New from EYE -- Cover Layout by The Eye Columbia Spectator

�e magazine of the Columbia Spectator 16 April 2009 / vol. 6 issue 10

the eye

Eye on the Prize We sit down with SIG GISSLER, above, the administrator of the Pulitzer Prizes, and BILL GRUESKIN, the dean of academic aﬀairs at the J-school, to talk about journalism’s future.

in spain, seeking the right words \\\ kris saknussemm’s “psychoerotic noir fairytale” \\\ eco chic

Bill Grueskin, dean of academic aﬀairs at the J-school

Editor-in-Chief Thomas Rhiel Managing Editor, Features Melanie Jones Managing Editor, A & E Hillary Busis Deputy Editor, Features Raphael Pope-Sussman Senior Design Editor Meredith Perry Photo Editor Kristina Budelis Online Editors Ryan Bubinski Laura Torre Eyesites Editor Carla Vass Contributing Ideas Editor Jia Ahmad Interview Editor Zach Dyer Film Editor Peter Labuza Music Editor Rebecca Pattiz Books Editor Yin Yin Lu Food Editor Devin Briski Art Editor Hannah Yudkin �eater Editor Ruthie Fierberg Dance Editor Catherine Rice TV Editor Christine Jordan Style Editor Helen Werbe

EYE ON THE PRIZE Sig Gissler and Bill Grueskin talk Pulitzers and the future of journalism with �e Eye, pg. 07 interview by �omas Rhiel photos by Kristina Budelis

FEATURES \\\ EYESITES 03 Semana Santa Tess Rankin

Photo Associate Vitaly Druker

04 Public Health? Carla Vass

Production Associates Samantha Ainsley Alexander Ivey Talia Sinkinson Shaowei Wang

05 Lost in New York Olivia Tandon

Copy Editor Wesley Birdsall Spectator Editor-in-Chief Melissa Repko Spectator Managing Editor Elizabeth Simins Spectator Publisher Julia Feldberg

\\\ EYE TO EYE 06 �e D-List Zach Dyer

ARTS \\\ FILM 11 Old Director, New Tricks Cedric Cheung-Lau \\\ DANCE 12 Ballet and Books Ruthie Fierberg \\\ THEATER 13 �e Balancing Act Rosie DuPont

\\\ BOOKS 14 Once Upon a Crime Chris Morris-Lent \\\ STYLE 15 Earth Trends Are Easy Anna Cooperberg

LETTER FROM THE EDITOR It’s a nerve-racking time to be an aspiring journalist. �e New York Times reported Wednesday that newspaper ad revenues, already at near-Depression levels of paltriness, fell a staggering 30 percent for some papers in the first quarter of 2009. �e parent company of the Chicago Tribune filed for bankruptcy in December, the Seattle Post-Intelligencer closed shop weeks ago, and the New York Times, which owns the Boston Globe, is threatening to shutter that paper unless its unions can cough up $20 million. �e Los Angeles Times is so desperate for money that last week the paper ran an ad for a TV show disguised as a frontpage news story. Embarrassed employees of the paper started a petition in protest, but they’re among the lucky. Stable journalism jobs are vanishing, and yet here many of us are, lining up for one. At a journalism conference some Spectator editors and I attended recently, an editor from the Wall Street Journal tried his best to convince an audience of the soon-to-be-jobless that their career options were plentiful. No one can figure out how journalism can possibly be profitable, he

explained, but if we could figure it out, we’d have jobs! Another speaker at the conference, a former foreign correspondent for the Boston Globe, was trying to be just as optimistic when he compared the slow collapse of America’s major newspapers to the fall of the Roman Empire. “Study the dark ages,” he told a crowd of increasingly skeptical college journalists. “�ey were forced to do some serious innovation back then, and they did. Just look at that armor they came up with!” (I’m paraphrasing, but he did say something like this, and he wasn’t joking.) �is is what passes for hope. Sig Gissler, the administrator of the Pulitzer Prizes and the subject of one of two interviews in this week’s cover story, seems confident that quality journalism has weathered the economic storm. But his eyes brightened and his shoulders slackened when our interview was over, when we weren’t talking about journalism and its rocky future. “You know I do yoga,” he told our photographer as he posed for a shot. Boyishly flexing his arm, he flashed us his first smile of the afternoon. —�omas Rhiel

THE EYE ABROAD

EDITORS’ TEN

What We’re Into �is Week 1. �e Minnesota Twins: Final season at the Metrodome can only mean one thing for my hometown baseball team—World Series! -Peter Labuza, ﬁlm editor

BY TESS RANKIN

2. �e Lonely Island CD: From the boys at SNL. It’s hilarious! -Laura Torre, online editor

For Holy Week (Semana Santa, in Spanish) most of Spain headed south to enjoy the good weather and the week of spectacular street processions that begin on Palm Sunday. Since Granada was abandoned by people I knew and overrun by people I didn’t, I left the sun and festivities to go as far north as I could get. And though I didn’t walk the Camino de Santiago, I made my own, backward pilgrimage of sorts to Santiago de Compostela in Galicia— a land of rolling hills, bagpipes, seafood, and lots of rain. My solo adventure generated anxiety from my parents and a look of surprise from my friends. But it provided time to reflect, alone with my thoughts, a book, and, as it turned out, some newly made French and Galician friends. And during the slightly odd week, in which only my thoughts existed in English while the rest of the world carried on in Castilian and Galician, I came to some realizations about language. In my class on English-to-Spanish translation, there is a lot of talk about registers—formal, colloquial, professional, or vulgar. While it’s all well and good to choose the audience of a text and proceed accordingly, in reality I find my Spanish developing lopsidedly—in various directions and all at once. I volunteer Fridays at a school for children with special needs. Only two of the seven students in the class communicate verbally, so I spend an outsized amount of time hearing myself talk. Certain phrases echo in my head throughout the week: “We do not hit one another.” “Put the desk down.” “Very good!” I speak quickly and without hesitation: Children can sense weakness and are generally merciless upon discovering it. �ey respect their old teacher immensely, and being a newcomer is difficult. So I try to be self-assured and straightforward. �ere are moments, however, when I long to explain myself, to set things in the context of my own native tongue. And then there are the moments in my university class, when I find myself spinning in circles in seemingly endless debates on religion in Spain and individuality in the United States. At some point after the third or fourth Foucault reference, I want to make use of my freshly honed imperatives: “Stop it.” “Make a point.” Instead, I throw in something about fundamentalism or Obama and express my frustration with some dismissive eye movements. �e most comfortable register of language develops in the cracks around these more formal situations. When I discuss music preferences with one of the assistants at the school while we scroll YouTube

3. Notcot.org: �is site describes itself as a “studio bulletin board gone visual.” Creative types post inspirational links, and the result is an addictive and visually stunning hodgepodge of links. “Notcouture,” the fashion incarnation of the site, is pretty great, too. -Kristina Budelis, photo editor

videos for a student’s birthday party. When two Spanish students in my semiotics class explain that they couldn’t do the reading because they were on vacation. When a hamantaschen-baking experiment with my exchange partner becomes an all-night outing to celebrate her friend’s birthday. �ese are the times when I talk quickly, ask questions, make mistakes, scoﬀ, laugh, and rant. Probably Foucault comes up. Probably there are some polite imperatives (“Ooh, tell me”). And it all starts to come together. But as important as language is, it is in the moments apart from linguistics that I see my experience here forming around me. One of the students in the special needs class is autistic, and except while eating she sits apart from the class. She wanders around the room, tries to leave, or lies on a mat in the corner. Sometimes she looks out the window. Sometimes she tries to pull out your hair. Frequently she wails inconsolably. Talking to her and saying her name will calm her for a while, but generally music works far better than talking—a cycle of cheery children’s songs plays continuously in the background. One particularly diﬃcult day before Semana Santa, when the class was painting penitents on sticks and I was cleaning up after a can of water had been hurled across the room, the teacher sat with the girl and sang with her. She uttered the only words I have heard from her so far—a song about rain falling that was stuck in my head for days. As I walked through the perpetually rainy streets of Santiago, I hummed it under my breath, making Spanish onomatopoeia sounds for rain, and I was comforted. What I have been developing along with my various registers of Spanish is a life here, with all of its integrated, quirky, linguistically challenging parts. And having returned to Granada, where it is—of course—raining, I can say that by coming back to this odd accumulation of experiences, people, sounds, songs, and words, I’m starting to understand. Tess Rankin is a Columbia College junior studying abroad in Spain.

