Other Art

Matt Hartman is a freelance editor and cataloguer, running Hartman Cataloguing, Editing and Indexing Services.

Stories about academia are notable for their heavy doses of sarcasm and
sharp juxtapositions of life and art. John Harris’s second collection
is no exception.

The stories are narrated by a divorced father, a man in his early 50s
who makes his living teaching at a small-town college. Many of them
feature Barry, a fellow teacher, who wages battles with the college
administration and is always on the verge of losing his job. The
collection gets its title from a coffeehouse in Prince George, B.C.—a
cappuccino bar and art gallery, in fact—in which much of the book’s
wicked dialogue takes place.

Conversations revolve around such academic pursuits as obtaining grant
money, avoiding meetings, attacking ridiculous administrators, and
arranging sabbaticals. In “Safari to Malaria,” the narrator
cheerfully agrees that “it’s a rule of thumb among faculty that a
sabbatical project should, if possible, be something already started or
almost done.” In “Leave,” Barry is advised, while on leave, to
call in sick. “You’re saying that I should go on leave while I’m
on leave?” “It could be a useful precedent,” says the narrator.
Being on leave from leave means, to Barry, “that he [will] be, in
effect, at work, in the sense that two negatives make a positive.”

You get the idea: academia seen through somewhat skewed and jaded eyes.
High Art is a delightful set of stories by a gifted writer and master of
academic ironies.