Issue 7

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Adderall, advantage, allnighters, and A pluses

by Anna Gonzales with photos by Nora Kerrich

Plus: An interview with poet Michael Robbins

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CONTRIBUTORS Nyantee Asherman is a senior and an art and sociology major who in an ideal world would be an illustrator but would also be rich.

Sara Blazevic is a senior comp lit major with roots in Croatia and New York City. She spends most of her time working to build student power for climate justice.

Yenny Cheung is a junior from Hong Kong who is interested in web development and user experience design. She also works as a freelance designer and illustrator.

Tom Corbani ’17 is working on an individualized special major, attempting to combine interdepartmental theory and practice within the humanities division. Tentative title: “Cigarette rolling and self-deprecation in overrepresented communities.”

Caroline Creasey is a junior at William & Mary, currently studying at the University of Nottingham. After finally discovering music in ninth grade, she’s come to value it slightly more than Ezra Koenig’s tweets and almost as much as the Emoji keyboard.

Tyler Elliott ’15 did not write himself a bio, despite being repeatedly asked to by his talented and hardworking editors.

Chase Fuller is a sophomore at Swarthmore, studying communications.

Letter policy Letters are welcome from all readers. We will not ever publish letters anonymously and we reserve the right to edit all letters for length and clarity without contacting the letter writer. Letters generally should run no longer than 1,000 words.

They should be sent to ikornbl1 or agonzal4 or pqueen1, all @swarthmore.edu.

How to contribute We solicit pieces from writers, though we will also accept submissions of long-form reporting, personal, argumentative and photo essays, book and movie reviews, short stories, poems, and anything else that seems suitable. Submissions will be considered from Swarthmore students, alumni, faculty, and staff, and will be considered anonymously, though we will not, except in rare cases, publish anonymously. Submissions should generally not go longer than 10,000 words.

Contact: ikornbl1 or agonzal4 or pqueen1, all @swarthmore. edu.

Colette Gerstmann is a freshman from Brooklyn.

She likes Patti Smith, dogs, and artichokes.

Anna Gonzales ’16 is an English major and gender and sexuality studies minor who wants nothing more in life than to finally win the #swatphoto competition (she has taken second and third place in the past).

EDITORS IN CHIEF ANNA GONZALES IZZY KORNBLATT PHILIP QUEEN

Philip Harris is a junior studying English literature.

ART NYANTEE ASHERMAN YENNY CHEUNG

Nora Kerrich ’16 is majoring in history and education, and minoring in film and media studies. She tries her darnedest to get a full night’s sleep.

FICTION PATRICK ROSS

Michaela Krauser is a sophomore and a prospective English major from Philadelphia. Her autobiography will require 1.2 volumes.

Olivia Ortiz is a junior from Georgia who studies mathematics. Honestly, she’d rather be baking right now.

S W A R T H M O R E

Steve Sekula is a sophomore from Richboro, Pennsylvania studying art and computer science.

Steven Wang is a junior at Carnegie Mellon University studying economics, statistics, and decision science.

Daniela Wertheimer is a sophomore sociology and anthropology major from Phoenix, Arizona who takes too much pride in her Snapchat stories and has been described as a millennial flâneur.

Founded 2012 | Vol. 3, No. 1

PERSONAL ESSAYS LILIANA FRANKEL BOOKS PHILIP HARRIS TV AND MOVIES RACHEL YANG POETRY MIKE LUMETTA VICTORIA STITT Z.L. ZHOU

Published by the Swarthmore Phoenix swarthmorephoenix.com

Design © 2014 the Swarthmore Phoenix. All content © 2014 by its listed author unless otherwise noted. The “R” logo is based on the font Layer Cake by Luzia Prado. The “Review” logo is based on the font Soraya by Pactrice Scott. Printed at Bartash Printing, Philadelphia, PA. Please recycle this magazine.

“One day I was counting the cats and I absent-mindedly counted myself.”

Bobbie Ann Mason

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October 2014

Arts BOOKS

The stuggle is real 22 A life, and an attack on fiction, in six volumes

by Michaela Krauser

LETTERS

Forum: Talking money on campus Two essays on navigating social class at Swarthmore,

by Gavin Fahey and Emma Kates-Shaw

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Adderall, advantage, all-nighters, and A pluses

25 mg XR

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by Anna Gonzales with photos by Nora Kerrich

Literal and formal 24 What to make of more than 500 unrealized ideas?

by Chase Fuller

TELEVISION

FEATURE

PERSONAL ESSAY

“It says here to burn the rich and take their shit”

Above ground

An interview with poet Michael Robbins

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by Daniela Wertheimer

Returning the gayze 27 On HBO’s new series, “Looking”

by Tom Corbani

ENDNOTES A NEW SPORTS FEATURE

MOVIES

Like it’s right now 29 Indie blockbuster “Boyhood” tells a messy, incomplete, real story

by Olivia Ortiz

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MUSIC

Shaking it off 31 Taylor Swift’s anti-appropriation knows no bounds

by Caroline Creasey

Pure lyricism 33 Hooked on a young Sinatra

by Tyler Elliott

Interview by Philip Harris

ILLUSTRATIONS Yenny Cheung 8-9 Steve Sekula 18 Nyantee Asherman 38 Cover photo by Nora Kerrich

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Why I love to watch boxing

by Steven Wang

POETRY Block Light 21

by Colette Gerstmann

Samson 30

Editors’ picks Brief recommendations of movies, books, music, and more from our editors

by Sara Blazevic

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LETTERS Forum: Talking money on campus In our May 2014 issue, we published a report by Personal Essays Editor Liliana Frankel ‘17 called “Talking About Money at Swarthmore.” It drew a good deal of commentary around campus and online. What follows are two responses to the piece, from Gavin Fahey ’14 and Emma Kates-Shaw ’16.

Portrayal of college as miserly seems unfair

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n last May’s article “Talking about Money at Swarthmore,” Liliana Frankel questions to what extent college is a tool of social and economic mobility.

She concludes that for the lower-middle class and working class students, Swarthmore provides an excellent education at little to no cost. Removing Swarthmore and its financial aid from the equation these students’ options are often limited to either attending cheaper state schools or community colleges, or simply forgoing the college dream altogether. For these students, attending Swarthmore is a no-brainer. The upper-middle class students who receive less financial aid, on the other hand, are not privileged with such an easy decision. Does spending $60,000 on Swarthmore make sense for a family earning $180,000 per year?

Lisa Chow, writing for NPR’s Planet Money, wrangles with this very question.

Using Duke University as an example, Chow breaks down how the fifty-two percent of students paying the full $60,000 in tuition and room and board actually receive a discount on the $90,000 the school spends per student. Of this $90,000, $20,000 goes to Duke students on financial aid. Excluding those on athletic scholarships, just over ten percent of students pay nothing at all. Another quarter of students pay less than $20,000 per year to attend Duke. Although Duke is a large research institution and still includes loans as part of its aid package, its financial aid data is somewhat comparable to that of Swarthmore. At Swat, forty-eight percent of students pay full price. Sixteen percent of students come from families earn-

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ing less than $40,000 per year. I would surmise these students pay little to no cost for their education. Ultimately Chow, like Frankel, concludes that these students on full financial aid are receiving a very, very good deal. Both authors, however, gloss over the fact that the good fortune of receiving financial aid is usually met with an equal financial misfortune at home.

When I was applying to colleges my family was making around half the annual cost of a Swarthmore education. My parents had lost their retirement savings during the recession. We had not paid the mortgage in several years and our home was under threat of foreclosure. After health expenses my family was taking home only four figures per year. In spite of this, I had never considered forgoing a college education, nor had I seriously considered going to a community college.

My brother had worked three jobs while at school and graduated with $70,000 in student loans. He believed, however, his education represented an opportunity, not an everlasting financial burden. I, too, felt that a college was well worth the cost and was prepared to take on debt if necessary. Even so, my college search was decidedly geared towards schools that had a reputation for both academics and great

Swarthmore education. Swarthmore provided me with four years of health insurance, four years of housing, and four years of meals at no expense to me or my family. Swarthmore returned a portion of an outside scholarship I had received to help cover books and travel expenses. For me, Swarthmore was a place completely divorced from the financial obligations of the real world. I assumed this was the case for everyone. I assumed Swarthmore’s financial aid was such that no family ever worried whether they would be able to pay tuition that semester. I filed the complaints I heard about the cost of Swarthmore into the same category as gripes about the carwash erected outside of Sharples, the yearly disappointment with the LSE headliner, or the dusty tome Worth nurses use to diagnose students with any manner of incorrect illnesses.

This past year, however, I have seen more and more students unhappy with the state of financial aid. Frankel’s article told the stories of students who, like myself, had fallen on hard times financially.

Unlike myself, these students either saw no improvement in their aid packages or, in some cases, less aid awarded over time.

I began to wonder if my situation was an outlier. Maybe through some error on

Swarthmore provided me with four years of health insurance, four years of housing, and four years of meals at no expense to me or my family. Swarthmore returned a portion of an outside scholarship I received to help cover books and travel expenses. financial aid. This is how I discovered Swarthmore.

In my Swarthmore application essay I wrote about the school bills itself as a “college with a conscience.” I wrote about Swarthmore’s history of producing individuals who strive to upset the status quo, help the less fortunate, and take action towards social justice. I wrote about how Swarthmore would help me build the foundation for a life dedicated to a common good. In reality, all I wanted was a college I could afford. Swarthmore proved to be this college.

I did not pay a single dollar for my

Swarthmore’s part I had ended up with all the aid meant for other students. Where were all the other students speaking out in favor of their financial aid?

Frankel proposes that the upper-middle class students—the ones who have always expected to go to a college like Swarthmore and are paradoxically making the biggest sacrifice to attend this school—“become angry when logistics prove challenging.” It is these students that have said the most regarding financial aid. Contented students aren’t likely to post a Facebook status noting that their financial aid package was perfectly accept-

able this year. Similarly, a student on a full ride probably won’t tell his or her friends about the pleasure of not having to pay for college that comes with both parents losing their jobs.

So which financial aid story is more prevalent: one of dissatisfaction or one of empowerment? Although I have no answer to this question, I cannot accept the narrative of Swarthmore as a miserly businessman concerned only with the bottom line. I would like to believe that Swarthmore is still driven by humanist, not capitalist, ideals. I thus do not think that the college would entice students with generous first-year packages only to decrease awards in subsequent year, nor do I feel Swarthmore’s financial aid gotten worse. While I can only hope these beliefs match reality for most Swatties, I know for certain that a Swarthmore education should never come at the cost of economic hardship.

Gavin Fahey ‘14

people with mixed financial backgrounds, which in my experience are most groups of people at Swarthmore. Part of our reality here is that we all come to the proverbial table of each discussion from vastly different places. Some of us grew up worrying about money and, as a result of receiving great financial aid, don’t have to worry about it here. Some of us have never and will never have to worry about money.

And for some of us, money has always

this tactic is “lean in to being uncomfortable.” This means changing your reaction to the initial feeling of “uncomfortable;” from: retreating from the situation, to: examining what it is that is actually causing the uncomfortable feelings. In this case, the “uncomfortability” (which is not a word but I’m using it) comes from acknowledging a privilege that is not often acknowledged or examined, especially at Swarthmore. Specifically, this is the privi-

how much is it?!? well...what if I had two more siblings?

Gavin is a recent grad from Chicago currently living in Cambridge, Massachusetts.

Students: Be mindful of others’ financial backgrounds

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he other day, I received a text message from a friend, asking if I wanted to marry her. We don’t have a romantic relationship (apart from sleeping in the same bed together on occasion), but I considered saying yes. This is because the second part of the text message mentioned that if you are married, you are eligible to be considered financially independent from your parents by FAFSA, and therefore have only your finances factor into your aid decision at Swarthmore.

She and I, like many people I know at Swarthmore, are struggling to “fill the gap” between what it is decided that we could contribute toward the cost of a Swarthmore education, and what we actually can.

Oftentimes, I’ve found my discussions about this dissolving into radical solutions (i.e. sham marriages, robbing banks, etc.).

If the discussion takes a more serious route, however, it can feel like conversation turns to pity party the minute the subject of money is introduced.

This especially feels true in groups of

Illustration by Nyantee Asherman been part of our consciousness but not so much so that we ever felt “worried.” That is, until we were faced with the looming concept of being in loan debt for the rest of our foreseeable adult lives.

Part of what makes money a difficult thing to talk about at Swarthmore is the fact that it is so often emotionally charged.

If the “pity-party” happens when the subject arises, neither the pity-er nor the pitied enjoy the aforementioned “party.”

Likewise, feelings of jealousy and unfairness are similarly uncomfortable for all parties involved. So how do we talk about these things when they feel so negative to talk about?

I think the most important thing is to understand the importance of feeling uncomfortable. A common way of phrasing

lege of being here without worrying about money, AND without knowing how real that worry is for others.

I mentioned before three realms of experience that make up a majority of what I have observed at Swarthmore: 1: never having to worry about money, 2: worrying before but not now, and 3: acknowledging before but worrying now. Of course, this is not to say that these are the only three realms of experience that exist around money at Swarthmore: experiences exist between and apart from these three designations and are no less valid. I have had conversations with many friends whose financial aid, which initially allowed them to be here worry-free, changed dramatically from freshman to sophomore year (I’ll give you one guess as to the direction SWARTHMORE REVIEW

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in which the change occurred). These categories are based on observations I have made about the major differences between experiences people have shared with me, and I divide them so crudely only for the sake of argument.

The latter two groups have past or present awareness of money in their lives. At Swat, this means they are conscious of things like spending money on food outside of school, on concerts, online purchases, travel, and other expenses. For the remaining group, leaning in means becoming aware that spending money like this without worry is a privilege. It means being conscious of how we speak to each other about spending money, and not making the assumption that a peer will be able to spend money on “fun” limitlessly. This is a simple act, but it is powerful.

Being mindful of each other in this way is crucial to solving the bigger problem that exists around money at Swat. The reason I have chosen to focus on the simple process of thinking about how we talk to each other about money is that it is the beginning of standing up to a problem as a unified group. When we are in something together, we get things done. And we can only be in this discussion together if everybody feels comfortable and is willing to talk about money. Part of the reason I chose to stay here, to come back after a semester at home full of discussions about doubt and debt, is that at Swarthmore I feel supported by my peers in a way I have felt nowhere else in my life. My fellow Swatties listen to me and care about me and value the things I say and do. Some of them have much more money than I do, and some have much less. I have personally chosen to be open with my peers about my financial situation, and it has brought me nothing but generosity and support. It has also taught me that I am not alone in thinking about the roots of these issues.

