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From Russia, With Accents
If anyone can pull off the role of satirical, socio-political prophet and shnooky belletrist, it’s Gary Shteyngart. The author of The Russian Debutante’s Handbook and Absurdistan, Shteyngart is one of the punchiest and funniest young novelists out there. His writing, colored and coarsened by the blunt cynicism of his 1970s upbringing in the Soviet Union,…
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The Origins of My Jamaican Accent
That I spent the first 13 years of my life living with a Jamaican woman is always striking to those who best know me. Seldom, I suppose, is the topic broached in casual parley. So when I reveal I have a Jamaican accent, I am often faced with guffaws of incredulity, pshaws of dismissal, cold…
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Me, Me, Me, Me, Me
Though it might otherwise be dismissed as a horribly-written play, Me, Myself & I inspires additional disappointment, flowing as it does from the pen of three-time Pulitzer Prize-winner Edward Albee. A moving and clever piece, it is not. Perhaps the only element that could have saved and justified its stodgy formal progression—an insistent meta-theatricality—comes off…
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The Chabad Affair: Part 3
When I meet Howard Nuer ’07, a Hassidic Jewish student, three Sundays ago in his room, I am struck most by his bookshelf—filled to the gills with advanced math books and Hebrew scripture. The math major sits relaxed at his desk, which is covered in papers scratched with, alternatively, multivariable calculus or Jewish prayers. With…
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The Chabad Affair: Part Two
Given the impenetrable penumbra of mystery surrounding the secret letter from the Center for Jewish Life (CJL) to President Shirley Tilghman about the Chabad Affair, one may question the current adequacy of the support for Jewish life at Princeton. Though Princeton may overtly seem a welcoming environment for Jews, recent events suggest otherwise: Lisa Glukhovsky…
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The Chabad Affair: Part 1
Rabbi Eitan Webb, when I come to interview him early last Wednesday in his Nassau Street apartment, is juggling with ease five things at once. The sun rages to highlight red flourishes in his beard and the car beeps become louder as the Princeton Borough awakens, but he is preparing to have some thirty students…
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Roger Q. Mason Tells No Lies
Roger Q. Mason is controversy. Roger Q. Mason is change. Roger Q. Mason is revolution. “Every good revolution happens behind locked doors,” he proclaims, sealing the portals leading to Theatre Intime’s Charrier Room. He’s been directing rehearsals for seven weeks now in preparation for the February 23 opening of Pearl Cleage’s Flyin’ West–the first full-length…
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Micawber’s Reaches THE END
Just walk in Micawber Books, now as it phases out its inventory in preparation to close its doors in March, and you will undoubtedly bear witness to a sad scene, not quite of mourning but of definite melancholy, downtrodden emotion. Yes, of course, the friendly staff is still smiling; Bobbie Fishman, a long-time employee, interestedly…
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What’s In a Name?
As a self-proclaimed solipsist, I have always attached much importance to my name and seen it manifest itself in the least expected of places. But in my pampered youth of Plaza teas surrounded by the redolence of a fine Cavendish tobacco blend among glasses of Scotch filled three-fingers high, I wanted to rebel, mutiny, dissent.…
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A Modern-Day Houdini
Tickling the teeth, the tongue, the lips, Dr. Rabinowitz-Drillstein would jab various metal objects into my mouth during my visits to his dentist office. Though the majority of dentists will have at their most depressed of times the faint scent of Scotch or some strong digestif, my humble tooth doctor lacked this characteristic, and quite…
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Irish Drama Insurgence
Like the juiciest of farts, the relieving and incredibly human production of The Playboy of the Western World arouses in the depths of your belly that sort of visceral, ancient laughter perhaps only possible and appropriate in Irish villages. It’s evident to all, not just to theater experts, that the scent here is of brilliance,…
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Dionysian Delight
Espionage becomes us. We traveled to Cambridge, Massachusetts this weekend on a reconnaissance training mission to discover restaurants and entertainment venues that snarky Harvard students frequent. Posing as Mr. Black and Mrs. White – and alternately Vladimir Bolshoi Khoi and Natasha Krasavitsa – we penetrated the scene incognito, speaking in tongues unfamiliar even to us,…