EYESITES

Semana Santa, celebrated backwards

4. Periwinkles: I have always been obsessed with these beautiful lavender-blue flowers, and I was more than pleasantly surprised (viz., I almost died from excitement) when I caught sight of their little five-petaled heads on various lawns all around campus! (Note: To the extent of my knowledge, “periwinkle” is the only word in the English language that is an animal, a plant, and a color. How cool is that?) -Yin Yin Lu, books editor 5. Matzah: You just have to get creative. Matzah and cream cheese. Matzah and jelly. Matzah and haroset. Matzah pizza. Personally, I’m a fan. -Ruthie Fierberg, theater editor 6. �e Jackson Five’s “Blame it on the Boogie”: Timeless tune. And since Michael Jackson decided that at the time of his (predicted soon) passing, Paul McCartney would get the rights back to all those Beatles songs, you no longer have to feel guilty listening to his dulcet tones. -Zach Dyer, interview editor 7. Drug stores on the Monday after Easter: Half-off cream-filled eggs! -Rebecca Pattiz, music editor 8. “Freaxx” by BrokeNCYDE: I never imagined screamo and techno together but BrokeNCYDE pulls it off surprisingly well. �e tween-style music video is a little lame and reminds me of Hot Topic stores but besides that, the song is actually kind of cool. -Helen Werbe, style editor 9. Exquisite Costume: �is vintage shop downtown is frequented by celebs and hipsters alike. I’m no hipster, but I love their interesting, reasonably priced clothing. -Carla Vass, Eyesites editor 10. Dave Matthews Band at Madison Square Garden: DMB kicked off their 2009 tour with an single release and concert on Tuesday. �ey played several great new songs from their upcoming album, and Gregg Allman joined him on stage to play “Melissa.”. -Meredith Perry, senior design editor

COMPILED BY CARLA VASS

IDEAS

EYESITES

Public Health? how pharmaceutical companies can make us less healthy TEXT AND PHOTO BY CARLA VASS A woman sits with a doctor in his office. He is explaining to her how she should take her medicine. He shows her a pillbox. “I’ve drawn a moon on one side, and a sun on the other. You take all of the pills on the sun side in the morning, and all of the pills on the moon side at night, understand?” He pauses as she nods. “Okay. Now let’s practice opening and closing the tops of the box, because sometimes the pills can pop out.” He hands her the pillbox, and she takes it in her hands to practice, holding it as if it were gold. �is medicine is gold. �is woman is living with AIDS in sub-Saharan Africa, and she is receiving donated anti-viral drugs. In 2004, the biggest killer in the world was not cancer or heart disease, the common culprits for death in the West; instead, the majority of the world’s population died from various upper respiratory infections, like pneumonia and bronchitis. �e next four deadliest illnesses were AIDS, diarrhea, tuberculosis and malaria. How can so many people be dying of a list of illnesses in which four out of the included five are almost completely eradicated in North America and Europe? Because they live in the poorest places in the world, places where necessary medical drugs are simply too expensive. On Friday night, in honor of National Public Health Week, the Barnard-Columbia Public Health Society held a screening of Health for Sale, a documentary by Michele Mellara and Alessandro Rossi. �e film explores the political and economic problems caused by big pharmaceutical companies, particularly the process of drug-patenting. “�ese large pharmaceutical companies should be taking social action against deadly diseases and be real contributors to solving the world’s largest health problems,” says Amy Huang, the public relations chair of the student-run CPHS. All of the big pharmaceutical companies are based in Geneva, Switzerland, as is the World Trade Organization, which oversees pharmaceutical patenting laws. According to the WTO, a patent can be granted if a product represents a significant innovation, thereby guaranteeing it as intellectual property. For a certain period of time, no other company can produce the same product. On April 15, 1994, the WTO initiated the Trade Related Aspects of International Property Rights agreement, known as TRIPS. �e TRIPS agreement allows the WTO to regulate trade of patented products. When patents are applied to pharmaceutical drugs, this ensures that rival companies cannot sell generic alternatives to the drugs, which are much cheaper. Patents can be applied to anything, even genetically modified organisms like plants and animals,

but the biggest problem for the developing world is caused when patents are applied to pharmaceutical drugs. �e issue, critics argue, is that because they ensure that no other company can sell the drug, they create a virtual monopoly. During the allotted period of time, the company that holds the patent can sell the drug for as much money as they want without any fear of competition. �is means that desperately needed medicines, such as those for AIDS and malaria, are not available to most of the developing world because they are too expensive. Articles 6 and 30 of the TRIPS agreement stipulate that it’s possible to import drugs from the cheapest source, without asking for patent permission, if it’s in the best economic interest of the country. Furthermore, if the country is experiencing a health emergency, they can also ask for patent rights to be suspended. However, various humanitarian organizations argue that the qualiﬁcations and steps for enacting these exceptions are complicated and impractical. In South Africa, one case in particular highlights the tension between poorer governments and pharmaceutical companies. �e country enacted a law that allowed them to import cheap, generic AIDS drugs. In 2001, 40 of the world’s largest pharmaceutical companies sued the South African government, but lost. In the ruling, called the Doha declaration, the courts found that South Africa was within their rights to import generic AIDS drugs, and that they were not in violation of patenting laws. Even the United States has run into problems with TRIPS. During the period of anthrax scares in 2001, the United States demanded that Bayer, the patent holder of an antidote to anthrax called Cipro, supply the drug at less than the $5 per pill cost. When the German company refused, the United

States threatened to ignore TRIPS and use a generic form of the drug. Bayer ended up agreeing to supply Cipro at 95 cents per pill. Despite the anthrax scare, however, in the end there were only 3 deaths in the US, and two-dozen cases of infection. An article in the New York Times criticized these events as being another form of American exceptionalism. Critics also maintain that it is not true that patents act as an incentive for investment by guaranteeing protection of property rights. “�e point of a global economy is that people in developing countries can also participate,” says Dr. Y.K. Hamied, Chairman of Cipra Ltd, a company based in India that counts itself as one of the world’s biggest producers of generic drugs. “I have never been against patents...I am against monopolies. In India, with the number of AIDS sufferers at 10 million, and likely to go to 35 million by 2015, we simply cannot afford a monopoly.” Dr. Hamied argues that large companies take advantage of the convoluted patenting process. “How many patents should a drug have? �ree? ... But If I have a good product, how do I extend its lifespan? And so, some of these drugs have 240 patents on them.” Dr. Hamied charges these companies with “neglecting the poor man on the street in India. �ey are virtually committing selective genocide.” In the United States, health care costs increased 7 percent over the last year, while GNP only increased by 2 percent. It’s questionable how long even wealthy countries such as the United States will be able to afford basic pharmeceuticals, much less those in the third world. “It is our mission to raise awareness for public health issues by holding events like these,” says Huang.“Soon, we are all going to be affected by this.” a

