Intellectual awakening can often seem an accident in Princeton. It is an accident a number of people never has the misfortune of suffering. Inherent to the structure of the liberal arts system is an unlikely conflict between the academic and the intellectual, cast crudely, the conflict between getting a good grade and finding your passion (and discovering the tools which can help you communicate that passion to the people around you.)

To say that art in our society has taken on religious connotations is not to say anything shocking or new. Nietzsche presaged this transposition of religious fervor from church to museum as early as 1878 when he wrote in Human, All Too Human that “art raises its head where religions decline.” Nietzsche wrote this, of course, without any knowledge of the film industry that was about to burst onto the Western cultural landscape.

Dear Video Art,

I hope things have been going well for you since the breakup. I’ve been doing my thing – a little oil painting, some yoga classes, you know. Trying to find myself and regain my center after all of that turmoil. And I just had to write, because there are some things I need to get off of my chest before I can get closure, and you know we were never good on the phone. I just feel like I spent all of this time trying to understand and appreciate you, what makes you unique and special, and it would be a mistake to throw that beautiful friendship away, you know?

Simply put, The Alchemist is a thinly-disguised self-help book, a fairy tale for all those of us who are, for whatever reason, not living the lives we once imagined for ourselves. Rather than offer some new kernel of wisdom, however, Coelho slinks back into the old clichés, encouraging us to listen to our hearts and trust Providence. “The Universe is conspiring in our favor,” he assures us, “even though we may not understand how.”

What The Choice suffers from is a machine-like lack of imagination, its plot twists as predictable as mathematical calculations. In 2008, the scientist P. M. Parker claimed to be the first person to code a book-writing formula, which can churn out novels at the flip of a switch. Apparently he never heard of Nicholas Sparks.

Platitudes undercut any sense of character development. An eight-page denouement covers a shabby and stale period of mourning: grief washes over in a quick bout of puffy eyes, then all move on. Perhaps Ms. Jacobs will flesh out the wounds of loss in her sequel, “Knit Two,” arriving November 25, but I recommend that she stick to the camaraderie of social knitting.

There’s a lot of honey in Sue Monk Kidd’s debut novel, The Secret Life of Bees.

I am on my balcony. I have been here for three days and two nights. It was my wife who put me here. It happened like this:

At dawn, when we wake, she wakes, I see: she, simulacrum of sweetie, presently bovine sweetie, clodhopper lovely, trundle fatly to her boudoir to assess the damage: six digits, the tally. These days, my girl: formidable haunches, breasts sapped of buoyancy, deflated balloon breasts, gobs of fatty skin where there ought only to be loveliness. She squirms into her negligee, once loose-fit, casual, today perilously taut, and thumps into the kitchen. When she walks her feet slap the floor.

Empire of the Sun is an up-and-coming indie/electronic duo with a particularly fitting name. The 1984 novel that Luke Steele and Nick Littlemore drew inspiration from is a tale of disoriented youth and immense freedom being closed in on by hostile forces. In a similar manner, Empire of the Sun’s debut album, Walking on a Dream, explores the territory of youth and depravity as they confront the pains of reality.

So, to briefly memorialize the show for now: it’s a play about a play--a construction called, thanks again to ‘kipedia, a ``mise en abyme”--about Edgar Alan Poe.

As one of the wealthiest universities in the world, Princeton undoubtedly treats its students well: less than half the student body pays full tuition, grants for travelling abroad are readily available, and its per-student endowment is the highest in the country. However with what critics call “one of the most concerning economic situations we have seen in decades,” the financial situations of all universities and colleges are facing unforeseen pressures.

Dear Guy from TI the other night, aka Mike, aka My Love, My Love, My Love,

What the hell happened? I’m so pissed at you that I can’t even talk to you about it face-to-face. Also, I can’t find you, which makes it harder to talk to you face-to-face. Isn’t this weird? I’m pissed at you, but I still love you. Look at that. So I’ve resorted to writing this letter in the hopes that you’re the one guy who goes to TI who also reads the Nass.

On a damp Friday afternoon in November, traversing the broad, entirely empty main courtyard has the feeling of trespassing. Whitman’s Class of 1970 theater is the setting, this particular Friday afternoon, for a screening of 'Einstein and Margarita,' a so-called “media opera” composed by Iraida Iusupova and with libretto by Iusupova and the poet Vera Pavlova.