So I guess this letter is more of a charge to my peers than anything else: listen to each other, don’t shy away from the hard conversations, and think hard about what a Swarthmore education is costing you and your peers.

Emma Kates-Shaw ’16

COMMENTED ON AN ARTICLE TO YOUR FRIENDS? CRITICIZED ONE?

Emma is a junior from Ossining, NY studying studio art and sociology/ anthropology, and she makes a super delicious honey pie.

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PERSONAL ESSAY

Above ground

by Daniela Wertheimer

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ometimes, in the boroughs of New York City, the subway runs above ground.

When I arrived in New York in June I didn’t claim to “know” New York, and I don’t claim to know it, even now. All my previous subway travel in New York had been confined to Manhattan, which meant that I’d known the subway as subterranean. It is true that both in Manhattan and outside of Manhattan, the subway is hidden underneath the city, but if you get just far enough away from the island, it resurfaces and shows itself to Brooklyn and Harlem and Queens. You can see those places, and the whole of those places can surely see you.

I didn’t even know this was a possibility until a few weeks after I’d been living in New York. I had ventured out to Brooklyn to hear alternative bands—some good, some bad, all morose—loop their voices over tambourines in the top floor of an unair conditioned apartment. The only reason I noted the elevated train (it may have otherwise passed me by, in all honesty) was because that was also the first time I had to sneak onto the subway. Having given my unlimited pass to my friend and having no more than $1.50 on my last-resort subway pass, I slipped under the turnstile apprehensively, imitating a piece of floss forcing its way through a set of middle-aged teeth, narrowly fitting myself through the entanglement of metal and barely escaping a ticket. “Why the hell was there no place to refill a pass? This is some bullshit,” I wondered aloud to friends unimpressed by my finable offense.

When we disembarked from some train that only runs in Brooklyn, we went to buy beer at one of those stores with everything.

Some might call this a convenience store, but in New York, they take a different shape, a different meaning, both to the people who go in and the people who rarely come out.

In Phoenix, where I wasn’t born but grew up, the bananas in the convenience store are Dole bananas and they’re shiny and cost 50 cents. They will sit in a basket until you pick one out, your nice, clean, yellow Dole,

and bring it into your air-conditioned car and eat it before you get to your next cold location. In New York, the bananas have been handled. So have the cherries, and the grapes, too. They’re not just Dole. They live in New York; they bear “Dole” with the same weight the stench of the gray trash births onto recently laundered, stench-permeable clothing, even on a sunny day in summer. (Point of clarification: “sunny” is imprecise. A forecast of sun on its own doesn’t imply that someone didn’t take the trash out after the thunderstorm last night, or that the trash didn’t continue to sit there as the water lay stagnant around it until 8 a.m., when the sun finally cut through the 25-story building’s shadow and sucked the puddles dry except for a few drops, the scent of brewed waste invading the fibers of your clean clothes today, even though—and especially because—it is a sunny, sunny day.)

The fruit in the everything stores is simultaneously suspicious and enticing—it embodies the exploitation of its handlers and bears the brown spots of its rough supervision that stand out against its otherwise celebratory yellow skin. It can’t speak anymore of its tropical origin because once it gets to New York, it shares the same grayness of the city and, perhaps, the same grayness that overhangs anything picked or plucked or shipped by Dole. The everything stores in New York are tragic and the fruit relays maybe an even sadder story, but everyone goes in and buys their fruit anyway. Or they just go to Fairway.

I’ve never bought fruit in either place.

It follows, then, that at the everything store I didn’t buy any fruit. My friends and I illegally purchased our beer and went to the show. I don’t remember how we paid for the subway ride home, one of us down a pass, but we all got back to Manhattan, feeling a bit played by the aboveground subways in Brooklyn.

The second time I was on an aboveground subway was on the way to a Yankees game, which I attended partly because I was a horrible outfield softball player in my un-athletic youth and I have some allegiance to any sport that tortured me as much as softball did. But mainly I went because I wanted to see a good friend, eat some soft serve and get a like-worthy

Instagram picture out of it. I did all of those things, and nothing about the transportation that day, even the unprotected Bronxbound subway, bothered us, apart from the curiously congested midnight drive from the Bronx to my friend’s house in Greenwich.

That night, the Yankees won 5-3 against the Orioles at the bottom of the ninth and I remembered all the teams I’d loved throughout my life. My love for a team is always ephemeral, but easily awoken. The Yankees are now buried in my mind, but I’m sure my sense of pride and allegiance would reveal itself again if I could find the

The conversation took its excitement from our difference. (‘He doesn’t even know what Swarthmore is! How exciting!,’ and so went my internal dialogue for the entirety of the night.) time required to unearth myself from the city and make it to Yankee Stadium.

That being said, I hope I never have to ride it under the same circumstances that I did the third time I yanked myself from familiar neighborhoods (the Lower East Side, Midtown East, Chelsea). That time I was on my way to the Bronx with a boy who I’d met only once.

Certain parts of how I came to be in this situation are important, others are not. I met a German guy, travelling through New York, ready to take off with the money he’d saved working here whenever he wanted.

He was a little younger than I, born in February; I was born in October. Me 1994, SWARTHMORE REVIEW

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Previous spread illustrated by Yenny Cheung him 1995.

On our first date, we sat under some trees in Union Square Park from sundown until midnight. The conversation took its excitement from our difference. (“He doesn’t even know what Swarthmore is!

How exciting!,” and so went my internal dialogue for the entirety of the night.)

When the park shut down at midnight, we went to buy bread and hummus at both Duane Reade and Walgreens because one of them, I don’t remember which, did not sell bread. In Germany, he explained, annoyingly, didactically, every pharmacy has a bakery. “I know, I know,” I thought, grumbly but too eager to please him to care. I don’t remember what I actually said that evening, but I know it was frantic and inelegant, reflecting my dispersed, overly-wandering self.

He liked to speak nonchalantly, yet almost exclusively in platitudes, sort of in the manner of someone two years younger than himself. It didn’t irritate me on this first date because I sort of liked retorting with my own platitudes. After a while we got quiet and sat and observed that the spraying apparatuses in the defunct fountain in front of us looked like water bottles.

I felt nervous and maybe a little bored; I was waiting for him to kiss me.

The second date happened on the day of the World Cup. Sharing German-ness (sort of), we were both ecstatic when Germany won. He’d managed to down a lot of alcohol by the time Gotze scored and put a stake in the Argentinians. Thankfully, the milieu was appropriate for his style of drinking and celebrating.

Nothing seemed amiss until we left and he implored me to go to the Bronx with him, see his apartment, help him pack. He’d been kicked out the night before and needed to get his stuff before moving to Brooklyn to stay with a friend until he found a new place to stay permanently. Saying no to someone who tells you to “stop worrying about what everyone else wants you to do” is tricky. And, as he once shared with me, he didn’t even care about other people.

“The world has hardened me,” he said.

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The subway tracked along, up through the eighties, nineties, until we found ourselves looking out onto the Bronx, thankful for the opportunity to check our cellphones, thankful to pause a conversation as vacant as our excitement about each other.

When we got off, few words had been exchanged for at least half an hour. Fewer passed during our walk to his apartment.

“I guess girls don’t know what it’s like to need to pee so badly it hurts.”

“What?”

Saying no to someone who tells you to “stop worrying about what everyone else wants you to do” is tricky. And, as he once shared with me, he didn’t even care about other people.

“Nothing, I can’t really talk until I’ve used the bathroom.”

When we got into the building, he careened through the halls, smoking, eventually flicking the butt onto the tiled floor.

I let him know that I was shocked that he’d done that, but he said that no one would care. It seemed like of all the people that didn’t care, he probably cared the least. He spent at least ten minutes in the bathroom while I sat in his roommate’s bedroom on a small chaise, flanked by two large stuffed bears. In the middle of the room was a heap of sheets and pillows. Maybe the roommate was doing laundry, but the fabrics looked like they had been thrown there in considerable vexation.

He finally emerged from the bathroom, but as soon as he walked in, his roommate came home. The roommate was a 40 yearold gay Dominican cook, and when he saw me, he was angry. Behind him was a younger man, also gay, Puerto Rican, maybe 26, who accosted me and encouraged me to go with him down to his apartment.

“Sweetie, these guys need some privacy.”

As we slipped away I heard the roommate address the guy I was with, “ —we need to talk, now.” Fuming.

The younger man sat me on his family couch, which I shared with a blue-eyed cat.

He said he loved looking at all of the shirtless men in the summer and brought me to a window where we could see through to the other side of the building. Over there a group of shirtless 20-somethings were talking, holding basketballs, unaware that strangers were bonding over their broad shoulders and delicately swelling abs. Then the younger man left.

I sat for a while, marveling at how I’d gotten myself into this situation, how far it was from any other experience I’d ever had and how far I was from my homes, adopted and not. Full of hesitation, near paralysis, I continued to sit, unsure of my body, unsure of my place.

As soon as the man I was on a “date” with came to retrieve me, we walked to the subway station so I could catch the 4 back to Manhattan. Just before I got on, I remarked that all of the subway stations in the Bronx were aboveground. He didn’t respond, at least not to that. He just wanted to clarify with me, before I left, that we were just friends. I got on the subway back to the city, already resolute that it didn’t matter, that he hadn’t liked me, and that I hadn’t liked him anyway.

Two days afterward, I got a text message from him.

“I apologise for my slight drunkenness yesterday and for dragging you along to the bronx.

I hope you still enjoyed your day:) See you soon!”

August has ended and I haven’t made it far enough, even once, to the places just beyond the reach of Manhattan where I might see him, or be seen by him, through the windows of the aboveground subway. u

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Adderall, advantage, allis for nighters, and A pluses

by Anna Gonzales with photos by Nora Kerrich

25 mg

25 mg

25 mg

Logan

is probably the least-likely person to be a drug dealer since Walter White.

She’s got a penchant for wearing her hair in pigtails, favors t-shirts festooned with cartoon characters or funny sayings, and peppers her text messages with emoji. Passing her on your way to class, you would never guess that she pulls in a few thousand dollars each semester selling Adderall, one of the most widely prescribed and widely abused prescription medications in the United States, and the “study drug” of choice for high school and college students across the country.* But rake it in she does. It’s a Sunday night in Paces, finals are drawing near (as is a hefty price hike for a little studying boost) and Logan is doing a roaring trade. Our table is visited by a steady stream of students, by turns desperate or resigned, high-strung or flippant. Some—the regulars, of whom Logan has about ten—are casual, stopping by, picking up their orders, and exchanging pleasantries. Others are brutally efficient, to the point of being rude (one wonders where this efficiency goes when it’s time to get started on that seminar paper), and some are too nervous to conduct the deal in Paces and insist on picking up somewhere a bit more private.

“Paces is actually a great locale to sell, for me at least,” Logan explained. She’ll grab some food, set herself up

at a table with friends and meet clients throughout the night. “It’s awkward when I sell to someone for the first time, and I don’t know what they look like,” she laughed as she waved a new client over. “It feels like a creepy blind date.”

Logan was first diagnosed with ADHD in 9th grade, and, a year or so later, was prescribed Adderall as needed in order to help with completing her homework.

Many days, however, Logan would either forget or decide not to take her meds at all (she says that Adderall isn’t as effective as it should be for her, and that she often can’t feel it working), and thus ended up with a large excess of pills.

Adderall, along with other drugs which are usually prescribed to those with attention-deficit hyperactivity disorder, such as Vyvanse, Concerta, and Ritalin, are composed of mixed amphetamine salts, and have been adopted as cognitive enhancers and referred to as “study drugs,” allowing students without ADHD who take the drugs to work for hours on end without losing focus or needing sleep or food. A series of articles in major publications such as the New York Times have provided a more in-depth look at both the prevalence and effects of such medications, revealing that “study * Note: All student names used in this article are pseudonyms selected by interviewees.

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drugs” are enormously popular on college campuses and at high schools, despite their high potential for abuse and a laundry list of frightening side effects.

As Logan’s surplus piled up, friends either asked her if they could have some or suggested that she sell the leftovers. No, I would never do that, Logan always answered, aware of the legal consequences and the potential of the drug to be abused or become addictive.

Last fall, though, Logan changed her mind and finally gave in. She quickly took to the business, getting her prescription doubled from her previous amount (an almost incredibly simple process of telling her doctor that the pills weren’t working and requesting more) and purchasing small plastic bags to contain the drugs.

Logan credits her swift business—there is more than enough demand to use up her extra, even at the somewhat steep price of $8 for one pill (four guaranteed hours of studying) or $15 for a double dose—to word of mouth. “I talk a lot, which is good and not good,” Logan explained, “because I think it’s hilarious that I sell drugs…I wouldn’t say I’m exactly the ‘drug dealing type,’ so it’s funny to talk about.”

Yet she also needs to balance her advertising with a fair amount of caution. “I need to be careful, because this is super illegal and I can’t have all my clients telling everyone and their mother that I sell. I’d rather not get arrested,” she told me.

What about the health risks and negative side effects associated with taking drugs such as Adderall without a prescription, or the possibility that those to whom Logan sells might become addicted? “Well, sometimes people ask me, like when they buy for the first time, how much they should take,” Logan said. “But in the end it’s their own body, their own responsibility. I expect that my clients know the dangers of taking it unprescribed … if they ask, I’ll be like, don’t take too much at once, blah, blah, blah.”

On a

Tuesday afternoon in his first semester of freshman year, Eugene sat in class, literally falling asleep from a combination of exhaustion and intense boredom. He had a ten-page research paper, on a topic he knew nothing about, due the very next day, which he hadn’t even started, let alone the pile of smaller assignments and commitments throughout the day which would prevent him from even beginning the paper until 10 p.m. at the earliest.

In short, Eugene was desperate and terrified. He knew he would need to work through the night to finish the bare minimum of work he could get away with handing in. Eugene had pulled a few all-nighters in high school, with the help of a six pack of Red Bull, but he knew he needed something a bit stronger. He’d heard that Adderall, available to him through a friend, provided not only a surge in energy but a boost in morale, and, a few weeks before, had picked up a few pills, thinking they might come in handy.

Pretending to be listening to what his professor was saying, Eugene reached into his wallet, pulled out a small orange capsule, popped it, and waited for a 12

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miracle. He stared at the clock, and, as time passed, felt an incredible sensation of intense happiness wash over him. He felt jittery, gleeful and excited: a long night of tedious, boring work had become a fun, thrilling challenge. By the last ten minutes of class, Eugene couldn’t wait to get down to work.

When class ended, Eugene rushed out of the building towards his dorm to get changed for his PE class.

