Weekend

WEEKEND // FRIDAY, FEBRUARY 24, 2012

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d n a t s s itie n r e t a r f w e n o w Why t //

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TAN E N I L O

BY CAR

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SHAKESPEARE AT THE BEINECKE

NEW HAVEN’S QUIRKIEST SPORT

THE SECRETS OF YALE FURNITURE

Caroline McCullough traces the cultural capital of Shakespeare’s genius.

Caroline Tracey hits the asphalt and scores some chuckers at the AT&T parking lot.

Tapley Stephenson tells the stories behind the desks of Yale’s administrators.

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YALE DAILY NEWS · FRIDAY, FEBRUARY 24, 2012 · yaledailynews.com

Message from NYPD re: the Yale Community

ASCHER

KAHOE & MADISON

WEEKEND VIEWS

// BY JORDAN ASCHER

// BY CODY KAHOE AND CALEB MADISON

After the Associated Press revealed that the New York Police Department had been monitoring Muslim student associations at Yale, we were able to obtain access to the Official Police Report, which reveals the shocking findings of years of expert investigation on Yale’s campus.

Students are advised to read in the safety and privacy of their rooms.

“The New York Police Department submits the following report to the City of New York, Michael Bloomberg, mayor, for consideration in maintaining homeland security.

Our findings regarding Yale University’s history and alumni highlight the institution’s long history of terrorism and subversive activity. One of its earliest graduates, a Mr. Nathan Hale, is infamously remembered as one of the nation’s first experts in espionage. Not only did the University allow this spy to graduate but it also honors him today with a statue on ‘the Old Campus’ that bears his final insurgent utterances, ‘I only regret that I have but one life to give for my country.’ Fanatical rhetoric has even been incorporated into ‘Bright College Years,’ the University’s unofficial alma mater. The lines, ‘the shortest, gladdest years of life,’ clearly invoke the glory of a short but honorable life sacrificed for the extremist cause of jihad. There are also clear allusions to the Arab Spring in the lines, ‘The seasons come, the seasons go,/ The earth is green or white with snow,’ the latter half a clear reference to the ashen remains of American civilization as we know it.

Past aside, the current environment at the University reveals greater cause for concern. We believe it is no coincidence that a popular religious meeting place on campus is named Battell Chapel, an open reference to an impending battell with American values. Some nights earlier this year, our surveillance teams were able to pick up the traditional extremist chants of Yale students. The transcript reads, ‘The ’Houn, the ’Houn, the ’Houn is on fire!

We don’t need no water, let the motherfucker burn!’ This inflammatory slogan both promotes the fiery destruction of American infrastructure and demonizes the classic American hero, John C. Calhoun. Students have taken to nourishing themselves with traditional Middle Eastern cuisine, frequenting the suspicious local falafel establishment, Mamoun’s. Who ‘Mamoun’ is remains to be ascertained. Other surveillance has gleaned that students have been gathering and organizing at both ‘Blue States.’ We have determined this to be code for impending battells in two of the several New England liberal states, including Massachusetts, Connecticut, or, possibly, New York.

As this report confirms, it is absolutely necessary that the United States government prepare for battell with these Yale militants before President Levin officially declares fatwa on the innocent citizens of this country.

Report filed by: Sgt. N. Ferguson New York Police Department” *Please note: this message is fictional and was not created by the authors of this View.

// TAOTAO HOLMES

Ladies and gentlemen, taxes are very important. Taxes fund things we all like and depend upon: health care for the elderly, public schools, roads and infrastructure, and the military. I think if we paid higher taxes, we would be able to get more great stuff! Another thing: isn’t it nutty that rich people pay a smaller percentage of their income to the government than middle-class people? I think that’s pretty crazy. I guess if I had to sum up my opinion on taxes in three words, they would be these: “Taxes, taxes, taxes.”

And another thing — Sorry, hold on. It looks like I just got an email.

