‘That Lean and Hungry Look’ of immortality

“I take my hat off to those contemporary writers who manage again and again to crack the college anthology market. [Suzanne Britt‘s] name will be instantly recognizable to anyone who teaches English 101 as the author of ‘That Lean and Hungry Look,’ the comic comparison of fat people and skinny people that can be found in the compare-contrast section of whatever textbook one happens to be using; ditto for [her] ‘Neat People vs. Sloppy People.’ The author’s bio tells me that Britt teaches English part-time at Meredith College in North Carolina: an adjunct made good!…

“It’s a sweet deal for a writer, to have such ephemera reprinted year after year, thereby hardening into classic work…. Britt could easily have been forgotten completely, but her whimsy lives on, tucked away in a corner of thousands upon thousands of collegiate minds….”

— From “In the Basement of the Ivory Tower: Confessions of an Accidental Academic” by Professor X (2011)

Professor X (probably not the Marvel Comics superhero by that name who “can project powerful mental bolts of psionic energy enabling him to stun the mind of another being into unconsciousness”) is causing a stir as “an academic hit man” who believes many of his students “have no business being in college.”

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