On the way, he saw a friend, in whom he had early confided his desperation. The friend asked how he was doing, but Eugene could only respond with an ecstatic, unintelligible comment as he sprinted towards his dormitory.

That evening, he enjoyed his PE class more than he ever had before. By the end of the class, the exercise had burned off the frenetic, excess energy of Eugene’s high, and he became quietly certain that he could get everything done. He headed to the worship room in Bond Hall, where he spent the night reading and writing his paper, feeling confident that he would finish it. His energy was at a perfect level, not too high, and his earlier exhaustion was completely gone, leaving him serene and focused. “I don’t really know how it happened, but it was finished,” Eugene remembered.

The next day, victorious and prepared, Eugene went to class and handed in the paper, and then stayed up late that night working again. Eventually, he crashed, collapsed on his bed, and woke up late, which he thought was a reasonable price to pay for zero sleep the previous night. Eugene began using Adderall a couple of days a week as the semester wore on, sometimes taking a week off if the workload became lighter.

Students interviewed for this article said that Adderall and similar study drugs work to make the user feel fairly invincible, a sudden genius, as though one’s brain is firing on all cylinders, as though anything—reading hundreds of pages, writing thousands of words, churning out problem sets or study guides, memorizing endless flashcards—is possible, even if it’s four in the morning, all of the above are due the next day, and one has not had coffee, food, water, or a bathroom break, let alone a good night’s sleep, in days. One feels that they are the best iteration of their studying selves, a smarter, more focused version of themselves, one that writes smoother sentences faster, absorbs more pages more quickly, and solves equations with greater ease. Study drugs make you feel like everything is under control— you will finish all of your work, you will finish it well, and you won’t feel tired, hungry, or distracted. All you need to do is take the pill.

The effect on some people is not unlike what happens to Bradley Cooper’s character in the film “Limitless”— the world is reduced to a entirely comprehensible system, your homework transformed into a game that you can beat. Hours staring into a book or typing away on a laptop feel like mere moments and fly by, and when you look up, the dosage finally leaving your bloodstream, you’ve finished a Herculean amount of work. Used recreationally, the drug can also be enormous amounts of fun—like any other stimulants, such as cocaine or ecstasy, study drugs can make a user feel euphoric and can vastly improve a partying experience.

Though the drug is technically designed to help users with attention-deficit disorders focus, some, like Eugene, find that Adderall helps with motivation. “I get distracted relatively easily—probably not enough to get diagnosed with anything though—and so at some point it’s a bit demoralizing…so by helping me focus, it made me feel like I could actually get something done, which was great,” he said.

Eugene used Adderall through the fall exclusively in order to complete his homework. But he found that it soon became something more than a homework pill, something along the lines of part of his daily routine at Swarthmore. After his extremely positive first experience with the drug, “it almost became the indicator that I was having a particularly busy day. Sort of, ‘I’m stressed, I could probably manage without it, but why bother with the stress,’” Eugene said.

At the end of the fall, though, Eugene decided he would force himself to stop taking Adderall as often.

“I definitely formed a habit,” he said. “I decided that I wanted a lifestyle that wasn’t dependent on a drug.”

Luckily, Eugene wasn’t on the drug for a long enough period of time to become physically addicted—“It was more of a, ‘I could use some now, I could do without it but this would be way easier,’” he said.

As fall semester came to a close, Eugene believed that he would do the drug again. I asked if he thought it was a form of academic dishonesty or cheating to use the pill. He didn’t. “It doesn’t enhance mental capacities or give me new ideas or use the work of someone else, the same way I drink coffee every day to be alert or smoke to calm down,” he said. “This may have a stronger effect, but I feel that it’s not dishonest to try and be at the best of my ability.”

Adderall

is magical, amazing, and, of course, has the potential to be highly addictive. This is not the only danger of the pill.

Besides the ease with which such drugs lend themselves to abuse and addiction, the downsides include the worsening of existing mental health problems, the crash when you’re done, and the increasing inability to do work without the drug.

Swarthmore’s Alcohol and Other Drugs Counselor, Joshua Ellow, discussed some of the pitfalls of abusing Adderall and similar drugs. “Some studies seem to indicate that individuals who recreationally use these drugs to complete an assignment or study for an exam actually may score lower versus others,” Ellow said via email.

“Furthermore, anecdotally, an individual may feel the rebound effects of these drugs, which can include disorientation, dehydration, or even lack of motivation or fatigue, and may therefore perform worse than usual or miss class in its entirety,” he explained.

Ellow explained that the drugs, whether prescribed by a physician or used for recreational purposes, typically cause reduced appetite (and therefore potential weight loss), trouble sleeping, tremors or shaking, mild anxiety, and pressure or headaches. At higher doses, 14

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Ellow said, these drugs can create increased anxiety, heart failure, and even psychotic episodes, including hallucinations and paranoia (a February 2013 New York Times article chronicled the case of Richard Fee, a popular class president and varsity baseball player at Greensboro College, for whom the use of study drugs led to addiction, psychosis, nervous breakdowns, and eventual suicide). Ellow pointed out that prescribed and legal drugs can at times negatively affect an individual just as much as illegal or “street drugs.”

“The good thing about having a prescription is that an individual can talk to their doctor or psychiatrist about their unwanted side effects, and the dose can be adjusted, or a different medication could be tried,” Ellow said.

Students interviewed for this article recounted that highly unproductive experiences when on the drug sometimes occur as well—if your brain does not actually require the chemicals in order to concentrate, the pill’s way of forcing you to hyperfocus might cause you to spend twenty minutes finding the split ends in your hair, or you may waste an entire afternoon or evening feverishly working on something unimportant.

Articles in the New Yorker and the New York Times have highlighted that many students, who acquire the pills at a relatively inexpensive price from friends or acquaintances, see the drugs as benign, since they know many people who have been on the medication since childhood. One such student is Sophia, a fairly typical Swarthmore student, one who sets high standards for herself, is used to achieving these standards, and finds the prospect of failure difficult or nearly impossible to imagine. In the fall of 2013, Sophia found herself in way over her head, absolutely buried under her homework from her four classes but unable to cut back. She was working at least fifteen hours a week for one of her classes, and putting in five to six hours each for the other three.

To keep up, Sophia, who also sought to hold down a job, play on a sports team, and serve as an officer for a club (any semblance of a social life took a backseat to all of these), began to pull three all-nighters a week, with the help of Adderall. On Sunday nights, realizing she had not worked as hard or as productively over the weekend as she needed to (“It was never as much as I needed,” she said), Sophia would take Adderall around 6 p.m., eat in Sharples before the high hit, and then work through the night. After her classes ended around 1:30 in the afternoon, Sophia would grab two quick hours of sleep, then awaken again at 3:30 to hit the books again.

For a few weeks, Sophia’s work situation was so desperate that she would repeat the cycle the very next night. “Sometimes there’s enough sleep deprivation that you’re alert. That’s how it felt most of the time, because my body had to function…it was fucking crazy, actually,” Sophia said.

For Sophia, using Adderall was a highly socially dependent activity. She and a close friend, Nicole, would always do their Adderall together. Nicole, Sophia said, had so much trouble motivating herself that she would not work without first taking the drug (for which she

Later, Sophia found out that the part of the test she had completed had in fact been correct, and that if she had kept going and completed the questions, she probably would have gotten an A. Instead of her usual straight A’s, however, she got a C.

did not have a prescription). This meant that Sophia felt comfortable using Adderall as often as she did, because most of the people who she and Nicole hung out with did it, too.

At first, Sophia relied on Adderall mostly for staying awake, rather than for attention or motivational problems. “My brain is the type that wouldn’t get unfocused anyway,” Sophia explained. “I just need something to keep me awake at night, and coffee doesn’t cut it.”

As the semester wore on and Sophia racked up the all-nighters, however, motivation became an issue, as did dependence on the drug. She knew that Adderall could make her study, and it was unbelievably easy to use this as a form of motivation and a crutch of sorts. As Nicole became dependent, Sophia felt herself too relying more and more upon the drug whenever she had to study for a test or write a paper.

Sophia’s lowest point using the drug came during her fourth all-nighter in a row, during one particularly difficult week. She had been studying “insanely” for the week leading up to one of her tests, which involved much more material than usual. When it came time to take the test, everything went fine at first, but as Sophia went on, her exhaustion overwhelmed everything she had learned.

She grew more and more anxious as she realized she was forgetting what she had studied, and this anxiety caused her to forget even more information and feel pressed for time, a harrowing cycle that caused Sophia ultimately to give up without completing the test. “It was one of the shittiest feelings ever, especially since I had studied so long for the test,” Sophia remembered.

Afterwards, crying, Sophia spoke to her professor, who was luckily sympathetic. The professor knew that Sophia was putting her all into her work, and was more lenient than Sophia believes he might’ve been with a slacker. “I think he thought I was a normal college student pulling all-nighters with lots of coffee,” Sophia said. “I don’t remember him being especially concerned, except the fact that he thinks I’m batshit crazy.”

Later, Sophia found out that the part of the test she had completed had in fact been correct, and that if she had kept going and completed the questions, she probably would have gotten an A. Instead of her usual straight A’s, however, she got a C. This was an especially bad episode, but total, overwhelming exhaustion and anxiety were fairly typical of Sophia’s experience after each studying marathon. The fall was a haze of Adderall-induced studying followed by miserable mornings in Sharples, where Sophia felt

like a zombie, unable to smile or be funny, the life and energy drained out of her. Sophia described the experience of an Adderall crash—which for her lasted about 12 hours, compared to the six hours of productivity she might have gained from taking the drug—as “like your soul is being sucked out of you, and there’s no happiness in the world.”

As friends and even acquaintances began to comment on her extreme weight loss (a fairly common side effect of abusing Adderall and similar drugs which depress one’s appetite), Sophia knew that she was hurting her body, but she was unable to compromise on her academic goals for herself. “There’s just a certain standard of grade I want and expect from myself,” Sophia said. “I could not let myself fall below it no matter what…I’d do anything to achieve the standard I want for myself.”

Combined with Sophia’s exhaustion and weight loss was intense, nearly crippling anxiety and stress that her professors or classmates would find out what she was doing. Sophia didn’t think, however, that she was doing anything wrong or cheating by using the drugs without a diagnosed learning disability—she was making herself so profoundly miserable by putting her academics ahead of her health that she felt she was doing herself more harm than good, rather than gaining some sort of unfair advantage over her classmates.

Part of Sophia knew that there had to be some way she could get her work done without pulling all-nighters and taking an incredible amount of Adderall, but she felt that she had no other options. She couldn’t conceive of how to get all of her work done without staying up all night.

At the end of the fall, when Sophia’s grades were finally posted on MySwarthmore, she had gotten straight A’s. She had the grades she wanted, but not the sleep or health that she needed. She wanted desperately to find enough time in her schedule to do her work, without having to resort to using Adderall.

On one of the first days back at school after winter break, the two of us had lunch at a window table in Sharples, where Sophia took a break from studying to tell me how she felt about the previous semester. She was fairly horrified by what she’d done to her body and mind over the course of the fall, even though she had achieved her desired results. “It didn’t seem like a big deal at the time, even though now that I’m saying it out loud it seems fucking terrifying,” she said.

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Spring

semester brought several big changes in Sophia’s life. Her study buddy of sorts, Nicole, went abroad for the semester, leaving Sophia to do her Adderall alone. She also began seriously dating someone who disapproved of her drug usage, and she decided to take a somewhat easier course load.

Though she now had less work, Sophia still craved the ease and instant brain boost Adderall could provide.

Since her significant other did not approve, Sophia found herself behaving like someone addicted to hard drugs, doing the drug secretly and making up excuses for her lengthy absences. The lying and covering up took a huge toll on the way Sophia constructed herself, and she began to feel an intense disconnect between the face she presented to the outside world and the person she felt she truly was. She began to hate herself.

Adderall had shifted from the solution to Sophia’s academic struggles to a serious problem that affected her entire life. As Sophia thought more and more about her fall, she realized that what she had done was completely not worth it. She could be productive for six hours using Adderall, but the crash afterwards was so hard and lasted for so long that it wasn’t even remotely practical. Sophia had gotten all A’s, but she knew she could have done just as well without taking the easy way out, hurting her body and brain, and making herself miserable, if she had only modified her study habits to make all-nighters no longer necessary.

Slowly, she began to decrease her usage, until she was completely off the drug. When we talked at the end of summer, Sophia was certain she would never use the drug again. “I’m staying the fuck away,” she told me emphatically. “I’m tempted, but the drug is so addictive that I wouldn’t be able to do it just once.”

Sophia seemed to deeply regret her time abusing Adderall. Besides the harm to her body and her brain, Sophia recalled being extremely lonely, and feeling separated from the rules she believed her friends and classmates lived by. She was horrified that she’d fallen into a habit of depending on a substance for personal growth and success. “The easy way out doesn’t last forever. It’s temporary, and in the case of Adderall, harmful,” she said.

I asked if she had any more thoughts about the drug that she wanted to share. “Honestly, I just hope it deters people from Adderall. Drug abuse has never made anyone a better person,” Sophia concluded.

before taking it fall semester, and the extreme I was at in order to justify myself using it, and didn’t feel like I was in such a desperate situation at all,” Eugene said.

“I’m not against the idea of using it again, but I have a pretty dreary and vivid image of the place I’d need to be in to do so.”

Primarily, though, Eugene’s moral compass had gotten the best of him. “What worried me was how my ethics were working with those around me,” he said.

“Even if I don’t feel guilty using it, others do, and I can’t really change that.” Essentially, Eugene felt that using the drugs when others weren’t doing so gave him an unfair advantage.

Much of this advantage was tied to Eugene’s feelings about his self-described privileged background. “I’ve often had to relativize what I have versus what others don’t and what opportunities I’ve taken that others don’t have access to,” he said. In other words, choosing not to take Adderall was Eugene’s way of “leveling the playing field.”

If there were physiological downsides to using the drug for Eugene, he barely felt them. He would use Adderall for all-nighters, and, even when tired, found himself able to sit through class without much trouble.

Once, when he lost a full research paper to a computer error, Eugene recalls feeling deeply demoralized, but the cost was simply another pill and another night of work.

When we spoke at the end of the year, Eugene couldn’t think of a single way in which the pill had affected him negatively, besides the need to sleep for a long time after a lengthy stretch of work, which Eugene needs anyway if he works for too long (though drowsiness from long nights of work had caused him to sleep through about 30 hours’ worth of classes and commitments “semi-accidentally” in the fall).

