G. Tod Slone

A Journal of Literature, Democracy & Dissidence

In the Samizdat Tradition of Writing against the Machine

Notes on the Editor

G. Tod Slone, aka P. Maudit, is the founding and sole editor of The American Dissident, which was created in 1998 as a direct result of the corruption experienced first-hand at Fitchburg State College in Massachusetts (see Genesis). At that institution, I was a tenure-track professor of French and Spanish. After arbitration hearings during my fifth year overwhelmingly pointed to intrinsic institutional corruption, I was offered a monetary settlement, but not further employment. The college of course did not/would not admit wrong. Its president cigar-smoking Vinny Mara was a product of rampant state cronyism. Truth was certainly not one of his concerns. Since Fitchburg, I occupied full-time positions at several other institutions of purported higher learning (see Bennett College and Grambling State University).

Because I tend not to turn a blind eye regarding the institutions employing me, evident requisite for a "successful" college-teaching career, I have ended up without a comfortable pension. For excerpts from my published books and unpublished manuscripts, see Books & Manuscripts.

Prior to obtaining my doctoral degree at the Université de Nantes in France (1987), I worked at diverse occupations including bank examiner for the FDIC (South Dakota), graveyard shift check proofer for New England Merchants Bank, accountant trainee at Continental Can Corporation, graveyard shift radiation monitor at the submarine base in Groton, CT, graveyard shift welder at the shipyard in Quincy, MA, census taker, carpenter, cabbie, grape harvester in Dijon, France, and interpreter (11 years) at the famous 24 Heures du Mans automobile race also in France.

Evidently, I am a fervent critic of academe and its literary milieu of highbrow diversion and entertainment. Other interests besides dissident literature, include running, foreign languages (French, Spanish, Italian & German), astrophysics, drawing, landscape gardening, and of course travel (Quebec, Newfoundland, Labrador, Nova Scotia, New Brunswick, Europe, and Mexico).