I wonder why my parents’ accountant would possibly need to email me. And why is the subject line “Your tax return?”

I don’t need to file a tax return, right?

Only adults have to do that, and I’m definitely not an adult. Plus I make, like, no money. Well, I suppose it is my civic duty to pay taxes. What do I owe, like $20?

OK, let’s scroll right down. Wow, this thing is, like, 30 pages long. And here it is. WHAT!? HOW IS IT POSSIBLE THAT I OWE [amount of money]?!? THAT IS LIKE [fraction] OF [total amount of money I made this year]!!! PLUS I ONLY EARNED [total amount of money I made this year]!!! WHICH IS NOT ENOUGH FOR ME TO HAVE TO PAY [amount of money]!!!

Contact CODY KAHOE and CALEB MADISON at f.kahoe@yale.edu and caleb.madison@yale.edu .

BERNHARDT

DEATH TO TAXES

OK, Jordan, stop crying and vomiting everywhere. It’s going to be OK. You see, some of the money you earned this year came in the form of a grant, for which a 1099 form is issued instead of a W2 form.

This means that the Social Security tax is not withheld by the hiring firm, so you need to pay that tax now — SHUT UP. SHUT UP. SHUT UP. YEAH, YEAH, YEAH. BUT STILL. I. WHAT. BUT. HUH? WELL. IT’S NOT RIGHT. IT JUST SEEMS EXCESSIVE. BECAUSE THAT’S MY MONEY AND I EARNED IT, AND I DESERVE TO KEEP IT. Jordan. You love taxes! How cool is it that you get to give some of your money to the government you love so much?

Plus, don’t you think it would be awfully ironic that you, who support raising taxes, would object so strongly now that you have to pay, yourself? Don’t you think that would be awfully hypocritical?

BUT DON’T YOU SEE THE DIFFERENCE? I SHOULDN’T HAVE TO PAY BECAUSE IT’S MY MONEY AND I EARNED IT. WHY CAN’T THEY JUST MAKE SOME RICH DUDE PAY [amount of money] EXTRA? HE WOULDN’T CARE! HE’S RICH! PLUS, SOCIAL SECURITY WILL TOTALLY BE BANKRUPT BY THE TIME I’M OLD ENOUGH TO BENEFIT FROM IT. Cut the crap, Jordan. This obviously isn’t about [amount of money]. This is

about something more, I think. What’s bothering you?

NOTHING. IT’S JUST IT’S A LOT OF MONEY. JUST LEAVE ME ALONE. I WANT TO CRY A BIT. Jordan.

OK. Fine. I guess having to pay taxes just means times are changing. For all the years I’ve looked forward to being an adult, now that I’m on the precipice, it makes me anxious. In past years, savings were just that — they never amounted to much. But, I mean, look at this tax!

I’m paying into Social Security; that’s all about setting aside for later, making investments toward a future, toward a secure life. And I guess I’m anxious about taking responsibility for my own destiny, you know? It’s exciting, but it’s a little scary.

Wow, Jordan. That was really honest of you. I think I’m feeling a lot of the same apprehension as you. I guess that makes sense, since I am you. But you’re ready, Jordan. We’re ready — JUST KIDDING. I WAS LYING. NO WAY I’M PAYING THIS. RING ME UP FOR TAX EVASION!!! I DON’T EVEN CARE!!! I WILL BE YOUNG FOREVER!!!

I WILL NEVER DIE!!!

Contact JORDAN ASCHER at jordan.ascher@yale.edu .

An Hairing of Grievances // BY AUSTIN BERNHARDT

Friends, Romans, countrymen: I’m a pretty hairy guy. I know that. Do you think you need to come up with euphemisms in order to make that observation in a sensitive and considerate manner? Because you don’t — really!

I have hair on my arms, I have hair on my legs, I have hair under my armpits and on my chest and stomach and even one little stray bastard that keeps popping up just above my sternum.

