Jack Crittenden

Pinzak: A Campus Novel Jack Crittenden

Stanley David Pinzak, known to all simply as "Pinzak," suffered a series of devastating panic attacks. In class. In front of his students. Terrified to return to the class, he is desperate to find some way to escape from teaching it. So, Pinzak agrees, against his principles, to serve as Associate Chair to the new, highly ambitious Chair, Maria Maldonado. Maldonado has two conditions. First, Pinzak will share with Maldonado insights from Machiavelli on how to run the department. Second, he will seek counseling from the university's psychiatrist, Zane Running. He accepts both.
But Pinzak's and Maldonado's Machiavellian schemes rattle the department and roil the campus, pushing Pinzak in the process to the edge of ruin. Meanwhile, in therapy, Pinzak comes to realize that much of his life has been a lie. Nevertheless, can his work with Zane Running save him even as his career and reputation collapse?

Now emeritus professor, Jack Crittenden taught political theory at Arizona State University for 30 years. He is the author of five books related to democratic theory and practice: Beyond Individualism (1992), Democracy's Midwife (2002), Wide as the World (2011), Direct Deliberative Democracy (2019), and an ebook: What Hath Trump Rot? (2020). In addition, he is the author of Stalking White Crows: How Evidence and Altered Consciousness Brings Better Living and Better Dying (2020), a book oriented toward psychology and metaphysics. Pinzak is his first novel. He can be found and followed on Twitter @jackcrit.