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.
“Mr. President, they’re ready to see you now.” “Give me just another minute. I’m almost done.” In an otherwise pristine Oval Office, the President’s desk was littered with unread daily briefs, crayon drawings, baseball cards, and candy wrappers. He had … Read More
Blue Valentine writer and director Derek Cianfrance’s latest film The Place Beyond the Pines is, if anything, a study in what Robert Penn Warren, legendary 1940s author of All the King’s Men, calls “the awful responsibility of Time.” We begin with Ryan Gosling’s character Luke Glanton, a reckless circus-performing motorcyclist. Seemingly out of nowhere, Luke has great responsibility thrust upon him when an old flame from an upstate New York carnival stop steps back into his life with his infant son.
Looking back, I can recount— although perhaps, at times, incompletely, and often, I admit, sensationally—— a brief episode between my four-year-old self and a close childhood friend: a young girl named Mary, similarly diminished in age and stature, a miniature co-star, with whom I shared an afternoon that I will always remember.
He presses his wrist into my breast and wraps his hand around my neck palm and fingers enfolding my ivory veil. His eyes devour the lights from three wax candles, one burning with a viridian flame. Unaware of the wind … Read More
David Foster Wallace is not here. In the absence of a physical body there is an idea, that of two Davids. It’s brought to life by biographer D.T. Max and author Jeffrey Eugenides, sitting in front of a rapt audience in the James Stewart Theater. The concept of two Davids—the sincere, troubled one and the manipulative, self-aggrandizing one—is one that the real men onstage constantly return to.
On Allie’s fourteenth birthday, Christopher felt his hard-won sanity begin its retreat—right there at the kitchen table. It started as he watched Allie, his step-daughter, try to tell Cyndi, her mother, stories about their day at Christopher’s parents’ ranch: the … Read More
The night is an exercise in harmony, a lesson in primary colors: Billy, ten, clutches a bottle of WKD blue, rubs his fast-ruddying face. When he lifts his arm for posterity, the salute calls the flame to crawl down the … Read More
a Palestinian transports wine amphorae West. state government export programs should be. implemented as opposed to the arguments. about policy intervention strategies. an eager Roman transports wine amphorae East. execute the social change, “I am invulnerable. like a trade’markâ€, says … Read More