More importantly, I usually have a pretty thick covering of the stuff on my cheeks, chin, neck and upper lip area.

Maybe I should make myself plain (or “pull back the razor blade,” if you will, ha ha). I’ll often be at a social gathering (I’m very popular, you know) at which, in the middle of a conversation that clearly isn’t going anywhere, or apropos of nothing while passing

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by, a friend or an acquaintance or even a stranger will say something like, “Oh, you’re growing your beard out!”

The sentiment in itself isn’t shocking. What is hair-raising (okay, last one — I promise) is the tone in which it’s usually delivered. In my copious experience, it’s most frequently said in the same way you’d say, “Hey, you’ve been working out!”

But here’s the thing: as much as I love compliments on my appearance, deserved or otherwise, cultivating facial hair is not equivalent to doing lat pulldowns. It’s not hard. In fact, there are really only two necessary preconditions for “growing one’s beard out”: the ability to grow a beard the ability not to shave for a while.

So when you say, “Oh, you’re

growing your beard out!” what you’re really saying is, “Oh, you’re relatively hairy AND too lazy to wake up five minutes earlier in the morning to take a trimmer to that bad boy.”

Food for thought.

I bring this up because at the moment, we, as a nation, seem pretty divided on the issue of beardliness. I’m not talking about whether you prefer your faceplant partner fuzzy or smooth; that’s just a matter of comfort. I’m talking about the broader issue of whether beards are things on our faces or things that exist outside of our faces. Case in point: the vaguely embarrassing phenomenon of the beard holiday.

In case you’re not familiar, there are designated periods of the year — some seasonal (a “winter beard,” a “summer beard”), some monthly (Octobeard, Novem-

“MORE EUROPE: THE EU’S RESPONSE TO THE DEBT CRISIS” 202 Luce Hall // 2:00 p.m.

Hungary’s ambassador to the U.S. György Szapáry gives us more more more.

beard, Decembeard, Manuary, Manly March) — during which certain men capable of follicular development band together and agree not to trim or alter their facegardens in any way.

I understand that the experience is meant to be at least a little tongue-in-cheek. But I am convinced that all of this so-called “ironic masculinity,” at the root (sorry, I can’t help myself), is really just a screen to obscure a genuine generational insecurity about (of all the arbitrary shit) the ability to sprout “filamentous biomaterial” out of our faces. It’s a … well, it’s a beard, one we’ve grown to protect our rosy, vulnerable little cheeks from the sting of scrutiny and the possibility that we may not like what we find underneath.

As someone who gets a five o’clock shadow at, like, 9 a.m., I

SETTLERS OF CATAN TOURNAMENT — FUNDRAISER Asian-American Cultural Center // 6:00 p.m.

What better way to fundraise than playing board games?! We’re not going to pretend we know this game, but maybe you do. Proceeds go to the YIRA 2012 Philippines Spring Trip.

can say that the genetic predisposition toward beardliness does not offer you any benefits, aside from maybe making you look slightly older, maybe. In fact, I had the crappy fortune of being one of the first boys in my class to hit puberty in middle school, a hormonal shift which resulted in a wispy ’stache I found positively mortifying at best and socially ostracizing at worst. What I would’ve given to be hair-free in those days!

Evolutionary advantages notwithstanding, facial hair is really just another accessory. You can grow it out for a few weeks and then shave it into weird shapes, but I promise you there are way cooler ways to get attention at a party. Like literally any magic trick, for instance. Not only is magic more entertaining, but it also require much less invest-

“CLASSICAL INDIA” — LECTURE DEMONSTRATION ON SOUTH INDIAN MUSIC & DANCE

Morse-Stiles Dance Studio // 7:00 mp.m.

Get your groove on with some Bharatanatyam.

ment than the time and care it takes to grow a beard and shave it into a pair of funny mutton chops right before a rager.

