Carole Kuebler

 

NB:  Insufficiently innocuous would of course include any essays or poems critical of the above NER editors, their friends, Middlebury College, and New England Review.   And of course such a term wouldn’t be used.  Bad taste or rant would be the vocabulary of choice.  It is shameful so many professors and college literary review editors purposefully seek NOT to expose students to all points of view, including the above.   Shameful.

BTW, I am a Middlebury College alumnus, 1980.  The student newspaper has been irresponsibly unresponsive.  Evidently, its student editors are learning quite well from their irresponsibly unresponsive professors.  They teach DIVERSITY at Middlebury, but apparently not DEMOCRACY.

The following is the email I sent to the English professors and instructors of Middlebury College.  The number of "hits" clearly indicate that many of them obviously checked out the cartoon.  Curiosity in a college professor is a positive trait!  Sadly, not one of those professors commented.  Absence of desire for vigorous debate in a college professor is a negative trait. 

From: George Slone

Sent: Friday, January 24, 2014 6:06 PM

To: nereview@middlebury.edu

Cc: alvarez@middlebury.edu ; bain@middlebury.edu ; baldridg@middlebury.edu ; berg@middlebury.edu ; bertolin@middlebury.edu ; mbertoli@middlebury.edu ; dbrayton@middlebury.edu ; tbilling@middlebury.edu ; cohen@middlebury.edu ; ccooper@middlebury.edu ; elder@middlebury.edu ; kgottsha@middlebury.edu ; kkramer@middlebury.edu ; devans@middlebury.edu ; benjaming@middlebury.edu ; alosano@middlebury.edu ; millier@middlebury.edu ; nash@middlebury.edu ; parini@middlebury.edu ; enapier@middlebury.edu ; newbury@middlebury.edu ; price@middlebury.edu ; cshaw@middlebury.edu ; skubikow@middlebury.edu ; mwells@middlebury.edu ; ysiddiqi@middlebury.edu ; cwwright@middlebury.edu

Subject: New England Review satirized

To Editor Carole Kuebler, and Outgoing Editor Steven Donadio, New England Review (as well as Members of the English Department, Middlebury College): 

You are both featured in a new P. Maudit cartoon posted on The American Dissident website: 

http://wwwtheamericandissidentorg.blogspot.com/2014/01/carole-kuebler.html.  Five years or so ago I’d also lampooned Jay Parini and Breadloaf in a P. Maudit cartoon.  I just re-posted it on the blogsite here:  http://wwwtheamericandissidentorg.blogspot.com/2014/01/jay-parini.html. 

Please feel free to comment, though lengthy experience with academics sadly tells me that likelihood to be nearly nil.  Please read the Nota Bene below the cartoon… and please tell me I’m wrong, not lacking in bourgeois taste, but wrong.  The unique thing I do is test the waters of democracy mostly in the Academic/Literary Established Order.  From my experiments, I create essays, poems, and even full-length works.  It is sad you will likely not evoke such “testing” to students as a creative-writing possibility.  Indeed, rather than seeking to build bridges and network in an effort to climb the ladder of dubious “success” (academic or literary), I seek to expose truth and to tell it openly as I perceive it.  From the academic and literary dross uncovered, I create.  The dross is the grist for my creative mill. 

Finally, as a Middlebury College MA graduate in French literature (1980), I look forward to your comments and hope you might even wish to subscribe to The American Dissident (only $20), which is quite unique in the world of literary magazines.  Too bad your students will likely never hear of it.  Perhaps you’d even consider inviting me to present a lecture on the journal and what I do as a creative writer.  (Dr. Dan Sklar, Endicott College, has been inviting me to his creative writing classes almost each semester for the past five years.)  I know, you’re probably now chuckling.  No matter.  So, might there be just one brave sole amongst you willing to engage in a little vigorous debate, cornerstone of democracy?  I do not bite, but I do satirize! 

Thank you for your attention.