Holden Caufield can wonder about the ducks all he wants. I wonder about where bohemia went—my bohemians went and why I can’t find them and how they survive on these streets in the winter—, and so I imagine my own … Read More
At the New Yorker Festival two weeks ago, the entire cast of the TV show “Arrested Development” reunited for a group discussion. Mitchell Hurwitz, writer and creator of the show, revealed that there were plans for an abbreviated run of … Read More
It certainly looks like things cannot get any worse for the Little Sisters of Hoboken, New Jersey, when two-thirds of the nuns die from ingesting a tainted soup prepared by Sister Julia (Child of God). When the play opens, the … Read More
Dearest Nass readers, I feel your pain. You, former bandies, who sit there with your thick glasses, Rubik’s Cube, and encyclopedic knowledge of Civil War battles. Even if you forced your nerdy self into hiding when you arrived at Princeton and are pretending you’ve always been cool, I know your past.
Theatre Intime’s production of Sam Sheperd’s Buried Child expertly conveys the balance of terror and humor in the life of a family struggling with a secret. Doug Lavanture ’08, directs a production in which every detail of the family’s life … Read More
Classical composers usually improve as they age. Beethoven reached dizzying heights during his late period; his last few symphonies and string quartets, intensely personal meditations on human nature and God, radically altered the way composers thought about form and harmony. Stravinsky, whose upward trajectory is harder to trace, given his restless desire to explore different musical territories, produced some of his most intricately beautiful works during old age. Late periods are usually marked by mastery and introspection.
I was one of the girls waiting to get to late meal. I was the one sitting on the couch, watching, completely unimpressed, as four boys sat around me fixated on a flat screen TV. They swore left and right, pressing buttons on the game controllers they gripped. My requests for them to please get up so we could leave and beat the crowds at Frist were ignored. Instead, they were busy whacking the shit out of each other in a virtual world.
The Nobel Prize in Literature is an important mark of Swedish achievement. Throughout its one-hundred-and-seven year history, the award has been bestowed upon many legendary writers and a number of women as well. Last week, Doris Lessing joined the ranks … Read More
The following passage is adapted from the opening of Albert Camus’ The Plague, which is a description of Oran, a city in French Algeria, in the 1940s. I have translated it into English and into the setting of Princeton in 2013 (office jobs become classwork, going to the movies is replaced by the more common pastime of the Internet and so on), but those are the only changes I believe I have made.
Green Day has released its eighth album, a so-called punk rock opera entitled American Idiot. American Idiot sounds like, and almost certainly is, the soundtrack to a movie that is yet to be filmed.
We tend to moralize casually on the walk to dinner, and we’re all the more biting for it. “There’s something tragic in it, really…” a friend offered, trailing off. She spoke softly to me, but also to them, the “bright and tight,” as they stumbled back to campus on our narrow shared way.
