book/9781646630349

PRICE: Kindle: $7.49 Paperback: $13.67 Hardcover: $24.95

CONTACT THE AUTHOR:

Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/thomashcarryauthor/ Author site: https://thomashcarry.wixsite.com/index