via kenyonhistory.net

By now we’ve all heard about P. F. Kluge’s dazzling recent review in the Old Gray Lady. But now The Master Blaster is getting some major attention closer to home, too: Cleveland’s The Plain Dealer recently published this review on their website, cleveland.com. See just how similar Kluge is to Shakespeare after the jump.

Four hundred years ago, William Shakespeare wrote “The Tempest” about a small cast of characters marooned on an island, interrogating, in part, ideas of colonialism and power. Similarly, P.F. Kluge’s enjoyable fifth novel concerns the fortunes of five narrators, the latest in a long line of transients and conquerors who have landed on the Pacific island of Saipan. — Susan Grimm

See? He’s basically the Bard. The review goes on to compare the character of the Master Blaster to Shakespeare’s Prospero, the sorcerer who controls the island in The Tempest, and praises Kluge for being “knowing and skillful with the shifting story lines.”

The review fails to mention that Saipan is obviously a thinly-veiled version of Kenyon set on an island, that the Master Blaster is President Nugent and that instead of American imperialism, Kenyon/Saipan is actually being threatened by the commercialization and commodification of contemporary higher education that has turned the noble institution of Denham Sutcliffe and his ilk into a shameless corporation that’s all about pleasing its customer students. Obviously.