THE VIEW FROM HERE / FICTION

BY OLIVIA TANDON ILLUSTRATION BY REBEKAH KIM

I take the subway because I like to watch the people: the kids weaving in and out between the center poles, new mothers keeping watchful eyes over their infants, businessmen reading the paper on their way to work. �e incessant chatter clears my mind and relaxes my muscles. Most college kids would cab it this early in the morning, but I need this time to myself. �e calm before the storm. �e only reason I am up at all is because my sister has never been to New York before and I didn’t want her getting on the 2 and ending up God knows where. �e city has a different life at 7 am, filled with busy, working people that I am rarely aware of. I close my eyes and let the subway’s peculiar music hum around me. In certain stations, the screeching as the brakes release rises in the opening notes of “Somewhere,” from West Side Story. In others there is just one clear, high note. My sister and I are not close. �e last time I saw her, over winter break, she was monopolizing everybody’s time and attention with her college applications. Now she knows she is going to Princeton, and I know I won’t hear the end of it. �ank God for New York City, the one thing I can still hold over her head. Not that I don’t love Columbia. It just that, when say you go to Princeton, people don’t ask if you mean the country. And anyway, I’m in that junior slump where all my friends are getting ready to graduate and I just wish I could get out of this school with them. How funny would it be if I didn’t show up to get her? I rarely get off campus anymore, except when I have to visit a museum for Art Hum. I imagine walking around downtown, through Chelsea and then the Flatiron District. In reality, if I looked at a map of New York, I would still have a hard time pointing out TriBeCa, or demarcating the boundaries of the Lower East Side. My sister probably knows the city better than I do. She has probably been studying maps, charting courses for our great adventures because she doesn’t trust me to know where to take her. Her to-do list will probably include a shopping foray on Fifth Avenue, breakfast on the Upper East Side, a trip to Times Square on Saturday night, an elevator ride to the top of the Empire State Building, orchestra seating at a Broadway show. My plans—a tour of the Frick Museum, picnic lunch in Central Park, a walk across the Brooklyn Bridge—in all likelihood won’t make the cut. At least I planned a party for her tonight. She probably won’t complain about that.

�e train lurches to a stop at 34th Street and I hurry out into the crowd, surprised by how many people are already charging about their super-busy lives so early. Down I go, into the massive warren of passageways and tunnels that seethe beneath the topsoil of New York. In the main hall of the station, classical music tries to soothe while people run to catch their trains. I’d always found that the music made me even more frantic when running late, but now, it makes the wait more enjoyable: My sister’s train is delayed by a few minutes. Soon people are pouring up from the tracks below. I strain, waiting for a small ﬁgure in pink to emerge among the suits. �e stream of people begins to thin, and still there is no sign of her. My stomach begins to tighten with the strain of waiting and a growing anxiety. It’s not my fault if she got lost before even getting here. I’m not very convincing. Suddenly, I realize that there are two escalators up from the train. If she had been sitting towards

EYESITES

Lost in New York the rear of the train, she would have come up behind me. I hurry to the other exit, wondering how I will explain it to our parents. �e music is folding in on me, a rising crescendo that corresponds exactly with my desperate footsteps. People have stopped rising from below and I still don’t see her anywhere. I glance around the cavernous hall, at a loss. I check my cell phone, but she hasn’t called. I begin to think she has been mugged and carted off somewhere, bleeding and dying in some alley where I have no way of finding her. I feel a hand on my shoulder and spin around, ready to finally put my self-defense class to some use. “I’m so glad I found you,” my sister says. “�e handle to my bag broke when I was getting off the train, so it took me a while to get up here.” It’s amazing. For once I’m actually happy to see her. And for once, I’m doing the finding; and she’s the one who had to be found. a

EYE TO EYE

�e D-List the eye interviews sarah dooley BY ZACH DYER PHOTO BY ZACH DYER

Sarah Dooley, a Barnard sophomore, writes the YouTube series And Sarah, which documents the college life of the naive and quirky main character (Rachel Mersky, also a sophomore at Barnard, directs). With over 120,000 collective views, the videos recently attracted the attention of a writer for the New York Times’ Freakonomics blog, who raves not only about Sarah’s acting and writing, but her original music accompanying the videos. Sarah has written and recorded over 30 original songs, and isn’t stopping there. As one YouTube comment says: “this may be the coolest thing on youtube; no joke, straight up, honest to god. never stop.” Zach Dyer sits down with Sarah Dooley to discuss her life as a semi-famous Columbian. How did you feel when you found out a New York Times blog wrote about you? I was really happy. I was actually really surprised people read the Freakonomics blog—I didn’t think that many people would. Guess I’ve found my target audience: economists. Did you have any idea that your YouTube videos were as widely watched as they are? Oh, absolutely not. I showed them to my friends, like, “Look what I did! Aren’t I nutty?” But I thought that would be the extent of it. I thought it might end up like those people who film their dogs doing something silly in a costume and, you know, 20 of their relatives watch it once and that’s it. Rachel Mersky had been making videos for a long time... I really owe it to her for any sort of viewers it gained. What was your aim in making them? I don’t even know. I was just really bored, and had seen all of Michael Cera’s videos, and liked them so much that I felt like I wanted to make some of my own. First of all, I didn’t think they would ever happen. Secondly, I didn’t really expect anyone to watch them. I don’t know what I thought would happen—I kind of did it for myself. You mentioned Michael Cera, and, just browsing some of the comments on your YouTube and MySpace, I see a lot of them claim that you are no different from him or Regina Spektor. Personally, I see some immediate physical differences, but how do you respond to this? I’m a lady. Michael Cera is a gentleman. So there’s that. But those observations are obviously valid—both Michael Cera and Regina Spektor influence my stuff, and it’s pretty apparent. But I guess I hope people can see that those two inspire me to make my own version of things— [to] kind of take what I love and admire and run with it in my own way.

Do you read all your YouTube comments? Have there ever been any strange ones? Last year there was this person, this hater, who made all these YouTube accounts called “stopsarah101” or “sarahmustdie202,” not violent ones, but there were a ton of them that left comments like, “Sarah is a racist! We should boycott her!” ... it freaked my mom out, majorly. I went to his page and the only video was one of him on some mountain wearing a ski mask. My mom saw it and thought he was a murderer. But, I mean, he lost steam after a while and went away. And his accusations were just hilariously out of left ﬁeld. I think he may have been out of his mind.

ESPECIALLY AFTER THAT SKIING MURDERER CAME AT ME, I DOUBLECHECKED THE SCRIPT TO MAKE SURE I ACTUALLY WASN’T A RACIST. Once you’d gained a following, did you change the way you thought about your videos at all? I deﬁnitely didn’t change how I wrote them, but I was probably a little more conscious of the fact that more people would be watching. I think I was probably a little more careful—I mean, especially after that skiing murderer came at me, I double-checked the script to make sure I actually wasn’t a racist. Do you feel you’ve reached any level of fame on the Columbia campus? People will tell me they’ve seen the show, and it

makes my day. It catches me off-guard. ... Sometimes I’ll be doing something awkward, and someone will come up to me, and I’m left thinking, “Great. �at person thinks I am the character.” One time, I actually was eating alone in the dining hall—that’s OK sometimes, isn’t it? If you’re like, doing work or something? Frick. Do you have any other outlets for your original music, besides YouTube? I have a MySpace that I need to update, desperately. And I think some of my stuff is on iLike, but I don’t even really know what iLike is. I thought for a while, and I still consider music something I would love to pursue. It’s probably what I like to do the most—I play every day and I try to write every day. Ideally, I’d love to be a singer-songwriter, but that’s just something that I love at this point, and if it happens, I mean, that would be great. Do you think Columbia provides an outlet for all your creativity? Yeah, I do. At least the theater does. ... I’m happy with it—I feel like I’m always busy in that sense. Do you ever feel like your more arts-related commitments on campus ever put your classes second? Sometimes, yeah—a lot of times I will skip class, and it will be OK, but I usually never skip rehearsal. Which makes me wonder. But that’s normal, I think. Even if I didn’t have a lot of extracurricular stuff going on, I probably would still put off doing school work if I had, say, a really good cake to eat. Priorities. What do you think YouTube and MySpace are doing for the world of music and acting? [�ey’re] definitely making things more available to more people, which I appreciate. And it is a lot easier to find and connect with people who do the same things you do. a