I don’t know who’s behind this (my current theory is that somebody’s got a vendetta against Gillette), but it would be great if it he or she would stop. It’s not a skill, folks. It’s not a hobby. I’m not a hero, though I’d be lying if I said I didn’t kind of like being treated like one.

So let’s stop beating around the beard. Some people can grow it; some people can’t. But isn’t the acceptance of those benign differences what makes America so great?

Yeah, I didn’t think this would go there either; just let it happen.

DEMOCRACY! Contact AUSTIN BERNHARDT at austin.bernhardt@yale.edu .

“IF ALL MEN ARE EQUAL, THEN ALL MEN ARE OF THE SAME ESSENCE, AND THE COMMON ESSENCE ENTITLES THEM OF THE SAME FUNDAMENTAL RIGHTS AND EQUAL LIBERTY … IN SHORT, JUSTICE IS ANOTHER NAME OF LIBERTY, EQUALITY AND FRATERNITY.” B. R. AMBEDKAR

YALE DAILY NEWS · FRIDAY, FEBRUARY 24, 2012 · yaledailynews.com

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WEEKEND COVER

AMONG BROTHERS W

elcome to Frat City.

In a three minute, 16 second music video that surfaced last December, Yale rappers “DaLegend” and “MC Lars” captured that simple message in their musical debut, informing Yale students that “frat city … runs the whole school.” The video continues, rhythmically chanting a sequence of different Yale fraternities — including 3, Delta Kappa Epsilon and Zeta Psi. While the video acknowledges the traditionally athletic fraternities ADPhi, DKE and Zeta, Yale is also home to a variety of other Greek organizations, including Sigma Alpha Epsilon, Sigma Phi Epsilon and Alpha Epsilon Pi, which all typically draw members of the student body beyond just sports teams.

But while existing fraternities on campus have attracted interested students every year, recent efforts to establish new chapters have not been met with the same success.

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their niche. Though University administrators were not opposed to the idea of a new fraternity, he said they did not lend as much support as administrators had at other universities.

But Alpha Sig’s recruitment challenges have not prevented other fraternities from considering expanding to Yale. Less than one month after Alpha Sig suspended official expansion efforts, another national fraternity, Chi Psi, has started looking into the possibility of establishing a chapter on campus. Justin Froeber, leadership consultant for Chi Psi fraternity, arrived at Yale on Wednesday for a two-day visit to the University. He spoke with student leaders and fraternity members in order to gain a better understanding of Yale’s Greek life culture and determine whether Chi Psi should begin formal expansion efforts at Yale.

“We initially opened at Yale in 1924 and we closed in 1963, and so we have a strong population of Chi Psi alumni who are also Yale alumni,” said Bradley Beskin, Chi

IT’S NOT THAT THERE’S ONE MODEL FOR ALL UNIVERSITIES IN THE COUNTRY AND YALE’S AGAINST THAT MODEL — WE’RE JUST A DIFFERENT MODEL.

“

Early last month, Geoff McDonald, coordinator of chapter and colony development for Alpha Sigma Phi fraternity, arrived on campus in an effort to recruit students interested in starting an Alpha Sig chapter at the University. Though McDonald had intended to be on campus for one month to build a solid group of “founding members” for an Alpha Sig chapter at Yale, he ultimately cut his visit short by 11 days, leaving New Haven on Jan. 31.

McDonald said his efforts to start an Alpha Sig chapter on campus were hindered by Yale’s lack of a central student center and “inter-fraternity council,” which he said limited his ability to contact students who had previously expressed interest in joining a fraternity but had not yet found

Psi assistant executive director.

“We have a rich history [with Yale] that we’d like to reconnect with.”

BACK TO THE ROOTS

Like Chi Psi, Alpha Sig also shares a historical connection with the University. The fraternity was first founded at Yale 167 years ago as a sophomore literary society, but membership declined following the start of World War II and disappeared from campus entirely in 1943. As a result, McDonald said, Alpha Sig’s efforts to reestablish its presence on campus mark an attempt by the fraternity to “go back to its roots.”

