For several years when I was an undergraduate at the University of Connecticut, I worked part time for a business law professor who had an interesting wind blown way of organizing the papers on his desk. At the end of each work day, he would gather them together, and guide them into his middle desk drawer and the next morning he would fling them back on to his desk.
I’m Betty Martin with "Martin’s Must Reads" and that memory resurfaced after reading Julie Schumacher’s latest novel The Shakespeare Requirement. This story is about the battle for space between the Economics and English departments of the fictitious Payne University.
As the story begins, the newly appointed English Department chair is trying to acclimate to his new office where the computer, phone, shredder and air conditioner don’t work. What makes it worse is that one floor up, the Economics Department is celebrating their refurbished digs where everything is shiny and new and functioning.
The English Department can’t fix anything until their budget is approved which won’t happen until their new Statement of Vision is unanimously approved by the English faculty. But the oldest faculty member, Shakespeare professor Dennis Cassovan, won’t approve it without a sentence that every English Department student must be required to take a semester of Shakespeare.
The Chair of the Economics Department won’t be happy until his department gets rid of the entire English Department and has use of the entire building. There are so many wonderfully unique characters in this novel -- from the T.S. Eliot scholar who raises miniature donkeys to the absent provost who is off in Suriname collecting tarantulas in Tupperware containers.
If you’re looking for a laugh-out-loud story in an academic setting, then you must read The Shakespeare Requirement by Julie Schumacher.