EYE ON THE PRIZE �e winners of this year’s PULITZER PRIZES, newspaper journalism’s highest honors, will be announced at Columbia on Monday. Almost a century after the prizes were founded, the world of newspaper journalism is in turmoil as papers nationwide struggle to stay afloat. �is week, �e Eye sits down with SIG GISSLER, the administrator of the Pulitzers, to see how the awards are adapting to the changing media landscape. We also speak with BILL GRUESKIN, the dean of academic affairs at the Journalism School, to find out why anyone would want to go to the J-school at a time like this.

interview by THOMAS RHIEL • photos by KRISTINA BUDELIS

IN FOCUS

Eye: Currently, there are no prizes awarded specifically for multimedia content. Might that change in the future? SG: I don’t want to speculate about what categories we might alter, but at this point, what we’re encouraging entrants to do is to blend the online components with the text components, which is really where journalism is today. It’s this hybrid of text and images and graphics. I think that’s one of the strengths of the Pulitzer Prizes for journalism right now. �ey reflect the nature of journalism today. Other competitions have separate silos: �ey put the print material in one silo, and they put the online material in another silo. I don’t think that’s the way journalism is evolving. Eye: What’s the significance of the Pulitzer Prizes?

Sig Gissler �e Eye: So I don’t embarrass myself: How exactly do you pronounce the name of these prizes? SG: PULLitser. PULL-it-ser. Some people call it “PYULitser,” but we consider that incorrect. Eye: What is the relationship between the Pulitzer Prizes and the Journalism School? SG: We’re headquartered here in the Journalism School. We have our own budget, our own operation, and what we have is a very warm and effective relationship with the Journalism School. We use some of their rooms, for example, for our jury meetings. At the same time, we provide ... what we call Pulitzer Traveling Fellowships for five journalism graduates each year. So there’s a symbiotic relationship between the prizes and the Journalism School. Eye: What’s the volume of submissions like? SG: Well, this year we got 1,167 books submitted, and in five categories: history, biography, fiction, non-fiction, and poetry. About 164 music entries that went to the music jury. We had about 50 or

�e administrator of the Pulitzer Prizes, Gissler serves on the 19-member Pulitzer board, helps assemble the juries that sift through the initial entries, and acts as the public face of the prizes. 60 plays. We had over 1,000 journalism entries in 14 categories. So it’s a lot of material that gets moved through here. Some of the books are door-stoppers, you know, they’re six-, seven-, eight-hundred-page books. Many of the journalism entries—for most of our categories you can submit 10 exhibits in each entry. For our Public Service Prize you can submit 20 exhibits, and for our Feature Writing Prize you can submit ﬁve. And each one of these exhibits can be quite extensive, so more than 1,000 entries will have many moving parts to them. Eye: Can you describe the typical juror? SG: Well it depends. In the journalism juries, most of them are journalists, or journalism professors. �e majority are editors. But we also try to work in some reporters, particularly previous Pulitzer Prize winners, people who are performing at a very high level in the profession. In the book categories, we probably are more diverse. We go for book editors, we go for academics, sometimes just authors. So we have quite a wide collection of people.

Eye: How are the prizes changing as journalism changes? SG: �e Pulitzer Prizes are a living organism. It changes through the years. Originally, we didn’t have a poetry prize, we didn’t have a photography prize. �ese things were added as time went on. It’s an ever-evolving, developing competition. In more recent times, one of the things that the Pulitzer Prizes have done in terms of journalism is to expand its scope to include more online material. We began in 1999 by allowing online material by newspapers in the public service category. ... �en in 2005 we expanded this to cover all categories. You could submit online material on newspaper Web sites. We expanded that into all forms of online material. Interactive graphics to videos could be submitted in all the categories with the exception of photography, a category we still restrict to still images. ... �is year, we expanded it further to cover online-only news organizations that publish regularly, that are primarily devoted to original news reporting and continuing coverage of events. And so now in our competition, we have entries from online-only publications for the ﬁrst time.

SG: Well, they’re very important. �e joke has always been that when you win a Pulitzer Prize, the first line of your obituary has been written. ... And I think that is true. It reflects the high regard that the prizes have and have achieved through the decades. And I think one of the reasons that they’re highly prized is that it’s a very careful judging process. ... �e other thing that I think sets them apart is this blend of arts and journalism. So when you’re a journalist and you win a Pulitzer Prize for, say, explanatory reporting, you’ll be in the same room as maybe a great author who won the Pulitzer Prize for fiction. Some of our board members have said that when you win a Pulitzer Prize, you enter an aristocracy of excellence. Eye: �e prizes were created to honor excellence in newspaper journalism. If newspapers become less prominent, do the prizes have a future? SG: I think they do, because they’re evolving with the changing media. What the exact makeup of the newspaper industry will be, who knows. But the way the industry’s going right now is that the journalism is as good, if not better, than it’s ever been. ... �e big problem today is not the journalism. It’s generating the revenue to support the journalism as the industry goes through a transition. When we announce the prizes on Monday, I think that anyone who looks at the nominees will be struck by the high quality of journalism that’s being practiced all across this great continental country. We have a long way to go before we think that the newspaper industry is kaput.

Bill Grueskin

�e dean of academic aﬀairs at the Journalism School, Grueskin oversees its faculty and curriculum. He started in September after 13 years at the Wall Street Journal.

Eye: What attracted you to the Journalism School? BG: It’s something I saw as a way to address a lot of the issues that journalism is dealing with from a broader perspective, rather than within the framework of a single news organization.

Eye: And ﬁnally, I suppose you can’t give us any hints about the announcements on Monday.

Eye: So you almost have a personal mission to change the face of journalism.

SG: I could, but I’d have to throw you out the window.

BG: Well I think that’s a little grandiose (laughs). I wouldn’t quite put it that way. I want to be

involved in how journalism adapts and transforms itself in a really convulsive time, but I don’t see myself as the one who’s going to ﬁnd all the answers. Eye: How can the school keep pace with an industry in ﬂux? BG: �at’s a good question, and is something that we grapple with every day here. �e industry is undergoing tremendous dislocation right now, more on the economic front. On the other hand,

IN FOCUS

in terms of the way content gets distributed and the way that you see really interesting, imaginative ways of creating journalism that didn’t exist five years ago, much less 10 or 20 years ago, it’s dramatically different. So what the school is doing is continuing to impart the core values and skills that we feel confident are going to survive this disruption in the economic model, but also re-tailor the curriculum so it’s more relevant to a lot of the issues that are going on in the industry today. Eye: As journalism changes, do the skills you teach change? BG: Some of the skills are kind of timeless: objectivity, integrity, understanding what is a story, understanding how you treat sources, understanding how you evaluate information, how you analyze it, how you present it in ways that readers or viewers or listeners want to get it. ... �en there is a set of skills that we increasingly need to teach our students that will help them when they immediately graduate from here. In the old days, the only technological skill that journalists really needed was to be able to type 25 to 30 words a minute. ... �at’s less and less true these days. At the same time, I’m really cognizant of the fact that the technological skills that we teach in 2009 may be obsolete in three years. So what I really want them to leave here having is more of an intellectual curiosity and a flexibility about technology and how it affects journalism and how they can incorporate it into their lives as journalists, and then they’ll be prepared to deal with lots of things that we can’t possibly predict sitting here in April 2009. Eye: You’re altering the curriculum in August. What changes can we expect? BG: Well, the main ones are to RW1 [Reporting and Writing 1], which is the kind of core Journalism 101 course that all the M.S. students take. We will have a heavier dose of digital skills training upfront in August, and then when the semester officially begins after Labor Day, the class will occupy more of the students’ time for the first five weeks of the semester. ... So they’ll get eight weeks of core training, both in foundational journalism skills as well as digital skills, and they’ll be taught in a much more integrated way. We think that will lead to a better sense of the impact that the Web has on what a journalist does and a better understanding of how when you write for the Web, or when you produce for the Web, it changes the way you go about conceptualizing a story. We’re also going to mandate a business and media course for all the M.S. students. �at’s the first time that’s ever happened, so they’ll understand more about the kind of core business models driving the way decisions are getting made. And we’re retooling the law, ethics, and history courses—particularly the law and ethics courses—so they will take into account the reality of the situa-