But reconnecting with its founding institution has not been easy. The absence of a Universitywide umbrella organization overseeing fraternity activity made

it difficult for McDonald to reach out to students who would be potentially interested in the new organization.

Compared to other institutions, which McDonald said have specified administrators tasked with managing Greek life, Yale’s fraternities are more independent from the administration, which made it more difficult to garner administrative support for his efforts.

According to John Meeske, associate dean for student organizations and physical resources, the process for establishing a new fraternity at Yale is the same as with any other undergraduate organization. Though a large majority of the University’s fraternities are not registered organizations with the Yale College Dean’s Office, Meeske said administrators would “certainly” review an application from any group of students who want to start a new organization.

Still, he added, the administration keeps Yale’s fraternities “at arms length.”

“We’ve chosen the route of having them be independent of Yale,” he said. “There are many [universities] with a real structure [to govern fraternities], and some have a hostile approach and some ignore the groups and let the things that happen just happen.

We’re in that range somewhere, but it’s not that we’re necessarily extreme. It’s not that there’s one model for all universities in the country and Yale’s against that model — we’re just a different model.”

In an interview last month, Dean of Student Affairs Marichal Gentry also affirmed that the Dean’s Office would be “receptive” to the formation of new groups if students expressed interest.

University administrators at other colleges are more involved in the Greek system, McDonald said, adding that he was able to recruit 56 founding members for an Alpha Sig chapter at the University of Arizona because of the larger Greek culture there. Unlike Yale, the University of Arizona has a central student center as well as an inter-fraternity council, and a large majority of the university’s fraternities are registered with the administration, said Aaron Tatad, one of the co-founders of the university’s recently established Alpha Sig chapter.

Tatad said the strong support from campus administrators facilitated communication and

helped ensure that all Greek organizations followed campus guidelines. He added that the close relationship between fraternities and administrators made it easier for fraternity leaders to speak with University officials if they thought the administration was “being too big brother.”

A SUCCESS STORY

But Alpha Sig’s comparative lack of success at Yale contrasts with previous expansion efforts from other fraternities in the last decade.

Sigma Phi Epsilon, or “SigEp,” founded its Yale chapter in 2003.

The new fraternity was meant to offer an alternative experience for students who wanted to join a social group on campus but had not yet found their match, said Aaron Shelley ’05, who cofounded the University’s SigEp chapter and served as the group’s chaplain in its inaugural year.

Similarly, Alpha Sig and Chi Psi representatives expressed these same goals when describing what roles they hoped their fraternities would fill on campus.

“The whole premise behind SigEp was that it was meant to be different from the other fraternities,” Shelley said. “Rather than going through an initiation process that really tried to break you down and mold you into somebody, the purpose was to pick people who already had an established image of themselves and use that to mold the fraternity.”

In a similar process to Alpha Sig’s and Chi Psi’s initial expansion strategies, the national SigEp headquarters had sent two recruiters to campus to garner student interest in establishing a Yale SigEp chapter, Shelley said.

Their proposal to bring SigEp to Yale seemed “fun and rewarding at the same time,” he added, and the other co-founders began recruiting additional students who they thought would be a good fit for the new fraternity.

SigEp grew pretty quickly at Yale, Shelley continued, adding that it was not difficult to get students interested in the new fraternity. By the end of the first year, SigEp had purchased a house on Lynwood Place and had “substantially” more students interested in living in the house than the space could accommodate.

SigEp has since relocated to High Street, moving into the house designed and formally inhabited

by Paul Rudolph, former Dean of Architecture from 1958-66. The fraternity’s move was contro-

versial since the group renovated the house, eliminating many of Rudolph’s original design elements.

“The downstairs [of the original house] would be packed with guys sitting along the walls, sitting on the furniture, sitting on the floors and standing by the stairs,” Shelley said.

