Princeton’s drug culture is like a moon. Once a month it is full, lustrous and can be seen from all over campus. For some, this metaphorical moon is perpetually full and bright while for others the sky above is eternally dark.
Princeton students are special. We’ve been told this upon every rite of passage we have experienced. No one ever dares to contest that they have near-superhuman aptitudes for creativity and hard work, Renaissance men and women all, steeped in the finest principles of humanism. Yet there is one thing in which we cannot manage to surpass the national average.
“Perhaps we must accept that we are simply watchers of beautiful forms. And if we acknowledge that we are observers, bound by our own frailties and limitations, we may be able to rescue the memory of what was, for an instant, exquisite.”
“When you’re famous and say you’re writing a book, people assume that it’s an autobiography—I was born here, raised there, suffered this, loved that, lost it all, got it back, the end. But that’s not what this is. I’ve never been a linear thinker, which is something you can see in my rhymes. They follow the jumpy logic of poetry and emotion, not the straight line of careful prose. My book is like that, too.”
They say that to be a great writer, you have to kill your liver. Or, preferably, yourself. To paraphrase Tolstoy’s old saw: happiness is banal; misery, unique. But do you really have to feel at odds with the world to write?
Years ago an American army captain ordered a million copies of a short novel, something to help keep the troops’ spirits up in Europe. Many credit the mass production of this book, _The Great Gatsby_, as the reason why F. … Read More
This isn’t an interview, but it feels like one. There are exactly 36 questions and I am stuck at the top of the list.
“It can be anyone,” he says. “Really.”
Like its preternaturally attractive star Keira Knightley, the new adaptation of “Pride and Prejudice” is very beautiful. Unfortunately, good looks are about all that Ms. Knightley and the film have going for them. This movie, the most recent addition to … Read More