While Sophia worried about the toll Adderall took on her body and morals, Eugene’s strongest regrets, or what he felt at least a bit more sad about as he looked back on his year, were related to the reactions of his friends. Eugene remembered his friends around him, when he grew motivated, excited, and committed to working, as looking sad, as if there was something tragic or disappointing, something they weren’t saying, about what Eugene was doing. “It might be some retrospective paranoia, because it didn’t affect me at the time, but I think that for many of my friends who don’t do Adderall, seeing me on it made them sad, and letting them down isn’t too fun,” he said. u

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25 mg

25 mg

surprisingly, Eugene did not use Adderall once in the spring semester. He chalked up the end of his habit to several factors: to start with, he was taking classes he actually enjoyed, which motivated him to do his work, and he never felt himself to be at the level of hopelessness which had helped him rationalize his earlier usage.

“If I was tempted, I kept remembering how low I felt

25 mg

Somewhat

FEATURE

“It says here to burn the rich and take their shit” An interview with Michael Robbins

Interviewed by Philip Harris

W

hile I could start by quoting Benjamin on Baudelaire, or make some sweeping—and likely very silly—statement about the status of the poet in (post?)-postmodernity, I will simply say this: Michael Robbins is as unabashedly modern as a poet should be. Pop culture suffuses his work, but so does a loving attention to the sonority of words. His poetic voice is slippery and can assume many rhetorical registers; leave your ideology at the door, and even then expect to be a little offended. His first collection, “Alien vs. Predator,” was a smash-hit (for a book of poetry), and I expect “The Second Sex,” released September 30, will generate a similar buzz.

Oh yeah, he’s also one of the most entertainingly incisive critics writing today (his collection “Equipment for Living: On Poetry and Pop, Mostly” is forthcoming). When all the blurb-speak and hyperbole have been exhausted, Michael Robbins is simply a serious poet trying to write meaningful (but fun) poetry at a time when “neither the drive-thru voice that takes my order/ nor the divine can be clearly understood.”

As this is a college magazine, I thought we could start out by talking about academia. You received your Ph.D. from the University of Chicago and teach creative writing at Montclair State University. It seems like there’s a conception in the literary world that the ivory tower, and the theory it circulates, exerts a magnetism which you have to either embrace or ironically distance yourself from. However, from reading other interviews with you, I see that you’re certainly not afraid to employ thinkers, and phrases like “hermeneutics of suspicion,” which perhaps don’t get much traction outside of academic spheres. I was wondering if you could talk about the effect academia has had on you and your work.

I read Nietzsche and Marx in college, but I came to Adorno, Freud, Derrida, de Man, and Deleuze on my own afterwards, when I was decidedly not in the academy. I didn’t enter the Ph.D. program at the U of C until after I was 30. John Guillory is right that within the academy a canon of theory replaced the literary canon as that which had to be mastered in order to secure cultural capital. I read Derek Parfit and David Chalmers in grad school while my peers were reading Franco Moretti or whoever.

I find that most graduate work involves aping certain theoretical moves in order to demonstrate your technical mastery of the material that you are being trained to transmit in your turn to the next generation of graduate students. Nice work if you can get it. Guillory neatly says that the academy is both the agent of the reproduction of unequal social relations and the site for the critique of such relations. So the academy’s relation to my work, like most things under the present regime of capital, is a contradictory relation. I am both in and out of the game.

I start at Montclair in the fall. It’s not a research university, so there’s this radical idea that your job is to teach the students. Theory enters into it obliquely at best. I have modest goals for my teaching: introduce students to the great wonders of literature, and help them to write better poems. Most kids won’t come away from college with a love of literature or with the ability to write well, but that’s always been the case. You reach whom you can, and you try to be fair and kind to those you can’t.

Where I see theory surface explicitly in your work is in some of your more polemic writing (I’m thinking of your article on Obama and drone warfare in the Los Angeles Review of Books and SWARTHMORE REVIEW

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Illustration by Steve Sekula

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your writings on the New Atheists). It’s clear you’re well-versed in the English tradition of argumentative writers.

How do you feel about taking up that mantle, albeit temporarily, in the digital age? The situation Guillory outlines seems a serious handicap for those trying to meaningfully apply theory.

Ah, I thought you meant my poetry.

OK, sure. Well, I believe it is a serious handicap. Fine work can get done in theory, which only idiots dismiss as nonsensical gobbledygook (which is not to deny that some of it is nonsensical gobbledygook). But at the end of the day the school exists to reproduce social relations, not to inculcate young minds with the best which has been thought and said. So you get situations such as the one involving Joshua Clover and his students at U.C. Davis, who committed the extraordinary crime of sitting down in a bank. Clover acted as if the words he writes and reads and teaches mean something. So the university had him and his students arrested.

The school reproduces economic inequality quite openly and directly in the form of student debt. In civilized countries, you go to college for free. Here you often have to assume a financial burden that will cripple you for decades, while, for instance, Robert Zimmer, president of the University of Chicago, takes home a $3.4 million salary. There is no reason students should continue to accept this obscene disparity. They should be doing whatever it takes to shut it down.

As for “the digital age,” I want to be wary of singing what Emerson called “the tune of the time.” It’s easy to believe that we have captured something distinctive with a phrase like “the digital age,” but I suspect we’ve elided what is distinctive about our time. As Jonathan Crary writes in “24/7,” “This pseudo-historical formulation of the present as a digital age, supposedly homologous with a ‘bronze age’ or ‘steam age,’ perpetuates the illusion of a unifying and durable coherence to the many incommensurable constituents of contemporary experience.”

The rhetorical tradition matters for anyone concerned about language. I recently saw Zadie Smith interview Karl Ove Knausgaard; one of her questions began, “Now that the language of God is unavailable...” I just thought: oh, sure, as everyone knows, the language of God is unavailable. No need to think about that

for a millisecond, just repeat the received wisdom and everyone will nod. Has Smith read Marilynne Robinson or Geoffrey Hill? It’s your job as a writer to try not to simply regurgitate lazy assumptions about how the world works.

It seems to me that whether reviewers are praising or denigrating your work, they still tend to draw a line between the pop cultural material you “appropriate” and the “matters of permanent concern” that you ultimately address.

In interviews you allude to myth and the sacred and I’m wondering whether your theological/philosophical views in any way influence the historical stance you take towards the cultural material you employ. Because it seems like the “sampling” you perform can go a number of ways, and while you don’t seem to be interested in the kind of historically totalizing assembly of cultural materials that poets like Pound were, neither are you playing the “postmodern” game of making everything surface-level.

Well, I don’t draw such a line. The best review of my first book was written by Anahid Nersessian, and it appeared in Contemporary Literature, an academic journal, so not many people have read it. She writes that “The poems are out to embarrass the reader who finds provocation only in their highbrow-lowbrow mixology while glossing over their brash, unflinching partisanship.” And that’s right. I can’t worry about—I’m not responsible for—superficial readings of my poems. I’m not Danger Mouse, so I don’t answer questions about the pop-cultural material in my work anymore. Make of it what you will.

As for the historical stance I take, Nersessian also writes that I pursue “a left-ecological poetics that doesn’t rhapsodize about trees or point fingers too baldly”—though here I would add that “Robbins’s enthusiasm for turning multinational corporations into neo-mythic figures on a par with William Blake’s Urizen or Vala is exemplary both of his political literacy and his literary sophistication.”

You know, I’m interested in communism and Christianity in a culture where I have to explain what I mean by those terms, where the first signifies for many people “Stalinist” and the second usually

refers to what I call actually existing Christianity, the grotesque distortion of the Gospel that prevails among fundamentalists. That makes it sound as if my poems are no fun, and of course I think and hope they are. But yeah, they arise out of partisanship and opposition.

Wrong life cannot even be lived wrongly.

As for “the digital age,” I want to be wary of singing what Emerson called “the tune of the time.” It’s easy to believe that we have captured something distinctive with a phrase like “the digital age,” but I suspect we’ve elided what is distinctive about our time.

They are fun, and that’s a refreshing answer to a rather dry question. Perhaps the problem lies in the very term “pop culture”? You wrote a great piece on what constitutes a lasting review for the Chicago Tribune last year, but I was wondering if you had any thoughts about the climate of reviewing in general: is it healthy or are we still getting tripped up on distinctions like “pop culture”?

Well, pop culture certainly exists. I’m not saying we shouldn’t make such a distinction. I just don’t want to talk about it in relation to my poetry. The climate of reviewing I hope never to give a thought to. I don’t read enough reviews to judge.

Most writing is terrible, always. Most reviews are not worth reading. But who cares?

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If that’s the case, and if we can return to some points you made earlier, what truly distinctive aspects of the present day do you think we elide when we use blanket terms like the “digital age of literature”? You said in an interview with the Believer that you occasionally wonder if “all our problems come down to questions of architecture.”

This was in relation to myth and the landscape of corporate America, but I think a similar observation about form obscuring or being confused with content could be made regarding the current debates over e-books, the digital humanities, print publications vs. digital publications, and perhaps even the occasionally portended death of the humanities.

What I’m saying is that these “debates” are shallow. They exist because newspapers and journals and websites have to write about something. There’s no real argument taking place. I have exactly nothing to say about these topics—”the death of the humanities,” “the digital humanities,” these are just phrases on a magazine cover.

Well, I certainly agree that these debates are shallow to the extent that they don’t address, or even acknowledge, the fundamental systemic problems. I guess I keep making recourse to these buzzwords because they’re unfailingly used to frame these discussions in the media. How do we productively talk about the very real fact that public universities are closing humanities programs across the country if the terms of these debates don’t allow for a critique of the ideological nature of the academy?

Well, one wants humanities programs to survive. I’m just cynical about the hand-wringing. But can we talk about something else besides the academy? I realize I’m being a difficult interviewee, but my friend writes profiles for GQ, and Harrison Ford was much harder on him.

Certainly. I’ll use your obstinacy as a way to segue to some product placement. You lifted the title of your new 20

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Some poets bleed place—the examples are obvious—but I’ve never felt strongly attached to any particular place.

And the speaker of “Alien vs.

Predator”... identifies with generic, homogenized spaces—Best Buy, Barnes & Noble, meth labs. collection, “The Second Sex,” from Simone de Beauvoir. What can we expect?

For one thing it’s another title about alienation, about being defined by and through external forces and processes.

And I’ve been haunted by Eve Sedgwick’s reading of Foucault in “Touching Feeling.” She argues that while the first volume of “The History of Sexuality” seems to promise—and is often read as achieving—a way of thinking about sex outside “the repressive hypothesis,” Foucault actually propagates that hypothesis (the dualistic notion that, historically, sexuality has been repressed through censorship and prohibition, with the corollary that opening up about sexuality will liberate us). Make of that what you will. But of course there’s also the Replacements’ [album] “Let It Be.” You were somewhat hesitant to endorse the “guarded optimism” another interviewer saw in your work. What I think is lost today in the optimism-cynicism distinction is that there are different strains of cynicism: the kind that goes back to the Greeks and is interested

in deeper truths, and the more common modern variety that’s basically self-reflexive resignation. Is a “healthy” sense of cynicism (about, say, “political correctness”) a prerequisite for serious writing today?

“The prevailing view of things can be assumed to be wrong,” Marilynne Robinson writes, “and its opposite, being its image or shadow, can also be assumed to be wrong.” To write as if that were true is the only prerequisite for serious writing I know.

You talk elsewhere about poetry being a way to complicate the relationship between the poet and his persona.

While a poem like “Oh Wow” seems like a sustained earful from a persona or interlocutor, at points, like the beautiful third stanza of “Sweat, Piss, Jizz, and Blood,” the speaking subject seems to dissolve into lyric description.

I was wondering if you could elaborate a little on your concept of the poetic self and personae, and how that plays out on the level of form in your recent work?

The speaker in the poem is never entirely the poet, that’s basic. That’s the first day of Introduction to Poetry. But I wouldn’t really say “persona,” I’d say that the voice in my poems is not me. As Anthony Madrid writes, “It’s not not me,” but it’s not me. Think of “The Brothers Karamazov.” Dostoevsky had to channel his skepticism to write it. It wasn’t his settled position. But he needed to write the novel. Valéry said it best: “Look, you can’t hold me to this shit.” You have to write a poem, you can’t restrict yourself to your truest self, your most considered thoughts. You have to allow yourself to be dishonest, to be meaner than you are or sappier or uglier or stupider or prettier. When people object to the tenor of one of my lines, I’m just like, yep, I object too, I don’t agree with that stuff.

That’s why it’s in a poem and not an essay (setting aside the question of how honest you have to be in an essay). Anthony Madrid says something to the effect of: “Put your finger on any given line, and I’ll tell you what percent I believe it. It never goes lower than 15 percent, and it never goes higher than 91 percent.” Because you’re making art—art isn’t supposed

to be true or comfortable or genuine or authentic or sincere. It’s not a position paper. That doesn’t necessarily mean you don’t actually have the wicked thoughts you put down. It just means that for the sake of the poem you don’t renounce them, as you certainly would in life. As for what form has to do with it, I’m not sure I have a satisfactory answer to that. I suspect form is devoid of content.

Block Light

by Colette Gerstmann

Goddamn the dancing bodies on the craft, the white stitching, the dark wind-smell, all those with luscious control.

This month I’m shadowless

I’m interested in one voice that’s not *not* you in your poetry: the rural Michael Robbins, or, perhaps more generally, the geographic Michael Robbins. In “To the Drone Vaguely Realizing Eastward,” geography plays a destabilizing role (“Mumbai used to be Bombay”), and throughout “AvP,” when cities or countries come up, they seem more like proper nouns than physical places. However, there are a handful of poems from the new collection that ground me in an environment in a way that is to me new in your poetry. I was wondering if you could talk about the role of place in your work, and (to get back to rural Michael Robbins) what draws you to the Americana that is the subject of poems like “S,P,J,& B”, “Mississippi,” and “Country Music.”

Some poets bleed place—the examples are obvious—but I’ve never felt strongly attached to any particular place. And the speaker of “Alien vs. Predator,” who as noted isn’t “the me myself,” identifies with generic, homogenized spaces—Best Buy, Barnes & Noble, meth labs. Except for “To the Break of Dawn,” written during my belated first trip to New York City, where I now live. And even there the New York is one I missed out on. I’ve often envied others their rootedness. But I recently lived in Mississippi for a year, and felt out of place in a banal way. And I became more keenly aware of a longing for place that I don’t know how to satisfy.

So the places I know but don’t love—Chicago, Mississippi, Kansas—made their way into some of the poems in the new collection. I think it was Andrew Marvell who said, “Home is where I want to be, but I guess I’m already there.”