He added that he thought SigEp — which currently has over 90 members — grew so quickly because there had been a “social vacuum” on campus for students uninterested in the University’s existing fraternities, which he said had included ADPhi, DKE and Zeta Psi. Shelley said he wanted SigEp to be the fraternity that “didn’t have to have a kegger” at social functions and that a “girl would be able to come and not have to worry about whether or not [the events] would be sketchy.”

In addition, he stressed that SigEp would not haze new members.

Shelley said he could not say why Alpha Sig was facing more difficulty attracting students for a new fraternity, though he said he thought there had been an especially strong need for a different type of social organization on campus during his time at Yale.

Their varying successes aside, student organizers of both the current and former initiatives faced similar experiences with University administrators.

McDonald said administrators were not opposed to the idea but did not actively promote expansion efforts, and Shelley said he thought administrators at the time were “kind of standoffish” in terms of supporting their efforts.

Shelley said he believes that administrators originally viewed SigEp as “just another fraternity” that said it would not haze. But he said it quickly garnered esteem in its first years: “There was definitely more respect [for SigEp] by the time I left,” he said. “All of us were involved in other aspects of student life. We had guys who were involved in a cappella groups [and] guys who wrote for the student newspaper. So [administrators] had been exposed to the guys who were in our fraternity in other settings.”

CURRENT GREEK CULTURE

Unlike some of Yale’s peer institutions, the University’s social scene is not as dependent on the Greek system, according to several fraternity leaders and SEE FRIENDS PAGE B8

// JOYCE SHAN

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YALE ANIME SOCIETY PRESENTS: “MONONOKE” Saybrook TV Room // 7:30 p.m.

Even if you are sick of hearing about endless events with Yale Anime, “Mononoke” is stellar. Get over it and get to the Saybrook TV Room.

YALE PHILHARMONIA, ALDO PARISOT, XU ZHONG, GUEST CONDUCTORS: HAYDN AND MAHLER

Sprague Memorial Hall // 8:00 p.m.

Mahhhhllllleeerrr. Everyone bleats: Mahhhhllllleeerrr.

“LICENSE TO TAP”

Off-Broadway Theater // 8:00 p.m.

Yale TAPS’ Annual Show, Missy Elliotinclusive.

“OF A SUDDEN HE FELT THAT FRATERNITY LIFE WAS THE ONLY WAY TO EXIST AT COLLEGE. HOW COULD HE HAVE DOUBTED?” FERROL SAMS

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YALE DAILY NEWS · FRIDAY, FEBRUARY 24, 2012 · yaledailynews.com

WEEKEND ARTS

‘SHAKESPEARE REMEMBERED,’ THE BARD THROUGH TIME AT THE BEINECKE // BY CAROLINE MCCULLOUGH

“Shakespeare Remembered,” the exhibition currently on display at the Beinecke Rare Book and Manuscript Library, tells the story of how one of many playwright’s in Elizabethan London became the Shakespeare our culture has come to know and love.

Although the exhibit reminds us that Shakespeare is singularly idolized, it traces the origin of his singular brilliance as a cultural process.

“One might argue that Shakespeare is a genius, and his long publication history is both the appropriate and necessary acknowledgement of that genius,” David Scott Kastan, George M. Bodman Professor of English at Yale and one of the exhibit’s curators, explained.

“The first half of that is true.

Shakespeare is a genius. His legacy might be an appropriate acknowledgement, but it wasn’t a necessary acknowledgement.”

The exhibition reminds the viewer that in various points in history, the continuation of Shakespeare’s legacy was at stake.

“Shakespeare Remembered” joins — one might argue centers — this semester’s collaborative celebration of Shakespeare at Yale. Curated by Kastan and Kathryn James, the Beinecke Curator the Early Modern and

Osborn Collections, the items in the exhibition borrow from the collections of the Yale’s Elizabethan Club, Irving S. Gilmore Music Library, Lewis Walpole Library, Yale Center for British Art, and the Beinecke Rare Book and Manuscript Library. The exhibition seems to be as much of a tribute to Yale’s astonishing resources as it is to Shakespeare.

