Three books, three institutions, and one question: what does the university make of the people who serve it?
In 1886, Leo Tolstoy sent Ivan Ilyich up the ladder of Russian society in search of the life he was told to want. At the top, Ivan found the ladder had been leaning against the wrong wall the whole time.
The Daniel Kessler Novels transpose that discovery into the twenty-first-century American research university, following one man through three phases of institutional life. Each volume stands alone, with its own structural model and its own shape. Together they form the arc of a single academic life, lived for an institution that will keep his name, his building, and his citations long after it has stopped needing the man.
The central reckoning. A decorated professor confronts the body that has been keeping score and the four decades he spent mistaking the institution's rewards for his own life. A close transposition of Tolstoy's The Death of Ivan Ilyich.
Daniel Kessler is dead. Some fraction of him is not. Trained on four decades of lectures, papers, recorded interviews, and countless emails, the avatar bearing his name answers student questions with his cadence and defends his research positions. Forthcoming.
The making of Daniel Kessler, before the life inside the academy became inescapable. Richard and Janet Kessler wanted a stable child. Someone else wanted a brilliant one. The flaw was in the design. Forthcoming.
Also in French: La Mort d’un professeur
When all three novels are complete, they will be gathered in a single volume, in print and Kindle. Its working title is Agency, after the thread that runs through every book: a man made, unmade, and remade by forces he never chose, and never quite the author of his own life.
Agency: A Daniel Kessler Trilogy. Forthcoming.