Fight for Your Long Day

the long version

In American pop culture, the handsome college professor is easy to spot. He's endearingly neurotic, his unfinished novel usually stuffs an expensive mahogany desk, and female students sigh in his wake. And even if it's not explicitly explained to us, the handsome college professor always has one other thing: tenure. But the further one moves down the academic totem pole, professors start to look very different. On the very bottom, lies a less dashing, less financially secure, and altogether less noticed figure: The adjunct professor. In Fight for Your Long Day, we meet Cyrus Duffleman--"Duffy" for short--an adjunct professor who can barely afford his two-room apartment. Forget about an unfinished novel: He'd be thrilled with health insurance. Still, he gamely shuffles to four urban universities each day to teach, and works a security guard graveyard shift once a week. Cobbled together, he can almost make a living. But today, Duffy's routine isn't quite so predictable. The cryptic mumblings of a possibly psychotic student. A bow-and-arrow assassination. A small government protest, then, a very large and violent one. Lunch with a homeless woman who claims to have been a 1950s film star. Frenzied attempts to spare his sanity (and safety)--all while a female coed quietly eyes him.