tion, which is increasingly that students leave here not going into big, mainstream media situations that have layers and layers of editors and lawyers that act to stop journalists from making a mistake, but in fact are going to much smaller news organizations or in many cases they’re going to work for a very small Web site or completely on their own, and they need to be much better-equipped to handle some of the legal and ethical issues. �ey’re not going to have the institutional and historical knowledge that’s generally been associated with their first journalism job out of school. Eye: I’m sure you saw an article that ran about a month ago in New York Magazine that quoted Ari Goldman, who teaches Reporting and Writing 1, saying “Fuck new media” and that new media training amounted to “playing with toys.” Are dissenting voices like Goldman’s welcome in this school? BG: First of all, let me say that professor Goldman is an incredibly talented and highly respected teacher, not just by his fellow faculty members, but by the students. Having seen a lot of his student evaluations I can attest to that pretty firmly. �e actual context of the quote was that a student needed to attend a new media workshop in the middle of RW1, and so he was speaking more specifically about the student wanting to leave class in order to do that rather than about his overall attitude. Actually, if you look at the Web site that his religion class did on their trip to Ireland about a month ago, it’s a fairly dynamic site that in many ways takes advantage of the Web. You know, all that said, yes, there are clearly—you know, some of what is happening at the school mirrors what’s happening in the industry... I think one of the issues that we’re facing is that everybody, both inside and outside academia, has very different ideas about where journalism is going and what it’s going to look like five or 10 or 15 years from now. So a lot of this is just what you’d expect in the context of a graduate school that’s preparing students for an industry that’s in a tremendous amount of flux. Eye: I went to a journalism conference recently, and several of the speakers at the conference warned the audience not to go to journalism school. �ey said that putting yourself $50,000 in debt just isn’t a smart career move when there are no guaranteed jobs. What would you say to these critics? BG: I think first of all, that journalism schools have never been like business schools, where there’s been a fairly precise relationship between the investment you put into business school and the income you expect in five or 10 years after graduation. People do it because they want to become journalists, not because after a year of journalism school you can become far wealthier than you could have ever anticipated. So that’s the first issue. �e second issue is that a lot of what you needed to know to be a journalist five or 10

years ago was taught in the context of the traditional newsroom. �ere were lots of editors, there were lots of people with institutional knowledge and that kind of thing. What you need now is all that plus the new skills that readers expect, and the truth is that a lot of newsrooms aren’t wellequipped to teach you that. I certainly wouldn’t make the argument that you can’t be a successful journalist without going to journalism school, but I actually think that the reasons for going are probably more compelling now than they would have been ﬁve or 10 years ago. As newsrooms cut back more and more, the number of people who are available to teach you those things is dwindling. So in most newsrooms there are far fewer editors than there used to be. When I was at the Miami Herald, for example, we used to have editors who would sit and work with young reporters the way that our faculty, frankly, do. �ey’d sit with them every day of the story, rewrite it top to bottom, and really show them how to do it. I can tell that the Miami Herald doesn’t have editors able to do that anymore. So it will be harder—not impossible, but harder—to learn that in the context of a traditional news organization. Eye: I’ve read that applications to the J-School have increased 40 percent this year. Why do you think that is? BG: Well, I think there are a few factors. �e ﬁrst one is that any time there’s an economic downturn, applications for graduate school tend to go up because there’s not as much opportunity cost. By that I mean that you don’t have to give up a great job to go to grad school. ... But I also think that a lot of prospective students realize that in a tumultuous time like this, when job opportunities may be dwindling, opportunities to help create new forms of journalism, and new models to support it, are increasing. When I entered this business, there was a fairly well-set number of outlets, and it was pretty clear what you had to do: You had to work at a small paper, then at a medium paper, then, if you were lucky and pretty good, you got to a national paper, which is what most people aspired to—though certainly not everybody. Now, it’s not really clear what the rules are. Eye: Finally, how are you feeling these days about the future of journalism? Gloomy? Optimistic? BG: �ere’s a tendency among journalists to wax overly nostalgic about the good old days. �e truth is that newspapers have been having problems for 15 or 20 years, it’s just that they had a monopoly ... in most of their markets, so it was kind of covered up. Insofar as it’ll make journalists start doing more journalism that’s really relevant to readers’ lives and that really makes an impact, then I think that it’s a really good thing. But that’s not to minimize the amount of heartache and pain that a lot of people are feeling right now. a

Old Director, New Tricks FILM

the evolution of jim jarmusch BY CEDRIC CHEUNG-LAU PHOTO COURTESY OF FOCUS FEATURES

My film education formally began the day I was introduced to Jim Jarmusch. Of course, I’m not the only one who has found the director to be both an inspiration and an influence. Hailed as the last true independent American filmmaker, he is also arguably the most European of American directors: His use of the distinct American landscape as a backdrop for his loose narratives echoes the films of Jean-Luc Godard and François Truffaut. At a time when MTV was being launched and filmgoers had short attention spans, Jarmusch’s Stranger �an Paradise stood out. Each scene is one long take, allowing for small moments to be captured and the humanity of the characters to be revealed. �is deadpan style has influenced the hundreds of independent filmmakers who followed Jarmusch. For three decades and with films like Stranger �an Paradise, Dead Man, and Ghost Dog: Way of the Samurai, Jarmusch’s filmmaking has undoubtedly evolved—for better or for worse—without the loss of his unique vision and style. His two most recent films, 2005’s Broken Flowers and �e Limits of Control, which opens in New York on May 1, retain some Jarmuschian sensibility even though they are also the first movies he has directed under studio supervision. But they also make a clear jump from his previous films, perhaps a result of studio intervention or in an attempt to distance himself from the lofty titles bestowed upon him.

Jarmusch has always been an intelligent director who counts among his influences a wide breadth of musicians, filmmakers, poets, artists, and novelists. �e title �e Limits of Control, for instance, comes from a William S. Burroughs essay about language, and the film opens with a quote from a poem by Arthur Rimbaud. �roughout the movie, there are conversations about music, film, and science—not to mention long takes of the main character staring at pieces in the Museo Nacional Centro de Arte Reina Sofía. Jarmusch’s characters are strangers and loners whose actions often fall outside of the law, and who seem unwilling or unable to take control of their surroundings—the action of the movie unfolds as a matter of fate and not necessarily by choice. Jarmusch’s camera maintains an aloof perspective, rarely going into close-ups. It is this style and these characters that have come to shape the independent cinema of today: Despite the vast differences between Jarmusch and counterparts like Wes Anderson or Quentin Tarantino, they all employ the same deadpan camera or film segmentation. Jarmusch’s latest may contain many of his trademark themes and visuals, but the film is far from his best. While the visuals, shot by genius director of photography Christopher Doyle, are perfectly composed and the rhythm of the film is focused and contained, Jarmusch ultimately ventures too much into the surreal and mystical. �e Limits of Control follows actor Isaach de Bankolé, a professional of a questionable occupation, traveling through Spain, visiting cafes, meeting strangers to receive various codes, and listening to them talk about various forms of art. �e film, like most of his others, can be broken down into

While �e Limits of Control may not be Jim Jarmusch’s best film, it is still representative of the director’s influence on the American independent film movement.

various segments that each take place in a different city. Yet compared to his earlier films, the conversations here are neither as humorous nor as interesting. Furthermore, while Jarmusch’s films have always been anti-Hollywood in the sense that they never have much of a narrative or a definite moral, they still tend to have resolution—something �e Limits of Control lacks. By the end of the film, one has a clear understanding of Jarmusch’s visual tendencies, but no comprehension of a story.