What I find particularly refreshing— especially since for a while now the prevailing rhetorical stance of liberal pundits to the absurdity of the polit-

with no shape of my dress to sweetly prove my power to block light.

I’m a link of chains, fluid and fixed, rinsing myself through torques and contortions, dragging sonnets through my mind, slick rhymes, things I memorize and onto which I latch my body to detach from comets.

I want to hear in a crowded space a swatch of gossip: that there’s something soft, concrete—a glowing slab of heat, a heart I can become and be, light up blackbox theaters with my energy: a block of light, a block light.

ical situation has been satire—is that your political work, even when it’s irreverent or hyperbolic, is where I feel close to the 91% truth-content in your work. And if there is humor, it’s not predicated on lampooning a particular ideology. I was wondering if you could speak to the intersection of politics and humor in your work. Do you see humor as a productive force?

Well, I should say that I don’t think poetry can have any political efficacy at the moment, which is not to deny that it has had and, though I doubt it, might have again. But when you say I don’t lampoon a particular ideology, you are rightly locating the ideological in my work. How hard is it to make a joke out of the current Republican Party? Stephen Colbert and John Oliver are funny, but

it’s easy humor, and I don’t doubt that their conservative counterparts are also funny. I still believe in totality.

So in an effort to end on something of a hopeful note, are there any contemporary poets you’re excited about?

I always recommend everything Robyn Schiff ’s written; Anthony Madrid’s “I Am Your Slave Now Do What I Say”; Paige Ackerson-Kiely’s “My Love Is a Dead Arctic Explorer”; August Kleinzahler’s “Sleeping It Off in Rapid City”; Patricia Lockwood’s “Motherland Fatherland Homelandsexuals”; Frederick Seidel’s “Going Fast,” “The Cosmos Trilogy,” and “Ooga-Booga”; Mary Ruefle’s “Selected Poems”; Dorothea Lasky’s “Thunderbird." u SWARTHMORE REVIEW

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BOOKS The struggle is real Karl Ove Knausgaard’s anti-fiction is a hypnotically addictive look at the trauma of the everyday

by Michaela Krauser

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ife’s final trial, as depicted in the opening pages of “My Struggle,” is painless. In one of the most easily quotable passages of Karl Ove Knausgaard’s six-volume autobiographical series, Knausgaard sensitively describes anatomy in decomposition. “For the heart,” he begins, “life is simple: it beats for as long as it can. Then it stops.”

Though death is basic to human experience, he points out, “there are few things that arouse in us greater distaste than to see a human being caught up in it, at least if we are to judge by the efforts we make to keep corpses out of sight.”

Facing the incontrovertible biology of death, he opens his work of fiction with an attack on fiction itself. It is a subtle critique of the fiction found in the everyday: the stories we tell about ourselves, to ourselves, what we choose to remember and to forget.

My Struggle: Books 1-3

by Karl Ove Knausgaard FARRAR, STRAUS, AND GIROUX; ARCHIPELAGO 448, 608, & 432 pages | $16, $18 (paperback), & $27 (hardcover)

Knausgaard’s beginning is strategic.

His stark introduction contextualizes his work within a greater project to subvert the conventions of personal narratives.

The series is a modern-epic in length alone—3,600 pages of a life dissected.

Though the title of the series has raised eyebrows (it’s Min Kamp in the original Norwegian), Knausgaard has defended himself against accusations of cheap provocation. Book Six includes a 400page essay on Hitler, and it has done little to placate his critics.

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depict his painful relationship with his abusive father. After his father dies, Knausgaard reexamines this relationship through the prism of his death.

He returns home to prepare the funeral and to clean his father’s home amidst the disturbing material evidence of his father’s alcoholism. This volume showcases some of Knausgaard’s greatest strengths as a writer: his acute sensitivity to detail and his shrewd insight into his own psychology. Book Two, subtitled “A Man in Love,” picks up several years after the first book’s conclusion. The novel portrays Knausgaard’s existential and creative dilemmas as he starts a new family and attempts to rescue his literary pursuits from his dreaded descent into bourgeois middle class existence. As the subtitle suggests, Knausgaard is at his most sentimental. In a sweeping, cinematic sequence, he meets and falls in love with the woman who will become his second wife, poet Linda Boström, with whom he has three children. Frustrated with his inability to create work amid strollers and screaming toddlers, Knausgaard takes temporary leave of his family to start what will be the first volume of “My Struggle,” giving this second novel a layer of meta-reality. If Knausgaard is aware that he inhabits a familiar, even trite archetype—man abandons domestic duties in favor of “higher” pursuits—he shows no consciousness of such. His pain, self-doubt, and restlessness are simply there on the page, no subtext or irony, all aching and sincere.

Both volumes are written in Knausgaard’s distinctive mix of episodic recollections and ruminative digressions on art, literature, and society. His writing style is straightforward and extremely readable, and strays toward the lyrical only when describing natural landscapes—a nod toward the Romantic tradition, with which Knausgaard professes a sense of affinity. However, the awk-

REVIEW

Unlike some fiction, Knausgaard’s novels are not transcendent in the sense that they create an alternate reality in which readers can immerse themselves Knausgaard’s work invites a reexamination of one’s own experience and a reentry into personal history. wardness of such aesthetic transitions at times distracts from the beauty of image and metaphor. In addition, Knausgaard’s allegiance to realism can, after several hundred pages, verge on exasperating.

When Knausgaard makes a cup of coffee, you follow him as he scoops the grounds, you hear the water boil, you take a seat at the kitchen table. Then you walk back to the counter because he’s forgotten a spoon.

Knausgaard’s studied banality does not appear to serve a greater end of artistic experimentation, but fits within a philosophy regarding the limitations of knowledge, writers, and literature.

Knausgaard argues that writers should

Above, “My Struggle” author Karl Ove Knausgaard; below, Knausgaard with Zadie Smith

Photos top to bottom courtesy of Oktober.no and New York Observer

not combat the “fiction” of the everyday—particularly artificial organizations and systems of knowledge and interpretation—with even more fiction: “What I ought to do was affirm what existed, affirm the state of things as they are, in other words, revel in the world outside instead of searching for a way out.” Moving at the tempo of day-to-day reality, Knausgaard’s writing brings the undercurrent of trauma that runs through regular existence to the surface. His recurrent bouts of worry, embarrassment, and frustration are compelling in their relentless ordinariness. Knausgaard’s unadorned vulnerability is what renders a mammoth work about one man’s experience digestible. In subtle strokes, his internal dialogue opens up to allow for personal association, introspection, and recollection.

Writer Zadie Smith has proposed that the series is like “crack.” Though the comparison reads as blurb-speak, Knausgaard’s capacity for observing detail—his ability to get down every aspect of a moment in time—does indeed render the narrative strangely hypnotic, if not addictive. Through plain, intimate recording of fact, he allows for detail and the very practice of observation to evoke more than merely his personal experience. Unlike some fiction, Knausgaard’s novels are not transcendent in the sense that they create an alternate reality in which readers can immerse themselves.

Rather, his work invites a reexamination of one’s own experience and a re-entry into personal history. The structure of the first two novels, dictated by associations of memory and tangent, echoes the way human beings instinctively process and organize information. Knausgaard’s anxieties and challenges are in no way universal, clearly influenced by his personality, identity, and position within society. However, his intuitive narrative allows for his particular practice of remembering to transcend the limits of his individual experience.

The third volume of “My Struggle,” subtitled “Boyhood Island,” was released in English in May 2014, and returns to Knausgaard’s childhood in rural Norway. In this novel, Knausgaard is in storytelling mode, recalling acts of mischief, ardent crushes and school dances, as well as his continual inability to appease his father’s raging temper.

As this book centers on Knausgaard’s early pubescence, it is especially rife with visceral and cringe-worthy anecdotes— SWARTHMORE REVIEW

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stories that require a different variety of vulnerability than those in the first two novels. Knausgaard abandons the roles of philosopher and literary critic to fully immerse himself in his childhood psyche and recall the micro-tragedies of youth: “For every step I took the bare foot rubbed against the coarse leather of my boot. I’ve lost my sock, a voice inside me said. I’ve lost my sock. I’ve lost my sock. A ticking started in my head. It happened now and again when I was running, my head ticked, somewhere inside my left temple, tick tick, it went, but

although it was alarming, sounding as if something had come loose or perhaps it was rubbing against something else, I couldn’t tell anyone, they would just say I had a screw loose and laugh.”

Knausgaard demonstrates an extraordinary ability to empathize with his younger self, articulating the nuances of childhood thought and emotion that are quickly forgotten upon entering adulthood. However, the novel is so deeply entrenched in a specific frame—temporal, intellectual, and emotional—that Knausgaard’s commitment to giving

The literal and the formal What to make of more than 500 unrealized ideas?

by Chase Fuller

A

cross from me sat a well-suited man leafing through what appeared to be a business book, one of today’s dime novels. The sanguine face on the cover consoled me: “its tough out there,” and inspired me: “but you can do it!” He read in a perfunctory manner, as if he were flicking lazily through a newsfeed, aiming for a minimum of possible engagement. He smiled pleasantly as the train took us across Pennsylvania. We did not speak. Green whirled by, interrupted by metallic splotches. Why did he read that book? One could reasonably infer its basic arguments.

The “getAbstract” app does just that— it compresses business books. Missed “Building Your Business the Right Brain Way”? Don’t know “The Hard Things About the Hard Things”? Run the text through the “getAbstract” program and then breeze through a distilled summary of the most pertinent information. This isn’t Joyce, and besides, what does one hope to extract from a book any way? The ability to demonstrate having read it? I’m reminded of a Woody Allen joke: “I took a speed-reading course and read ‘War and Peace’ in 20 minutes. It involves Russia.”

Maybe you don’t need to read all of Eduoard Levé’s “Works” either. The third of his four volumes, “Works” fits quite well into a career of clever and abrasive art. Shortly after submitting his manuscript for “Suicide” in 2007, Levé hanged himself. Before his untimely death, he was an esteemed conceptual photogra-

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pher, as well as a rising literary presence in France. It is not difficult to picture him in the act of “framing” a thought. Those who knew him, I imagine, would have claimed fondly: “Eduoard was a sardonic asshole.”

Here is the executive summary: “1. A book describes works conceived of but not realized by its author.” This sentence, Works

by Eduoard Levé DALKEY ARCHIVE PRESS 208 pages | $14

the first entry of “Works,” is also its program. Levé proceeds to meta-realize this concept into a compendium of 533 erratic ideas, each numbered and lasting about three to four sentences, all conceived of but not realized. Though a few, I am told, eventually were.

Levé’s rarified text is more easily defined negatively, but it must be admitted first: “Works” is certainly a book, a material object bought and sold. Though Levé seems to begrudgingly concede this is a book for us, he did, after all, submit it to a publisher. One is occasionally unnerved, so scrupulously does the text read like something found, a matter of incidence.

There is neither a narrative nor any character aside from its implied architect.

There is no pretense of order, but it has an internal logic.

“Works” comes, apparently, from that oh-so-French tradition of “con-

expression to the mundane begins to induce a sense of claustrophobia.

Though recollection is inherently an act of interpretation, by failing to lend transparency to this creative process, Knausgaard holds the reader within the confines of his particular existence.

By excluding a sense of hindsight from the narrative, Knausgaard deprives the reader of a retreat from his own story, creating a vacuum that potentially limits the reading experience. This novel is pure Knausgaard, and his struggle is solitary. u

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strained writing” whereby writers chain themselves to a conceit; the freedom in shackles bit, say, writing a novel without employing the vowel “e,” as Georges Perec famously managed. Ever been to an indoor rock-climbing wall? It’s like an expert ascending the blue holds to the rapt enthrallment and/or profound apathy of those present. Do we care? Were we amused? “Sort of,” we qualify.

Why? to all of this. For the novelty of it? A little gimmickry? That would be ungenerous. “Works” is at times blisteringly alive, more than many attempts at conventional realist fiction, because the reader is forced to constantly acknowledge the book’s physical reality, the very fact that it is an idea—“a book describes works conceived of but not realized”— that has been literally constituted. It also contains moments of smirk-inducing humor: “333. A large chair is surrounded by several smaller tables,” or “423. After watching a rotating spiral for several minutes, a man makes a drawing with the impression that the paper he is sketching on is retreating from him.” Zadie Smith describes Levé as having an “adolescent aesthetic,” and if one takes that to mean “sporadically cringe-inducing,” we might agree. Levé’s touch is seldom light and deft; he errs towards polemic.

Double translation—the execution of a concept, its reduction to its essence, and finally its reconstitution—forms the theoretical core of the project. Levé writes: “A film scene is shown backwards to actors so they can learn to act it in reverse. Once they succeed, they are filmed anew. The

new scene, in turn projected backwards, becomes strange: reversing the inversion doesn’t get you back to where you started.” We thus have what Levé deems “a referent without a history,” which we might interpret as a rather pretentious term for “making strange.”

So Levé has here defamiliarized and disjoined the theory/practice line; he has taken an idea, “a book describes works conceived of but not realized,” and brought it to life in a numbingly recursive way. The question is forced: is “Works” better for its execution? Should it, like the others ideas, have remained un-realized? Or perhaps, what’s the difference?

What is the difference between “a book describ[ing] works conceived of but not realized by its author” and “Works,” or between “Works” and its compression, its executive summary? Are we lost down the simulacrum rabbit hole?

What is in fact lost in reduction?

“Works,” inadvertently or not, supplies an answer: the art is lost, the art that had existed in the execution, the framing, the performance. Reduced to a set of declaratives, we are left with ideas, disembodied. We might instead supplicate for a fiction of subtlety, of artifice, shimmering brightly as it covertly imparts to readers impressions and senses, not a bombardment of arid thoughts.

As anything teetering on the far edge of abstract formalism, “Works” implicitly suggests the reader imbue it with significance. Levé has then written a private text—each reader has their own relationship with it, their own exegesis of it. It is largely an individual experience. We know where this thought extends—each copy of “Tristano” by Nanni Balestrini, a novel recently printed by Verso, contains a distinct, algorithm generated arrangement of paragraphs; no two copies are alike. We might each attempt to decipher a mirror. Has meaning then imploded into banality?

The creation of private experience is much in keeping with the neoliberal ethic fetishizing the individual, you or me, while dismantling our community.

Partly this is achieved by reducing things to the sum of their parts, not allowing that the whole is greater than its components. It is a strike against the public space. In “Works,” there is no emotional resonance by which we might commune with others, whether to laugh or to cry.