In creating the exhibition, Kastan said he was most surprised by the depth of Yale’s collections, and more so how few people were aware of the actual extent of Yale’s holdings.

“No university in North America could have done any of this,” Kastan said. “Not only the gathering of this exhibition’s particular collection, but also the orchestration of Shakespeare at Yale as a whole.”

Upstairs, the displays range from striking portraits of Shakespearean actors by Carl Van Vechten, to an advertisement for Cole Porter’s “Kiss Me Kate” urging the viewer to “Brush Up Your Shakespeare,” to the seating chart from Charles Dickens’ wedding — his guests were arranged by Shakespeare quotes.

A certain element of playfulness and humor runs throughout the exhibition. Commenting on a deck of Shakespeare playing cards, James remarked, “That’s

when you really know you’ve become iconic.”

In addition to the Vechten photographs, the exhibit also includes other visually stimulating works such as oversized prints and panoramic drawings of London with the original Globe Theater in the distance. However, the exhibitions strength and focus lies in the early printings and texts found in the downstairs cases.

“One of the difficulties of exhibitions of books,” Kastan explained, “is that unless you are familiar with a particular edition, all the books tend to look the same. The challenge is to make the story clear and important for those who are not as familiar with the texts.”

The impeccable design and layout allows the exhibition to overcome this difficulty.

All of the cases are arranged predominantly in chronological order, grouped under subtitles such as “Reviving Shakespeare,” “Defining Shakespeare,” “Performing Shakespeare,” and “Shakespeare in America.” The items under these labels are then arranged into groups of five with individual placards explaining the significance of each in the

context of the case. This method of identification provides an incredibly logical and effectively coherent relation of the exhibition’s larger narrative without losing the integrity of individual items. As another viewer put it, “This is the most readable exhibit I’ve seen yet. I know what I’m reading, and I know exactly what goes with it.”

THE CHALLENGE IS TO MAKE THE STORY CLEAR AND IMPORTANT FOR THOSE WHO ARE NOT AS FAMILIAR WITH THE TEXTS. James explained that each placard contains one sentence highlighted in red in order to allow the viewer to engage with the texts, even if she wanted to move quickly through the exhibition.

The acute attention to quality of detail extends beyond the physical cases of the exhibi-

// KAMARIA GREENFIELD

Shakespeare at the Beinecke

Dickens turns 200: ‘Nicholas Nickleby’ (1912) celebrates the silence // BY JACK LINSHI

In case you missed it (I did), it was Charles Dickens’ 200th birthday on Feb. 7 — and in light of the English writer’s megastardom, people all over the world are celebrating. Dickens 2012, as the official celebration of the author’s “bicentenary” is named, is just one long party. Think of it as an intellectual Feb Club (and Jan Club and March Club): multiple events will be thrown each day of for the remainder of February, in

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addition to the daily events that have occurred this past January and that will continue through March.

Here at Yale, of course the celebrations will ensue. On Saturday, the Yale Center for British Art will screen “Nicholas Nickleby” (1912), directed by George Nichols. It is one of earliest film adaptations of Dickens’ famous novel by the same name. The plot follows a young man named Nicholas Nickleby, as he strug-

gles to support his mother and sister after the death of his father. The film condenses the long story into a mere 20 minutes — silently.

The YCBA’s choice to screen the silent version, one of the less popular and lesser-known film versions of “Nicholas Nickleby,” is an astutely relevant decision.

Look at the Academy Awards: the current Oscar front runner for Best Picture is “The Artist,” a French silent film that origi-

“LAUGH OUT LOUD!” (ASIANAMERICAN ARTS FESTIVAL) Sudler Hall // 8:00 p.m.