JARMUSCH’S FILMMAKING HAS UNDOUBTEDLY EVOLVED—FOR BETTER OR FOR WORSE—WITHOUT THE LOSS OF HIS UNIQUE VISION AND STYLE. It’s possible that this film is simply another example of Jarmusch staying ahead of the curve and away from Hollywood ideals. While �e Limits of Control may be too large of a leap for fans of his more traditional films, when viewed as separate from his previous work, it is easy to see that it has its own merits. As usual, Jarmusch is simply redefining conventions—in this case, the gangsterassassin film. Film audiences usually expect to sympathize with a protagonist, whether he’s good or bad. Here, the audience is given nothing: the “protagonist” does not have a name, and the only insight into his character is his adherence to professional ritualism. As it turns out, he’s an assassin—and like the Tai Chi that he performs every day, �e Limits of Control’s main character is simply an element of the forces around him. He does not care why his employers want his target dead. �e audience ultimately takes a journey with him, observing and being subject to fate, as he is. �e Limits of Control’s approach and content is vastly different from Jarmusch’s other features, but seen in this light, the film is not necessarily bad. At one point in �e Limits of Control, Tilda Swinton’s character says, “Sometimes I like films where the characters just sit there and don’t say anything at all.” Appropriately, that line is followed by Swinton and her companion sitting for several moments without saying a word. �ose silent moments are when characters reveal the most about themselves, and it was Jarmusch who first saw their beauty and potential. While the director may continue to progress in his current direction, nothing can tarnish Jarmusch’s older masterpieces and the influence they have had and continue to have on American independent cinema. a

DANCE

Ballet and Books professional dancers at columbia describe what it’s like to live in two worlds BY RUTHIE FIERBERG PHOTO BY EMBRY OWEN

When Justin Peck left San Diego for the Big Apple, he wasn’t sure if his years of dance training and performance experience would pay off. Now, six years after leaving California, the 21-year-old has been a full-time company member with New York City Ballet for three years. You would never know that Peck splits his time between the stage and Butler library. A student in the School of General Studies, Peck balances a fulltime performing career at one of the most prestigious ballet companies in the world with a part-time academic program at one of the top universities in the nation. Peck is not alone, either. In 2007, five professional ballet dancers from Columbia founded the Columbia Ballet Collaborative, asserting the presence of student-dancers on campus. Bridging the gap between the professional performer and the Columbia academic, Peck debuted his first piece of choreography, “A Teacup Plunge,” with Columbia Ballet Collaborative at Miller Theater on April 2. Clearly, higher education and professional dance may be more compatible than they seem. For Teresa Reichlen, a part-time Barnard student and dancer with CBC, getting an education while working her dream job helps her create stability, “mainly because dance is a short career and it’s also a lot of what is up to chance. At any time you could sustain a career-ending injury, and I didn’t want to be left with no other options.” Peck also recognizes the risk involved with a career in the performing arts. At the same time, “of course you need to take risks to get places,” he says. He considers the job security of a performing career precarious, but concludes that working for New York City Ballet is the ideal situation. “In the Broadway world, shows close or contracts end or you burn out from performing the same thing over and over each night. My job with City Ballet offers me more stability and variety.” Despite the security and diversity offered through ballet, Peck sensed a void before enrolling at Columbia. “I felt that dance is ... a great outlet, but there was a lack of intellectual stimulation in my life,” admits Peck. Still, dance is his focus: “Hopefully I’ll graduate eventually, but in the meantime I keep busy with my job, which is my first priority.” In contrast, Reichlen plans on applying her education in a practical way later in life. “I’m not the type of person who wants to stay in the dance industry after performing. �ere are other things I want to do,” she says. Reichlen, a biology major, foresees a potential career in drug research. Whatever their motivations, it seems that more

MORE AND MORE DANCERS ARE FAVORING THE IDEA OF SIMULTANEOUSLY PURSUING HIGHER EDUCATION AND A FULL-TIME PERFORMING CAREER. and more dancers are favoring the idea of simultaneously pursuing higher education and a full-time performing career. Peck observes that some of his fellow City Ballet dancers take classes at Columbia. Many choose Fordham for its convenient location at Lincoln Center and lower cost.

Perhaps this means that the lifestyle of a ballet dancer is more conducive to schooling than that of other types of dancers. However, Reichlen believes that the typical ballet dancer’s personality can explain this trend better than the genre in which she dances. “I think that a lot of ballet dancers are kind of—we’re perfectionists, and that translates to other parts of our lives,” she says, adding that discipline comes from “the regimented nature of ballet.” Katie Glasner, assistant chair of the Barnard dance department, agrees that the company itself is driving dancers to go to school. “I don’t think that working in a classical ballet company is any more conducive to integrating higher education than other forms of dance,” says Glasner. But she also believes that discipline is not unique to ballet dancers. Balancing career and education is always tough. “It’s simply quite rare for undergraduate students to pursue simultaneous careers and educations,” she says. Maybe Columbia University—especially the School of General Studies—is just convenient for working students in any field. But despite Columbia’s flexible offerings through GS and part-time status at Barnard, a dancer’s schedule still can be excruciatingly busy, according to Peck: “At our busiest we start at 10:30 with class, and we can rehearse for as much as five or six hours, and then we have a show at night, so I might not get out of there until 11 p.m.” Both Peck and Reichlen tend to complete homework in the early mornings, on quick breaks or on their one day off each week. And as part-time students, they are not only limited academically—in terms of the number of classes per semester they take and the time they have to complete their work—but socially as well. “We work most when everyone else is off, at the night and on the weekends, so it makes it hard to socialize with normal people,” expresses Reichlen. Peck agrees that he cannot fully immerse himself in the Columbia community. “I’m a little upset that I can’t have the full university experience, but I have to make sacrifices based on my lifestyle,” says Peck. As student-dancers, Reichlen and Peck both agree that the isolation of their part-time status doesn’t concern either of them. Reichlen chose Barnard because of its small size and accessible advising system. Peck chose Columbia for its quality. As he says, “What’s great about Columbia is they have the most talented professors, so it’s hard to go wrong compared to other schools.” Peck and Reichlen’s dedication to their studies, combined with dancing full-time, is certainly impressive. When they started dancing at the young ages of nine and three, respectively, neither knew that they would turn away from a traditional education to favor professional performing. Nonetheless, based on their current priorities and lifestyles, perhaps the term “dancer-student,” rather than “student-dancer,” would be a better way to describe them. a

�e Balancing Act THEATER

full-time students-slash-actors juggle studying and the spotlight BY ROSIE DUPONT PHOTO BY LILA NEISWANGER