It engenders no empathy. We are not reconciled to humanity; we are felt to be alone within it. Though I am weary of Photo courtesy of Pequod Press

Eduoard Levé

sentimental drivel, “Works” is sadly too extreme in it is stoicism. Levé is prodigiously unbalanced. In a world seemingly so atomized, I found this book to be too much of the global marketplace and its inanities, too much an object consumed and expelled. There is little dignity in it.

Levé, though he spits his bile plenty, does not spit where he ought to.

Or perhaps Levé meant to subvert all this. After all, he did attend an elite French business school, which is a bit like Kafka becoming a criminologist. I could have read it poorly. Many of the claims

I’ve made here could go the opposite direction. Levé invites ambiguity, revels in it; this is why his book, as an unstable theoretical text, may be deemed a success.

But not as an object of art.

If you would like to read a book that can induce deeply deep rumination on our “postmodern condition,” “Works” can serve that purpose. If you’d like to throw a book away decrying “utter rubbish,” “Works” might be right for you too. It is a grating, sneering book, confidently trite, merely clever, radically indulgent, and entirely unique. u SWARTHMORE REVIEW

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TELEVISION Returning the gayze

REVIEW

HBO’s ‘Looking’ fulfills its promise, acknowledges divergence in queer lives

From left: O.T. Fagbenle, Frankie J. Alvarez, Jonathan Groff, and Raúl Castillo star in “Looking,” which centers on gay male life in modern day San Francisco.

by Tom Corbani

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ince its release in January, HBO’s “Looking” has received its fair share of criticism. The primary strand of reproach calls the series out for being boring—unbearably so. To quote Slate reviewer J. Bryan Lowder, “Looking” is, after all, gay without any of the hard parts (dick included), gay that’s polite and comfortable and maybe a little titillating but definitely not all up in your face about it. And in that, the show may

Photo courtesy of San Francisco Examiner

represent the greatest victory to date of those who strive not for the tolerance of queerness in straight society, but for its gradual erasure as we all slide toward some bland cultural mean...Don’t lament the ongoing health crisis in your community—that stuff is too old-fashioned, too dramatic.

I couldn’t agree more with the sentiment; I support pinkwashing no more than Lowder. I would, however, suggest that “Looking” is not that sanitized, but rather that it acknowledges this divergence within queer lives. The microcosm of characters it

reveals lives in the shadow of its community’s history and present, and at the same time struggles with its conflicting drives; silence leaves space for them all. The show’s seeming dullness hides a delicate balance between progress and memory, shame and consumption, comfort and fear.

Q

ueer critiques argue that the assimilationist wet dream that is a cast of mundane gay men living normal lives is of no interest within cable TV, regardless of how “groundbreaking” such representation may be. In an attempt to complicate such descriptions, we may begin by SWARTHMORE REVIEW

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examining of an example of this mundanity, from the bathhouse scene in episode 3: “Looking Through Your Browser History.”

In this scene, 39 year-old waiter Dom meets Lenny, a florist of a similar age. The frame is shaky, the lighting subdued and the interaction sparse, suggesting an atmosphere typically associated with the grime of the milieu. After an awkward beginning, the exchange takes a somewhat unexpected turn: Lenny: Sorry.

Dom: For what?

Lenny: No one really likes to talk in these places anymore, do they?

Dom: Did they ever?

Lenny: Sure, they used to. They had bands sometimes, food. Still had sex, but it was friendlier.

In this moment, their interaction is submerged with thoughts from the past: these two bastions of their world (they both describe the other as an “institution” later on; known figures of the San Francisco gay scene who finally meet) frame their interaction with their mutual experience within this space. Silence is fraught with memory; their own social chatter is the legacy of years of similar interactions in this space.

The everyday takes on a wider meaning.

At the same time, the interaction projects into the future, and ends with Dom picking up a (very) hot younger man who is apparently “looking very determined.”

The muffled atmosphere created by the camerawork is emphasized all the more seeing his bare body behind dewy glass, and so the contrast between the older and younger partner creates an image of continuity within this space: The bathhouses may have changed, but some aspects will keep going a while.

Q

ueer history and the present day get confused all the more in the opening segment of this episode. Lead character and level designer Patrick is at the marine-themed launch party for the game he’s been working on. He immediately taps into the novelty of the event: “It’s my perfect utopia: sailors giving out free drinks.” The environment feels sanitized and bougie, the drinks look fruity and colorful, the sailor’s costumes are immaculate and crisp. The gay haven of yesteryear has become a corporate fantasy.

Patrick’s behavior stands in stark contrast to the glamorized setting. When trying to justify his tendency to play video games as a female character, he says,

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“Women are the outsiders in games, and I relate to that. Gay people get it.” But do they? Ignoring his somewhat out of place generalizing statement, he is in a space that celebrates and commercializes gay heritage. It is because he is in San Francisco, in this space loaded with historical echoes, that his comments fall flat. The farcical voice of the setting reverberates most when he recounts, with horror, his summary of the evening: “I asked out my boss whilst straddling a torpedo.” The almost crude comedy of this moment is reinforced by the phallic and metonymic connotations of the weapon. An institution of gay men preceded that comment, and Patrick unconsciously makes reference to them: the past is present.

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s well as superimposing temporalities, “Looking” questions institutionalized stigma and the image of the assimilated gay man through the Patrick. Originally from Colorado, he’s preppy, discretely camp, and, as suggested above, makes bad decisions when he’s drinking (an image that will be relatable to some, I’m sure). He’s also white and from a comfortable economic background, and desperately tries to break out of the cookie cutter image he gives off, that of being a “Midwestern square.” He still struggles with it though, as seen in episode 5: “Looking for the Future.”

Over breakfast at a diner with his flingto-be-boyfriend Richie, Patrick babbles about his fear of HIV: “I just—I’m paranoid! I sneeze and I think I’ve got HIV. I get tested all the time even though I’m incredibly safe.” He’s awkward; he’s speaking as he eats: HIV frightens him. A few seconds later, Richie informs him: “My last boyfriend was...positive.” Richie hesitates.

Patrick gulps. Stigma and melodrama, served on toast. They stop referring to the disease by its name; they can only reconcile their differences through veiled language.

Richie explains, “I loved him, so what ya gonna do. You just deal.” Patrick acquiesces: “Right.” Not really, though. His discomfort is still obvious.

The conversation goes nowhere; they move on. The public location walls in Patrick’s inner conflict, which he keeps to himself so as not to upset his partner: he literally eats his feelings.

Had this conversation been treated differently, I don’t think it would have worked. Imagine them in bed, physical intimacy at the crux of the moment, having an extended deep conversation exploring Patrick’s reluctance. It would have led to either Patrick’s conversion (glorifying the

white boy for his supreme benevolence in a really toxic way, which would detract from the show’s credibility), or the end of the relationship in some feud that would have eventually led to the same change of heart. By allowing silence, Patrick becomes flawed for his uncertainty.

The conflict he’s experiencing becomes more nuanced. Time shows that he gets over his fear at least somewhat, and by avoiding the heroic moment of realization we can attach more aspects of his character than they could fit in one scene to this conversion (his affection for Richie, desire to break away from his background, growing understanding of alternate lifestyles to his own, etc.). So really, by showing us what was literally a countertop scene of menagerie, we’re experiencing Patrick’s fears as he exits his comfort zone all the more vividly.

The show doesn’t need to be loud to have an explicitly queer agenda.

In this way, one can say that “Looking” does care about Lowder’s “ongoing health crisis:” it just focuses on the ways that an individual relates to the issue as opposed to the polemic as a whole.

In spite of all this, it is worth noting that many other criticisms of the show reprimand it for its lack of diversity. For a show set in San Francisco, there is a worrying underrepresentation of Asian-Americans (one character in the whole series, which is ludicrous given the size of the community), and there’s only one regular female cast member to pepper the sea of gay men.

Unfortunately, this is only too valid.

Were I to justify the creators, I would argue that their aim is specifically to unravel the layers that make up the identity and historical baggage of these very specific (usually white) gay men, and have no pretense of representing San Francisco as a whole. I don’t believe my own argument though, and would latch onto this as my main letdown in the show.

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onetheless, to me the show fulfills its promise. Its premise is the gaze, and throughout the series we stare in detail at the web of images that creates the main characters. We look beyond their present into the past of their world, around the characters to see their environment interact with them, into their psyches to try and grasp the multiple layers of fear, desire, and uncertainty. Boring though it may be to some, I will celebrate a mundane that doesn’t seek to assimilate, but rather questions these narratives by forbidding us from forgetting, erasing, and ignoring our past.

There are multitudes of silences. u

MOVIES Like it’s always right now

REVIEW

‘Boyhood’ tells an incomplete, messy, and real story

Ellar Coltrane portrays “Boyhood” protagonist Mason as he grows up. The movie was filmed over 11 years.

by Olivia Ortiz

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ake a moment and reflect on your life between the ages of six and 18. Think of the decisions the adults in your life made—perhaps a divorce and remarriage, creating a career for themselves, a move to another town—that affected you.

Think of the equally impactful but smaller moments: a camping trip, bowling, a conversation at a restaurant. Perhaps there’s a mention of your first serious relationship or graduating high school. As you are well Photo courtesy of Collider.com

aware, your life has probably never been a neatly scripted, camera-ready affair. It’s messy.

This is precisely what “Boyhood” aims for. Despite taking the better part of the afternoon (two hours and 45 minutes) to watch, seeing the film in theatres was, for me, well worth it. Writer and director Richard Linklater manages to create a sense of involvement in the lives of the Evans family: Olivia (Patricia Arquette), Mason, Sr. (Ethan Hawke), their daughter Samantha (Lorelei Linklater), and, most importantly, Mason (Ellar Coltraine)

Boyhood Dir: Richard Linklater with Ellar Coltrane, Patricia Arquette, Lorelai Linklater, and Ethan Hawke

himself. Realistic characters fill scenes from start to finish, artfully delivered by the actors and actresses.

One of the repeated talking points of “Boyhood” is that a single actor plays each character for the entire film. Each year of life is a handful of scenes comprising one or two storylines. Receiving a glimpse of SWARTHMORE REVIEW

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each age, awkward haircuts and all, allows each character to grow before your eyes.

Meanwhile—if you’re near enough my age—you relive pieces of your own childhood, through “Dragon Ball Z” references, “Harry Potter” premieres, well-placed pop songs, and nostalgia-inducing costuming. In some ways, I enjoyed the chance to revisit memories via the big screen as much as I did the actual plot, and the jumps from year to year of Mason’s life accommodated my reminiscing well. The lack of continuity between segments—we

Toward the end of the film especially, I found it harder to stomach the expected next momentous moment—as a college student, I know one ending of the high school story very well. It was comforting, but also distancing. may leave Mason in one town to return to him in another without skipping a beat—does not come off as disjointed, but rather suggests that each scene should be weighed equally in importance as pieces of Mason’s (and Olivia’s and Samantha’s and Mason, Sr.’s) life.

So many scenes are of new beginnings— new cities, new schools, new friends, new family—but a recurring theme in “Boyhood” is the idea (and, occasionally, the desire) to leave. Mason Evans’s boyhood, it seems, is full of closing doors. Within minutes of the film starting, his mother, Olivia, packs her two children and a handful of their belongings into her car, and Mason watches his friend wave goodbye as 30

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they drive away. Olivia’s repeatedly changing home and relationship status play important roles in Mason’s childhood. Despite naming the film to focus on Mason, Olivia’s integral and deep role provides the strong female character that “Boyhood” so desperately needs. Rather than framing her relationship decisions as mistakes, “Boyhood” seems to focus on the effects of the decisions—continuing her education, creating a safer environment for her children, building a more stable life—pleasantly giving a more feminist narrative than I had expected. With each ending, the film gives a very clear beginning, even if it’s just the start of a new day.

By compressing life into a series of important conversations and events with few of the dull moments—your tedious Spanish teacher or the long drive to your father’s house from the other side of the state—it normalizes the “new,” making every day in “Boyhood” exciting. Toward the end of the film especially, I found it harder to stomach the expected next momentous moment—as a college student, I know one ending of the high school story very well. I happen to be living it, or, at least, a version of it. It was comforting to see someone else go through similar motions, but also distancing: by the end of the film, I knew Mason as a distinct person who does not see the world as I do. I could never imagine leaving for my first year of college in quite the same way he does: alone with about three boxes. I’m still surprised by how Mason orchestrates his own, self-directed ending of home-life—but I am sure Mason wouldn’t be able to stomach my way, either. Ultimately, “Boyhood” ’s coming-of-age story is conflicting: as my peer, Mason comes so very close to telling my own story and misses the mark entirely, being relatable and foreign in every scene.

Even when Mason’s a fresh and young age five, you watch, waiting for the next big life event, never quite sure if what you expect to happen will indeed happen, because the Evanses are not a TV-movie-perfect kind of normal. They are, however, the next-door neighbor/coworker/ family friend normal—the type that comes with a mini-van and middle-age, with new apartments and empty nests—and this type of normal leaves no room for perfectly arched story lines with perfectly shaped characters, but gives free reign to incomplete story lines and loose plot threads.

“Boyhood” tells us that life is messy and, oddly, keeps going, moment after moment after moment. Perhaps Mason says it best: “It’s like it’s always right now.” u

Samson

by Sara Blazevic

In April I pry myself from bed early in the morning, a moth heavy with dew.

Maybe it was the dream of the dead goldfish, remnant of my eighth grade science fair project, or the damp socks crumpled beside me on the bed; maybe the stink bug on the windowsill flipping itself over and over, bashing its body on the eggnog paint chips, that untethered something.

I remember I tried, I did — took tiny me catching fish in a bucket in the river Dobra, took the sweet stink of our neighbors’ pigs, took the new love so full—bodied I couldn’t pin its parts to a poem — took all the good things I could muster to thread your arms, Samson, and tie you to the ground to try and still you for a long time.

Still, your swimmer’s body snapped them apart in the April chill.

Still, you tore the lion open, scooped honey from its carcass, and fed it to me — fat like dew — with both hands.

MUSIC Taylor Swift’s art of anti-appropriation Shaking off every single identity Taylor Swift has ever assumed, ever

by Caroline Creasey

F

irst a blue-eyed, blonde-haired generic country star prototype with an acoustic guitar and exaggerated twang; then Hollywood’s now-infamous social climbing serial dater who craftily managed to maintain an innocent America’s sweetheart façade; and then an affectedly hip, Lena Dunham-worshipping twenty-something, a phase commemo-

Swift’s calculated attitude toward twerking mocks the naïve and offhand appropriation of the dance by popular artists like Miley Cyrus and Iggy Azalea. rated with a music video/glorified Urban Outfitters ad for her millennial anthem “22” (the word “hipster”—check, quirky frames—check, chic hats—check, Jessica Szohr cameo—check, mandatory flower crown cameo—check); but who is Taylor Swift, really?

