‘Reading,’ as describing a certain activity of eye-sliding-over-page, with eye recognizing ink blobs corresponding (by means of whatever neural calculus) either (1) to something like second-order phonemes, and therefore to certain aural centers and therefore to speech-parts of the brain, which ‘articulate’ meaning to other parts, or (2) to something like second-order morphemes, and therefore to certain visual centers, and therefore to picture-parts of the brains, which ‘project’ meanings to other parts, or (3) to some combination of (1) and (2)[1]—well, ignore that or bracket it, because I have 1,000 words and a little over, say, ten minutes to argue for long and arduous works of literature, their import and glory—and, specifically, for the particularly long and particularly arduous recent novels of Roberto Bolaño and David Foster Wallace.

My father, Donald Elmore Dietz III, graduated from Princeton University in the Class of 1968. Originally a member of the Quadrangle Club, he found himself living with a bunch of boys from Cannon Club and switched over for his senior year. These boys are the men I now know as my father’s Princeton friends—Uncle Tony, Things, Gore, and Stone—whose pride in Cannon, “The Gun” as they affectionately refer to it, rivals their pride in the University itself. From the stories my mother tells, it seems that at the Cannon Club reunions that took place at my family’s beach house during summers I can no longer remember, these men kept the traditions and reputation of Cannon Club alive well into their forties.

It all started with a little hash. Or rather, it all started with no hash. Or was it Old Monk? No, that’s not it. I’m not starting far back enough.

Four years ago this June, Shirley Tilghman told Princeton’s graduating class:

During your time at Princeton, many of you have been moved to speak out on issues of social and political importance, from the moral significance of a pre-emptive war, to the pros and cons of senatorial filibusters, to the needs of low-wage workers on our campus…As you prepare to leave Princeton, I trust that the social and political consciousness you have cultivated here will give you the conviction and the courage to take a stand against tyranny and injustice wherever it arises.

This sounds like a pretty standard sentiment for a university president to express at a commencement ceremony but does it accurately reflect the manner in which Princeton affords its students to build a social and political consciousness?

Abraham “looked toward Sodom and Gomorrah, and toward all the land of the plain, and beheld, and, lo, the smoke of the country went up as the smoke of a furnace” (Genesis 19:28).  Matteo Garrone’s horrifying film Gomorra depicts a sun-bleached Campania engulfed in a conflagration of mafia violence where one could easily mistake the smog of illicit industry for the brimstone of divine retribution.  The Neapolitan mob is known as the Camorra, phonetically inviting the allusion to the Biblical exemplar of collective evil, and the film succeeds in making it an apt comparison.

Dear Wise Wendy,
I’m having trouble getting anything done for class now that it’s nice outside. Any suggestions as we move into finals?
From,
Procrastinator