Ever seen someone muttering at a highlighted packet as they wait in the Dodge Hall lobby, or gesticulating at a brick wall outside Milbank? If so, you have probably spotted a student actor at Columbia. Among this group are a select number of undergraduates who take acting beyond college theater and film to auditions and studios across New York City. These are undergraduates who do it all: take a full course load while maintaining a professional career in film and theater. Melissa Macedo, a Barnard junior, Maura McNamara, a CC sophomore, and Asher Grodman, a CC senior, are three such undergraduate actors. They have taken on the rigorous demands of a Columbia education—and a profession that takes no excuses. Each of these actors has transcended institutional obstacles to pursue their passion in the real world, and though they have approached the process in a variety of ways, their Columbia educations have served and continue to serve them in the professional world. Who are these students and where do they come from? Macedo, a Los Angeles native, came to Columbia with acting experience. “I thought I would take a break from acting while I went to school on the East Coast, but, as you can see, that didn’t happen,” she says with a smile. “I just couldn’t stay away.” Grodman also worked professionally before coming to Columbia. In high school, he acted in a theater production in Queens, two-and-a-half hours from his home in New Jersey, while playing varsity football. �ough he described the experience as brutal, he concedes, “It prepared me for acting at Columbia. I’ve gotten used to juggling a hectic schedule.” McNamara has been packing her schedule with acting opportunities since she was six years old, and took a year oﬀ before attending Columbia to live and act in New York. “It’s nice to already have friends, connections, and experience in the theater world, so I’m not starting from scratch,” she says. Though Macedo, Grodman, and McNamara all have past acting experience, they have had to adjust to the time constraints that come with going to an Ivy League school. We’ve all experienced nights in which we find ourselves exhausted, un-showered, and ready to slam our heads up against a wall, before sitting down to write a 10page paper. So how, exactly, do these students manage to balance full academic schedules and full-time acting jobs? Macedo agrees that time is the greatest constraint for student actors. Even though she has managed to act in graduate student films, an independent feature, and an off-Broadway production while attending school, Macedo tells me, “People here

“THE WORK I’VE DONE IN SCHOOL, AND THE FRIENDS I’VE MADE, HAVE MADE ME A BETTER ACTOR.” don’t have enough time as it is—try fitting in a rehearsal and a shooting schedule, and it is almost impossible, not to mention tiring.” Tiring, yes, but not completely impossible. McNamara, who just finished a run in Tom Stoppard’s The Real Thing at T. Schreiber Studio, the first professional job she has done while attending Columbia, says, “Once I got through the initial how-many-hours-are-in-a-day panic, I seemed to find time for it all.” Having time for it all, though, does require a

bit of micromanaging. For McNamara, taking 18 credits is just right, but the real challenge was “arranging my class schedule so that I wouldn’t be penalized for all the class I was going to miss.” Grodman, who has acted in several independent films and had a role in an off-Broadway production of Artfuckers during his sophomore year, notes, “Talking to teachers is really important. They tend to respect your choices, and make exceptions. Whereas Columbia College does not.” So why come here? Columbia College and Barnard hardly seem like ideal schools for a working actor: They provide limited coursework in the practical application of theater arts, and the few classes both schools do offer are often hard to get into because of space constraints. Moreover, their programs are not designed to provide flexible schedules outside the classroom. According to Grodman, this is a mistake. “Columbia is running from a reputation they naturally have as an arts center,” he says. Yet Columbia and Barnard provide each of their students with an invaluable liberal arts education— one that is impossible to receive in a conservatory program like Tisch or Juilliard. Furthermore, it’s an education that is particularly valuable for actors. As Grodman puts it, “I am reading things most actors won’t read.” Conversely, McNamara argues that acting professionally while attending school has helped her as a student: “I think that ultimately, being able to go off to the theater has made me a better student, because my focus and energy is broken up, so it’s not just school, school, school, all the time.” In an ideal world, all actors would have the benefit of getting an undergraduate education equal to the one students get at Columbia. Though people complain about Columbia’s Core Curriculum and Barnard’s Nine Ways of Knowing, a well-rounded education introduces a student to a variety of disciplines and viewpoints and encourages the development of strong analytical skills—useful tools for any actor. Maybe these students actually get the ultimate balance between theory and practice. Macedo, Grodman, and McNamara all had the opportunity to jump straight from high school into the professional world, but they saw the value of coming to Columbia to diversify their knowledge and experience. When asked about choosing to go to college rather than launching straight into the acting world, Grodman replies, “Acting is all about your experience. It is about what you’ve seen, what you’ve read, who you’ve known. The work I’ve done in school, and the friends I’ve made, have made me a better actor.” Macedo has a bit of advice for aspiring actors who think acting professionally while attending school sounds like the best of both worlds: “Keep your goals for school and work distinct and clear. It’s not easy, so be sure it’s what’s right for you. But,” she says, smiling, “if it is, go for it!” a

BOOKS

Once Upon a Crime kris saknussemm’s “psychoerotic noir fairytale” has style, but a dragging plot BY CHRIS MORRIS-LENT PHOTO COURTESY OF KAREN RADCLIFFE

When I meet Kris Saknussemm, at a Starbucks in Times Square, the first thing he says is, “Want to go to a bar?” We head westward and talk about everything. Saknussemm is a well-traveled sophisticate who seems to have picked up something from everywhere: an openness from his early life in California, a faint Aussie accent from days spent in Melbourne, a sunny biliousness from years as an artist in all media. “Ninth Avenue is soaked in alcohol,” he says, and when we enter an Irish pub, more anecdotes help to explain his world view: tripping in the middle of a Klan-like frat procession at Dartmouth, being fired from a sequence of odd jobs, reading Nabokov and watching film noir. “If someone doesn’t know who I am in five minutes, then I’ve failed to be myself,” I say, and Saknussemm agrees. Failing to be himself is the least of the narrator’s problems in Saknussemm’s new novel, Private Midnight. Birch Ritter is divorced, an alcoholic, a john—a detective, in short, with obvious similarities to �e Wire’s Jimmy McNulty, the hard-boiled gumshoes of yore, and Saknussemm’s “on-again, off-again girlfriend,” who was “really smart but basically uneducated.” His past—replete with murdered fathers, suicidal siblings, and a war that’s resulted in a dystopian, inescapable version of Los Angeles—colors Birch’s own world view, and Birch’s world view colors all of Private Midnight. “�e powerful narrative voice will compel most readers to follow,” raves Publishers Weekly. But the beginning of the plot, with its stock murder case, may not. “We were going to interview a fresh widow,” narrates Birch, “a special breed I always enjoyed.” �e drollery, resignation, and thinly veiled depression are all there. Choosing to narrate a piece of detective fiction from a first-person standpoint is risky. Birch’s voice, at first enjoyable, grows tiresome after a while, as it is the product of relentless anomie and endless self-loathing. Perhaps he tries too hard, like one of James Wood’s “hysterical realist” narrators. Moreover, Birch’s huge vocabulary works weirdly with his hardboiled similes and streetwise sensibilities. For Birch, there’s no escaping his issues, and for the reader, there’s no escaping Birch—while thirdperson narration would have let Saknussemm switch between characters to present a wider and fuller portrait of post-apocalyptic L.A., the first person ensures that we get only Ritter’s experiences, in Ritter’s voice. �is blood-tinted and vomit-tinged tunnel

vision is at the center of Private Midnight’s aesthetic project: The plot is subordinated to the details and the style. Birch’s languishing is part of his persona, but the novel’s plot suffers when he stays static. As a narrator, he isn’t compelling when he talks about 7-11, Texas Hold ‘Em, n00bs, or any of the other 21st-century cultural touchstones strewn throughout the novel. These terms are meant to signify both a sham hipness and a nouveau nostalgia. The future feels dated, except for when something’s happening.