Ever since the release of her first studio album in 2006, the country turned country-pop turned pop star has done whatever it takes to get to the top, cycling through various contrived personas while churning out increasingly poppy albums with increasingly premeditated lyrical punches. Sugarcoating passive-aggressive, not-so-subtle references to her

famous ex-boyfriends between layers of sappy yet relatable accounts of puppy love, Swift executes a brilliant power play—despite enduring heartbreak over and over (and over) at the hands of notorious bad boys like John Mayer and Joe Jonas, she managed to preserve her all-American, girl-next-door charm.

But, as Taylor Swift would say (with the help of Ed Sheeran), “Everything Has Changed.” Never again will she go “Back to December,” and never again will she release an album filed under “Country” on iTunes. As Taylor barrels forward to October toward the release of what she calls her “first documented, official pop album,” she shakes off an array of identities in her wake, making way for what may finally be the real, honest version of Taylor Swift.

“Shake It Off,” the lead single from Swift’s newest album, is currently the single lead her fans have regarding the pop star’s newest phase. Basically, Taylor is turning over a new leaf – in her first honest-to-goodness real life pop song, she comes clean about rumors she previously skirted around and vows to “shake it off,” acknowledging the “haters” and “fakers” that dominate the music industry and resolving to pay them no mind, do what she wants, be the best Taylor Swift she can possibly be, etc. etc.

The music video for the song depicts Swift rapidly transitioning between a series of different artistic and cultural personas in reference to her manifold past, but rather than gracefully and effortlessly switching from ribbon dancing to tutting, Taylor chooses to portray herself as a foreigner in each situation, assuming the role of an outsider who either can’t conform or blatantly refuses to adapt to the diverse range of casts she finds herself surrounded by. Of course, this speaks directly to her biggest fans, all the confused and insecure teens and tweens who have no idea what they’re doing and can easily relate to Taylor Swift having no idea what she’s doing amidst all the nimble balleri-

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nas and fluid modern dancers who do.

But Swift’s newest video isn’t solely a vicarious confidence boost for her fanbase—Taylor is taking advantage of the changing environment of pop music to carve out a distinct notch for herself.

Miley Cyrus possesses the same innocent country star beginnings that spurred Taylor’s fame, but in spite of a shared starting point, the two singers’ career trajectories have little in common. After Cyrus enthusiastically adopted twerking as her provocative movement of choice, she was criticized for her offensive appropriation of the dance, particularly dealing with her use of black women as “props” in her “We Can’t Stop” video. Cyrus and twerking have become inseparably linked, and Swift’s inclusion of the dance in “Shake It Off ” certainly appears to be an intentional reaction to Miley’s image and an effort to distance herself from Cyrus.

If Miley Cyrus’s “We Can’t Stop” is famous for inappropriate cultural appropriation, Taylor Swift’s “Shake It Off ” adopts an anti-cultural appropriation stance. Earl Sweatshirt was quick to voice his disapproval of the video, tweeting “perpetuating black stereotypes to the same demographic of white girls who hide their prejudice by proclaiming their love of the culture…for instance, those of you who are afraid of black people but love that in 2014 it’s ok for you to be trill or twerk or say nigga.” But Earl Sweatshirt fails to notice that Swift looks completely clueless while crawling through a line of twerking dancers, which makes sense because what genuine connection could Taylor Swift possibly have to bounce music and Dirty South hip-hop?

Twerking is a foreign concept to Swift and to the “demographic of white girls” Earl criticizes. Swift’s calculated attitude toward twerking mocks the naïve and offhand appropriation of the dance by popular artists like Miley Cyrus and Iggy Azalea, though Swift’s subtlety ultimately obscures the message. But twerking alone isn’t the focal point of “Shake It Off ”; by SWARTHMORE REVIEW

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Taylor Swift cycles rapidly through artistic and cultural personas in the video for her latest single, “Shake It Off.”

honing in on assumed racist undertones, critics miss a pretty important theme of the video that deals with Taylor basically reinventing her entire image. Swift not only separates herself from understandably unfamiliar dances like twerking, but distances herself from situations in which no one would be surprised to find a pretty blonde girl from Wyomissing, Penn32

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sylvania—cheerleading and ballet, for example. Yes, it’s a stereotype, but Taylor Swift’s anti-appropriation knows no bounds and she disowns labels left and right regardless of whether they seem to apply to her or not. She no longer needs to jump through hoops to further her career and she’s over portraying herself as anything other than what she really

is—simply a talented singer who, after years of trying out different personalities, eventually found her niche in catchy, goofy pop songs. Haters gonna hate and fakers gonna fake but Taylor Swift is finally an honest pop star who’s just into being herself, and she’s about to embark on her most authentic Taylor Swift phase to date. u Photos courtesy of Big Machine Records

Not another suburban Eminem knockoff Linguistic art, pure lyricisim, and unusual, complex samples make Logic a must-hear

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Logic is the stage name of Maryland-born rapper Robert Bryson Hall III.

by Tyler Elliot

H

e sometimes goes by the name “Young Sinatra,” but you would be mistaken in assuming that the musician Logic traffics in the lounge-style jazz music of the late, great Frank. That is not to say that the two are so fundamentally different. Logic, the stage name of Maryland native Sir Robert Bryson Hall III, is a rapper, but one heavily influenced

by Sinatra: his free-flowing vocal style, presentation, and self-described outlook on life pay homage to the black-and-white films where he first discovered Sinatra in his childhood. Even Logic’s “crew” is affectionately referred to as his Rattpack,

Photo courtesy of Spoiledbroke.blogspot.com

an acronym that stands for “Real All the Time” and that makes an obvious nod to Sinatra’s own Rat pack. But Logic goes well beyond his Sinatra-inspired persona, and while chances are you haven’t heard of him yet, now is the time to brush up on your knowledge. Be on the lookout for this upcoming star.

Logic was first introduced to me by a friend who had set up a small recording studio in his room in the basement of Danawell. My friend was always interested in new music and for the most part he had a good ear for it, so I was admittedly excited when he texted me saying that he had stumbled upon a rapper who was “different, in the good way” and that I had to check him out. When I finally

arrived, he pulled up a picture on his computer monitor of the man formerly known as “Psychological” (the name was shortened to Logic after his first mixtape). The grand reveal. I couldn’t help but to chuckle. Rocking a goofy smile and gold chains was an awkward looking blue-eyed white kid. Another Eminem knockoff from the suburbs, I thought.

The first song I listened to (Logic’s “All I Do,” which has seven million hits on YouTube) didn’t do anything but confirm my assumptions. The song was about getting money, about being the best, about riding in nice cars. Typical rapper bullshit. It was like Mac Miller all over again, and that’s not to say Mac Miller is a terrible musician. He, like many other,s SWARTHMORE REVIEW

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certainly fits in a niche group with its own merits—fun-loving, goofy “pop-rap.”

The beats were simple and catchy. The lyrics were forgettable. It worked for what it was, but I certainly would not have pinned the man as “different.”

I looked skeptically across the room at my friend who now wore a sheepish smile across his face. “That’s his most popular song right now,” he said as he fiddled with his keyboard and began to pull up other songs on the screen, “but you have to hear his other stuff.” For the next two hours we sat in his room listening to Logic’s second mixtape (“Young Sinatra”), hypnotized. We barely spoke. We just sat in a surreal silence, and as much as I hated to admit it, I was hooked. The other stuff was nothing like “All I Do.” It was, I begrudgingly write, “different.” After that night I had to learn everything I could about this twentysomething-year-old up-and-comer.

I

nspired by the soundtrack of Quentin Tarantino’s “Kill Bill Vol. I,” which was scored by the Wu-Tang Clan’s RZA, Logic released his first official mixtape in December of 2010. It caught the attention of Chris Zarou, who signed Logic to Visionary Music Group. Since then he has amassed quite the internet following and gotten some attention from major media outlets. XXL Magazine named Logic to its Top 10 Freshmen list in 2013, a distinction shared by such rappers as J. Cole, Kendrick Lamar, and Schoolboy Q. In April of the same year he signed with Def Jam Recordings, joining Frank Ocean, Kanye West, and Iggy Azalea. It is hard to imagine that superstardom is not in this man’s future.

Logic’s childhood wasn’t easy. He was born in Gaithersburg, Maryland, a suburb about 40 minutes outside of Washington, D.C., but he never lived the peaceful suburban life I imagined that night in Danawell. Born to an African American father and Caucasian mother, Logic grew up surrounded by drug addiction, alcoholism, poverty, violence, and failure. As he put it in an interview with Complex, a magazine, “Growing up there were guns in the house, my brothers were out selling crack. I grew up on Section 8 housing, food stamps, welfare, and dealing with social services.” He barely knew his father and dropped out of school in tenth grade. At 17, he moved away from his mother to pursue music.

He hasn’t really looked back since.

This story isn’t so unique, among

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rappers and in the broader culture. Persevering through hardships is, after all, a theme of the classic American Dream story. And so the story isn’t really what makes Logic so special; it’s how he tells it.

Indeed, Logic’s pure lyricism is incomparable. Its uncanny balance of clever hooks and word combinations could only be created by a true genius. Poetry.

The kind of stuff you rewind again and again before you can even begin to fully appreciate it. I mean, I don’t want to get gushy, but sometimes you just can’t help it. Yes, Logic raps about money, cars, and jewelry, but he also tackles some pretty serious issues, including his father’s drug

There are sounds you may not be familiar with in a rap album, and sounds you may not be familiar with in general, but they all go undeniably well with the artist’s sound. use, his getting kicked out of school, and his mother being stabbed (see “Dead Presidents III”). Things people might not be so comfortable hearing about, but that have been influential in his life nonetheless. Things that matter. As Logic put it in a 2012 interview with AllHipHop.com, “There’s stuff on there for the motherf*ckers [sic] that don’t pay attention to lyrics and just want to have fun, but every line is constructed with such depth that the real lyricists and nitpickers have something to listen to and analyze as well. They can never question my love for Hip-Hop if you will.” Don’t believe the man himself? Even the likes of Lupe Fiasco are starting to take notice: Lupe recently compared Logic to King Los and Cassidy, asserting that the three were even better than Kendrick Lamar.

If linguistic art isn’t really your thing, Logic is also worth a listen for his beats.

This might not ring true for all, but I have a certain sweet tooth for unusual or complex samples—particularly old-school sounds (see “The Spotlight,” which uses Justice’s “D.A.N.C.E.,” or “Inception,” which samples Hans Zimmer), and Logic is all about them. These melodies are not simple by any definition of the word, and many of them Logic himself engineered in the studio. There is a lot of sampled material, everything from Biggie Smalls to “Family Guy.” There are a lot of female vocals and there is a lot of—a LOT of— piano. The variety of sounds touches on a myriad of interests. There are sounds you may not be familiar with in a rap album, and sounds you may not be familiar with in general, but they all go undeniably well with the artist’s sound and will have you eager for more.

And finally, if the lyricism and melody can’t convince you, there’s the way Logic shines in his unmatched work ethic. The man prides himself in the time and effort he puts into writing his music—something refreshing to hear and something that should earn him some respect.

This seemingly “wise-beyond-his-years outlook” separates him from the pack.

In his interview with XXL, Logic lists things like hard work, dedication, realism and “wanting success more than my next breath” as things that made him who he is today. He then concludes: “This [being featured in XXL magazine] is going to set me up, this is an honor and I’m not going to take it for granted.”

I haven’t stopped listening to Logic since that sophomore year afternoon in Dana. During that time Logic has released a total of four free mixtapes (see datpiff.com for the downloads), including his most recent “Young Sinatra: Welcome to Forever.” But these are still only the beginning. It was revealed at the end of 2013 that No I.D. (perhaps best known for producing Chicago-based rapper Common) would be producing his debut album, to be titled “Under Pressure.” The album has certainly seen a few setbacks in production, as evidenced by its delayed release date, but fans have been able to hear a sample from it—the song “Driving Ms. Daisy” which leaked in August of 2014 and features Childish Gambino. The album itself is now set to be released on October 21, but don’t wait until then to give this freshman a listen. Of course, I’m no expert on music. I have my own tastes and so do you. But I like to believe I have a certain eye for talent and this is talent I’d be willing to bet on. u

EDITORS’ PICKS

Brief recommendations of books, music, movies, and more from our editors as the book is filled with stunning and eye-opening stories of human survival across cultures and centuries, stories which sound like they’re from another world.

The main text of the book is an explanation of the skills and methods required for you, too, to be able to survive in the wild using only nature for navigation. The sad fact of the book is realizing you will never be able to learn most of the skills, and will never even meet anyone who has. The keenness of sense required for these skills is amazing, and now that it is no longer required for survival, even in the most remote corners of the globe, it seems it may become a lost art. But Gatty’s book is not just a cultural artifact. In describing natural navigation, he shows that the more you observe nature, the more you learn from it. Read this book, and allow Gatty to show you a new way of looking at the world.

-Philip Queen, Editor in Chief Jack Black as an assistant funeral home director in Richard Linklater’s “Bernie”

Album: ‘Life in a Beautiful Light ,’

by Amy Macdonald Usually, I’m the last person you want to take music recommendations from—I share an iTunes library with my grandfather and I’m useless on road trips—but I’m breaking that silence to recommend Scottish singer-songwriter Amy Macdonald. Scotland’s been in the news lately with their failed independence referendum, and I feel obliged to report that it’s not all blaring bagpipes (although I listen to those, too– once you acquire the taste, they roll off the ears like smooth jazz, I promise).

“Life in a Beautiful Light” is Macdonald’s most recent album, from 2012, and it’s quite versatile. If you’re bummed about the referendum results, listen to the rousing anthem “Pride,” which also features in a great Scottish marriage equality video online. “Left that Body Long Ago” paints a haunting picture of Alzheimer’s that stops me in my tracks every time. The album is political and personal: she sings about being a singer, about being Scottish, about being human. But she doesn’t hit you over the head with theme, and that’s what I love. She’s got a booming Glaswegian contralto, and the soft rock style is easy to listen to in any context. (Her music makes Photo courtesy of Millenium Entertainment-

up the bulk of both my Crum-running and novel-writing playlists.) If you like “Life in a Beautiful Light,” check out her older albums, too—I especially recommend the tracks “Poison Prince” and “Mr. Rock & Roll.”