PRIVATE MIDNIGHT’S PLOT GETS GUMMED UP IN DAY-OLD WHISKEY WHEN IT SHOULD BE ACCELERATING. Something does start to happen when Genevieve Wyvern, the novel’s other towering presence, enters. She starts off as a stock figure—a femme fatale—but Private Midnight is “a psychoerotic noir fairytale.” Saknussemm is

up to something else here. Wyvern grows from a cliché into an existential dominatrix, a repository for all of Birch’s neuroses, insecurities, and shortcomings. As her character expands, Birch’s shrinks and, literally, stutters. His universe had been bleak, but it least it was secure. Birch’s struggle to comprehend his new universe as everything he knows shifts beneath his feet forms the central drama of Private Midnight. �e novel is wellexecuted and compelling, but Saknussemm feels the need to insert passages that sound like they should have come at the very beginning. �e pace of Birch’s transformation, which mirrors the pace of Private Midnight’s plot, gets gummed up in day-old whiskey when it should be accelerating. �ere are enough ideas here for 350 pages, but the book still feels long, tedious, and overwrought at times. Private Midnight picks up again, but in the end, it’s poorly served by its chosen medium. The cinematic passages, which reveal a richness of imagination, cannot be done justice by Birch’s language, though there’s something sympathetic about his trying. “Someone was talking about a film deal,” says Saknussemm, and to see his phantasmagorias fully realized would be exhilarating. But in spite of Saknussemm’s enthusiasm for film and other media—he’s a painter, too, and as a “bonus” he hands me a CD, also entitled Private Midnight—it would be hard to convey the sweaty element of Private Midnight through the effortless clarity of a camera. “Ritual healings are focused on calling the soul back to the body,” says the first track of his CD. �e ambient screeches give way to piano riffs and more traditional harmonies, and, in the last track, a hooker’s moans over a euphonious guitar: �e disc, the cover of which shows a harlot with a gun between two giant eyes, is an attempt to encompass a warped version of everything, through the prisms of prostitution, destitution, and broken glass. And a semi-successful attempt at that: “I wanted Private Midnight to arouse either praise or withering attacks,” says Saknussemm—what made him attractive was less a request that people like him, but a demand that people get him. And yet Private Midnight is one of those books that couldn’t do full justice to its author’s experiences, literacy, and personality. “If you had to give Private Midnight a grade,” asks Saknussemm, “what would you give it?” “A B,” I reply, and enjoy his company for the rest of the evening. a Kris Saknussemm will be reading from Private Midnight at Pete’s Candy Store (709 Lorimer St., Brooklyn) at 7:00 p.m. on Saturday, April 25. Master jazz saxophonist Eric Wyatt will accompany him.

Earth Trends Are Easy

On the Lookout: Kanye West STYLE

green fashion is in, but is it sustainable? BY ANNA COOPERBERG ILLUSTRATION BY REBEKAH KIM We’ve been hearing it for years: Eco-friendly fashion is not just for crunchy granola types, nor does it mean burlap sacks in neutral colors. Since 2005, the green movement has been gaining followers in the fashion industry—but it didn’t really catch on until late last year. Now eco-fashion is the hottest thing since global warming, and everyone from Banana Republic to Ermenegildo Zegna is jumping on the green bandwagon. �e fashion industry is becoming more ecofriendly in many ways. Designers, for example, are now choosing to use sustainable materials. Loomstate, founded by Rogan designer Rogan Gregory, is dedicated to producing casual wear that is completely constructed of 100 percent certiﬁed organic materials. For this, Loomstate patronizes only organic farms and reduces dye in its clothing, using natural coloring whenever possible. Fashion houses are also changing the way clothes are produced, like saving energy by using more hand-sewing than factory machines. EDUN, “nude” spelled backwards, is a clothing line founded by Ali Hewson and Bono that focuses on building sustainable jobs in developing countries like Tunisia, Peru, and India. In this way, EDUN improves the quality of life in poverty-stricken nations while exclusively using 100 percent organic cotton farmed locally near the factory. No matter how they go about it, designers are getting serious about reducing their carbon stiletto-print.

Boutique owners are also actively supporting the shift towards eco-fashion. Major online retailer Shopbop even has an “Earth Friendly” category on its Web site, which showcases green brands like Beau Soleil and Organic, making it easy for consumers to choose green styles. Bird, which has three locations in New York City, makes a point of carrying ecofriendly brands like Eberjey and Bodkin alongside hip, upscale brands like 3.1 Phillip Lim and See by Chloe. In addition, Bird’s third boutique in Williamsburg is LEED Certiﬁed, meaning that the boutique’s renovated design follows strict sustainability rules set by the U.S. Green Building Council.

IT’S UP TO CONSUMERS TO DECIDE IF GREEN IS THE NEW BLACK. Despite efforts by designers and boutique owners, it is really up to the consumers to decide if green is the new black. To make environmentally friendly fashion more affordable and accessible, Target has partnered with Loomstate this spring—expect to see the collection in stores April 19, three days before Earth Day. But how exactly is Loomstate, whose t-shirts sell for upwards of $100, lowering costs to meet Target’s price range while maintaining organic standards? Because no official announcement on this subject has yet been released, it can only be assumed that Loomstate is simply using lower-quality organic cotton and less-than-perfect craftsmanship to produce the line. �is viable solution contradicts a major pillar of eco-friendliness: recycling. If the clothing is of a lower quality, it will not last long regardless of whether it’s organic. H&M has seemingly solved the quality problem by using recycled materials, including polyester recycled from PET bottles and cotton recycled from fabric scraps to produce its wallet-friendly organic cotton collection. �e idea is that the apparel itself is recyclable, though H&M has yet to roll out a “recycle your clothing here” campaign. �ough the theory behind H&M’s organic line is admirable, the contradiction between sustainable, eco-friendly fashions and the trendy “throw-away” clothing that the store thrives on remains a problem. By promoting the idea that there’s nothing wrong with buying a trendy outfit that will no longer be stylish next season, H&M contributes to a larger mentality that condones disposable fashion. Ultimately, affordability always seems to triumph over sustainability—which is why green items of lower cost are crucial to the long-term success of eco-friendly fashion. In short, it’s good that fashion is making an effort to go green. But until consumers pony up extra cash to buy the organics or designers lower prices, eco-friendly fashions will continue to take second place to their synthetic cousins. a

BY STELLA TAN PHOTO COURTESY OF SINGERSROOM Jennifer Lopez became J. Lo, Puff Daddy became P. Diddy, and Lil’ Bow Wow became, well, Bow Wow. Kanye West went in a different direction for his midlife name crisis: Martin Louis the King, Jr. �e rapper pays tribute to his love of fashion—to say nothing of his outsized ego—by using his new moniker as the brand name for the red sneakers he designed for his favorite label, Louis Vuitton. �e shoes appeared in the luxury house’s fall show. Unlike most celebrity collaborators, West oversaw every detail of the design process, from the Dune-inspired aesthetic to the flexible sole material to the signature raised tongue behind the shoe. �e budding designer’s sneaker line for Louis Vuitton debuts in stores this June, marking a major triumph for a music icon who has tried for years to prove his fashion cred.

West first caused a stir last year when he declared his intention to intern for Vuitton helmsman Marc Jacobs or for Belgian designer Raf Simons. �ough the 31-year-old has yet to assume coffee-carrying duties, he’s exhibited other behaviors typical of the fashion fledgling: West obsessively maintains a blog, where he muses about personal style and upcoming trends. His entourage is a colorful front-row fixture at runway shows, but West also meticulously studies cuts and fabrics backstage. He’s even moving to Paris with nothing but a dream in his pocket, so to speak. West’s hard work is paying off. Hot on the heels of his Louis Vuitton debut, his Air Yeezy collection for Nike was released last week to long queues of sneaker-loving fans. Rumors are circulating about a jewelry collaboration with Japanese artist Takashi Murakami, who designed the cover art for West’s album Graduation. West’s much-hyped clothing line, Past Tell, is also slated to launch this year after a three-year postponement that West attributes to his perfectionism. Could this be the year the Artist Formerly Known As Kanye quits his day job? a