-Patrick Ross, Fiction Editor Book: ‘Finding Your Way Without Map or Compass’ by Harold Gatty Navigation today is a special combination of low Earth orbit satellites and general relativity, a far cry from maps and compasses, so navigation with neither GPS nor maps and compasses seems especially difficult, if not obsolete. But if natural navigation is obsolete (at least until your batteries die), then it is only because there are no longer men and women like Harold Gatty around. His most famous exploit was joining Wiley Post on his nine day, record-setting circumnavigation of the earth, but he also flew other record-setting flights, invented navigational instruments, and once, when deserted on a pacific island, survived for a week primarily off of the vomit of blue-footed boobies, a skill which he teaches in the book. Gatty does not harp on his own successes, however,

Movie: ‘Bernie’ dir. Richard Linklater Based on a true story, the short and simple “Bernie” brings the rural town of Carthage to life and takes a quietly forceful look at what it means to commit a crime in a small community. The titular Bernie (Jack Black) is an assistant funeral home director and easily the most popular man in Carthage: he always goes above and beyond to take care of the town and its residents, acting in local theater, singing touchingly at funerals, and giving away money and gifts to those in need. He even manages to befriend the town’s meanest resident, wealthy old widow Marjorie (Shirley MacLaine), who has no friends and hasn’t spoken to her family in years.

Bernie, selfless as he is, soon takes on caring for Marjorie. Everything seems ordinary enough—until Bernie shoots Marjorie four times in the back with a shotgun she purchased to get armadillos off her lawn. But even for months afterward the townspeople don’t suspect a thing.

This premise demands a certain amount of dark humor, and the filmmakers pull it off subtly: there are jokes throughout, and two death-related early scenes set a dark and knowing tone. But soon after the tone changes considerably as the movie turns SWARTHMORE REVIEW

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its attention to ordinary town life. It lets us watch Bernie’s story unfold as it really did for the people of Carthage. Much time is spent on talking-head-style interviews with the townspeople—some played by actors and others actual Carthage residents. Their gossip and their quirks and mannerisms give the movie a warm and communal feeling, despite the subject matter. The screenplay is by Skip Hollandsworth, writer of a Texas Monthly report on which the movie is based, and Richard Linklater, who also directed. Linklater is currently better known for his latest movie, “Boyhood,” but in this writer’s opinion, “Bernie” is much better.

-Izzy Kornblatt, Editor in Chief Book: ‘Let Us Now Praise Famous Men,’ by James Agee In 1936 James Agee and photographer Walker Evans were sent by Fortune magazine to report on the conditions of sharecroppers in the American South. For eight weeks, they lived with and documented three families existing along the spectrum of rural poverty in Alabama. While this sounds like a conventional piece of anthropology-flavored investigative journalism, the result is anything but. Agee begins with a thoroughly-modern and castigating monologue about the futility of his project which ends in his denouncing the castrating effect of branding anything “art”: “the deadliest blow the human soul can strike is to do fury honor.” It only gets less orthodox from there.

Agee refers to Evans and himself as “spies,” and a taut vein of privileged anxiety runs through the text. Rather than take a critical distance from his subjects, Agee takes a critical distance from critical distance: as he zooms out and then in on his subjects, the three families assume proportions at once mythical and anomalous.

Agee eschews the standard Sarah-Mclachlan-and-sick-puppies journalistic practice of pairing the sucker-punch image with an indicting quote. What he’s concerned with is the irreducible singularity of his fellow man, and what he gives us are exhaustive catalogues: of clothing, of daily routines, of rural architecture, of the curricula of rural schools, of animals and children.

Interrupting these mesmerizingly pedantic sections are chapters titled “On the Porch,” where Agee engages in Whitman-esque flights of verbal fancy framed as nighttime meditations.

The book’s climactic section is a physi36

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Swimmers flock to Devil’s Pool in Philadelphia’s Fairmount Park

cally and mentally exhausting account of cotton-picking season which is perhaps some of the most affecting prose ever written. Agee was desperate it not be branded art, and he refused to observe the disciplinary asceticism of the anthropologist. It is so much the better for both decisions.

-Philip Harris, Books Editor Destination: Devil’s Pool, Fairmount Park, Philadelphia From 30th Street Station, bike down 31st to Chestnut. Turn left across the bridge. Where the bridge ends, dismount (or don’t) and walk (or sail) down the long ramp to the Schuylkill River Path. Enter the fray - northbound. It’s pretty flat until the art museum, where the first real hill may slow you down considerably right as you are rolling past the skatepark and wishing for poise. When you get to the roundabout in the PMA parking lot, stay left to keep on the path. Boathouse Row is crowded with weddings and strollers and crew teams slicing the river’s blue rind, but

once you have maneuvered safely through, the skyline receding behind you, the city morphs from a place people go to one where they live.

The path continues beneath countless overpasses and sometimes the Zoo Balloon until a bold set of arrows points you to the Wissahickon Creek Trail. Race the creek to Forbidden Drive and hang a left.

The road is gravel until it’s not and you get off your bike and tie it to a makeshift guardrail by the parking lot. You cross the last bridge and walk around the decoy fence blocking the trail to the uninitiated.

Take the downsloping path to your right.

Don’t trip.

Finally, you emerge onto a rocky outcropping. You scramble up, derobe, and jump off. Depending on the weather and the time of day, there may be a million other people there. The water is clear and cold enough to allow for the fantasy of being in the mountains, but the people won’t let you forget where you are. “Came thirty minutes out and it’s cold as shit...the fuck is this jawn.” It’s Philadelphia, and it deserves your love. u Photo courtesy of Philadelphiaspeaks.com

ENDNOTES

| by Steven Wang

Why I love to watch professional boxing I have never been in a fight—and by that I mean I have never participated in a full-blown testosterone-fueled street affair involving minimal upper body clothing and shaky phone camera footage that will probably later be uploaded to Youtube.

The closest was when a seven-year-old me got into a scuffle with an older kid and his brother for kicking my basketball over a fence. By the time some responsible adult decided the roughhousing had gotten too rough, my ass had been thoroughly kicked, though I’m pretty sure I got a few scratches in. Clearly, being Kimbo Slice and acquiring internet bad-assery points did not lie in my foreseeable future.

I would like to think that my combat skills have leveled up significantly since those days of my youth. I am average height and have the muscle definition of Michael Cera but if I flex enough in front of the bathroom mirror sometimes my six pack will make a guest appearance. I also have pretty good cardio stamina so I can run or even swim away quickly if need be.

Not to mention, I have been playing a lot of “Mortal Kombat” lately, which probably translates into some degree of real world fighting prowess.

Self-deprecating and nerd-pride jokes aside, I really have no interest in confrontation or fighting people. However, with that said, I do really enjoy watching other people beat the shit out of each other in the gentlemanly sport of boxing. While it’s true that some may find this odd for someone so apathetic toward engaging in physical altercations himself, I love professional boxing. I think that some of it has to do with the awe I feel watching

top athletes perform feats I myself cannot accomplish. People watch professional athletes catch balls, shoot baskets, and run fast because the majority of us can’t catch balls as well, shoot baskets as accurately, or run as fast as the professionals. People watch basketball because they can’t jump as high as LeBron James, while others watch swimming because their arms and legs are proportional to a normal human body as opposed to Michael Phelps’s fish-man appendages. I personally also follow ice hockey and occasionally glance at the cover of Muscle & Fitness magazine because I’m not as Canadian as Sidney Crosby nor can I afford enough human growth hormone to look like Brad Pitt in “Fight Club.”

Simply put, a part of me watches boxing for the physical expertise and skill in afflicting violence. But if it were just the violence I was seeking, I might just blow shit up in “Grand Theft Auto V” instead of spending so much of my time following boxing news, watching press conferences, participating in debates in online boxing forums, and paying for and watching the fights.

The comedian Andy Blitz once made an interesting comment about boxing in a stand-up routine: “I think violence is wonderful, but what I object to in boxing is the total lack of explanation as to what happened between these guys to cause

this fight to break out.” He touches upon an interesting point: for the casual observer, the allure of boxing rests in watching two guys whale on each other, but for others, like me, the draw of viewing a fight is to witness the conflict, personal struggle, the release of of some interpersonal tension between combatants, or even a bildungsroman-esque journey of the fighters. People fight each other for a reason. The Greeks invaded Troy because the Trojans went all “Mr.-Steal-Your-Girl” on them. The American Revolution started because the price for tea was too damn high. An Iraqi man threw a shoe at former President Bush for leading a neo-liberal, imperialistic hegemony controlled by corporate dollars and bent on spreading ‘Murican ideology for the benefit of capitalistic pigs back in the mainland—or maybe just because he saw a spider on the president’s forehead. And, apparently, I’ll scratch you if you kick my basketball over a fence. But in all seriousness, for me the great allure of boxing is not the skills of the fighter or how well he can take a punch, but the reason for why he fights, his personal story, and his background.

The two major boxing outlets on TV, Showtime and HBO, often use the backstories of fighters to generate buzz and sell tickets and pay-per-views. I understand it’s a marketing ploy but I sap it up because I know that no cable executive can make up the narrative of a fighter.

Take, for example, Cuban boxer Erislandy “The American Dream” Lara. “Boxing in Cuba, you’re not living a normal life,” he recounted in a recent interview before a fight. “We didn’t have a standard of living we deserved. It’s as if you are a soldier.”

Thus Lara decided he needed to leave Cuba. His first attempt at defecting failed as he and fellow Cuban boxer Guillermo Rigondeaux were apprehended by police when they left their team at the Pan-American Games in Brazil. Deported back to Cuba, placed under house arrest, and banned from ever setting foot into a boxing gym again, the pair resolved that escaping Cuba was now a necessity. “If I had stayed in Cuba I would have become like the other boxers there: disasters who stand around drunk on the street corners,” Lara said. So he and Rigondeaux embarked on their second try, this time SWARTHMORE REVIEW

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Illustration by Nyantee Asherman

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risking their lives as they attempted to cross over 300 miles of ocean by speedboat to reach Miami. “We got in at night.

25 people got on. It was 18 hours on the boat [and] there was bad weather too.

The ocean was rough and when the boat would go fast, the water would come into the boat on top of us. I knew it would be bad,” Lara remembered. After many hours and stormy seas, Lara finally arrived in Miami. From there, he would go on to establish a winning professional boxing record and earn a reputation as one of the most feared and avoided fighters in his weight division. But success in the United States did not come without a price. Defecting from Cuba meant he had to leave his family and children behind. Cuban law states that defectors are not permitted to return to the island for six years, and while Lara has just one year left, he hasn’t seen his family in over five years. He looks forward to the day he can return to his family but also hopes that someday he can bring them to the U.S. with the living he earns from boxing.

But his victories in the boxing ring didn’t bring all of the fortunes one might expect a successful athlete to enjoy. Being so skilled and feared, especially in the early stages of his career, Lara was labeled as a high-risk/low-reward opponent by many of his potential adversaries’ management, meaning that he posed a serious threat to other fighters but did not have a recognizable name amongst fans and thus would have difficulty selling fights. The opportunity to break into the limelight and participate in those big money fights constantly eluded Lara. Just a few months ago, however, Lara was presented with the chance of a life time: this generation’s Golden Boy of boxing, Saul Canelo Alvarez, the hard-hitting redhead who had won three world titles and set the all time pay-per-view record by the age of 23 had agreed to fight Lara.

The stage was set. Lara, the little-known fighter from Cuba, was set to fight the superstar. The narrative of such an event could have been taken straight out of a Hollywood movie. In Lara, one can almost see a real life Rocky Balboa—a fighter on the road to redemption for all those years of being ignored, for being homesick, for spending hours and hours in the gym, and for risking his life for the shot at a dream. When I watched that fight, I wanted that Rocky Balboa drama to unfold. I wanted enjoy that scene of Rocky getting beat within an inch of death by some jacked up Communist

While the narratives of movies are constructed by screenwriters, a boxer’s narrative is constructed by his fights in the ring. Professional boxers have the ups and downs of life magnified and reflected for all to witness. human machine of pain, dig deep within himself for some inhuman reservoir of will, knock that Commie robot out, and raise his hands in glorious victory as “Eye of the Tiger” plays in the background.

Real life, however, many times does not follow the plot of movies. After a tightly contested and highly controversial match, Alvarez, not Lara, was declared the winner by split decision. What should have been Lara’s dramatic victory, not just in the ring but also against overwhelming odds in his life, turned out to be a stinging defeat. Though he was able to fight in the biggest event of his career, such a public loss has undoubtedly lowered his stock in the eyes of many fans. Hardcore fans and experts may know of his stellar previous wins but to the majority of people, he is just some guy who lost in front of millions of viewers across the world.

While the narratives of movies are constructed by screenwriters, a boxer’s narrative is constructed by his fights in the ring. Such are the narratives of professional boxers who have the ups and downs of life magnified and reflected for all to witness. In a way, the candidness of boxing allows us to relate with the fighters we see in the ring. Everyone strives for success in his or her lives, whether that be to win a world championship, attend college, start a business, or finish an article that was supposed to be finished a long time ago. Everyone also experiences the euphoria of success, the pain of failure, and everything in between.

In boxing these pivotal moments in an

individual’s life are laid bare for all to see. The individual nature of the sport means that attention is hyperfocused on just the boxer. If he wins, people witness his joy. If he loses, people witness the consequences—for in boxing, every fight is crucial. As current lightweight world champion Terence Crawford once said, “If you lose, you go straight to the back of the bus.” Many fighters never get a second chance at a world title or big fight. Not to mention, fighters aren’t just risking their careers and livelihoods every time they box; they are also risking their lives and physical well-being in a brutal and often unforgiving sport.

People enjoy good stories, especially stories that they can relate to. Even if most people don’t punch others in the face for a living, we can empathize with the universal feelings shared by all humans: happiness, anger, excitement, surprise, fear, sorrow, satisfaction, etc. Narratives that most strongly draw upon these feelings and emotions are the ones that stand out. Classic tales such as “Othello,” “Huckleberry Finn,” “1984,” “Star Wars,” “Toy Story,” and many more are cherished because their narratives evoke strong emotions, both good and bad. Similarly, the sport of boxing spins its own narratives. A boxer’s story goes beyond just his bouts in the ring to his life outside, his background, and his reasons for fighting.

Not all boxing narratives have happy endings, but some do, such as that of Filipino legend Manny Pacquiao, who fought in unsanctioned street fights as a child for food and eventually became the only eight division world champion and a congressman in the Philippines. Ultimately, the boxing ring is just a stage where various components of a fighter’s narrative culminate in a dramatic and at times cathartic performance. u

Endnotes is the Review’s new sports feature. Each issue we’ll end the magazine with an essay about sports—Swarthmore sports, national teams, anything. Interested in contributing? See our submission information on page 2.

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