It’s comedy (but they’re professional and Asian.)

tion. Beinecke’s revolving door opens to a large and handsome “Shakespeare Remembered” sign that hangs over the security desk. There, the visitor finds the collection’s accompanying brochure. James explained that navigating a visitor through an exhibition at the Beinecke can be difficult given the placement of preexisting cases and the build-

nally didn’t make the competition at last year’s Cannes Film Festival. Right before the festival launched, it was moved into the competition category and ultimately lost. But when the film’s lead actor, John Dujardin, took home Best Actor, “The Artist” blew up in popularity. If it wins an Oscar, it’ll be the first silent picture to do so in nearly a century, when the first Academy Awards were held in 1929.

“Nicholas Nickleby” is a little different. On the most basic level, it attempts to fit Dickens’ novel into a small chunk of time. The novel is already popularly criticized for its lack of plot development, and to have such a short film perpetuates this original criticism. The film, too, struggles to connect with a modern audience, who understandably takes the sound revolution of the late 1920s for granted. For many of us, film depends on a combination of audio and picture, and “Nicholas Nickleby” provides only half.

REACH OUT BENEFIT CONCERT LC 102 // 8:00 p.m.

How joyous it is to have spring break — and so many people putting on events for you, the students of Yale, to enjoy in exchange for monetary support.

ing’s unique architecture. The exhibition’s brochure contains a clearly labeled map that successfully alleviates this problem.

The brochure is a condensed version of a larger “Remembering Shakespeare” catalogue.

“The catalogue is not just a wonderful memento of the show,” Kastan said, “but a serious articulation of the narrative. It will become an important scholarly contribution, but is also wonderfully readable for a non-scholarly audience as well.”

The exhibition encourages scholars and amateurs alike to engage with the texts themselves.

In preparing for the exhibit, the curators scanned many of the holdings of the Elizabethan Club and Beinecke archives that can now be accessed through the online portion of the exhibition.

“Long after the exhibition comes down, the scanned collections will be online for research,” James said. “That is something we were thinking of as the permanent contribution of the exhibition. That it would not only bring these items together physically, but also for scholarship going forward electronically.”

In addition, the Beinecke has installed iPads synced to the online exhibition. One can stand next to an original edition

To the viewer with less taste for the finer points of this classical form of cinema, the combination of lack of sound and century-old film technique hampers full appreciation.

But the film skillfully utilizes the limited techniques of the early 1900s. The background settings are not simply painted sets as was typical of the time, but are naturally built environments. The characters, too, are clear, defined, and personable without too much help or inter-

SILENT FILM IS SEEING ITS RESURGENCE, AND SO IS DICKENS’ MEMORY.

“TRANSLATIONS”

The University Theatre // 8:00 p.m.

The Dramat’s Spring Mainstage. Will it be decipherable?

of the “First Folio” while leafing through its pages online. The “First Folio” is the first collected edition of Shakespeare’s plays, and is responsible for the preservation of some if Shakespeare’s most beloved work.

“It is a wonderful example of how a modern rare book and manuscripts library can negotiate between the old physical copies that the library owns and the digital aspects that you can make available,” Kastan said. “This allows you to play back and forth between the two mediums in the same space.”

Both James and Kastan were interested in the ways in which the collection’s items demonstrate the historical development over time of a reader’s individual relationship with Shakespeare’s texts. Kastan pointed to an anonymous reader’s accurate correction of a printer’s mistake and a mysterious annotation in the margins of a 1599 edition of “Romeo and Juliet.” The exhibition begins and ends with an edition of the “First Folio,” one belonging to the Beinecke, the other to the Elizabethan Club.

James observed that the Elizabethan Club’s edition was much neater than the Beinecke’s, where “someone was so unconcerned with their[edition] that they wrote sums on it, smeared things all over it. This is exactly the way books would have been read in that period.”

Opposite Shakespeare’s iconic portrait in the “First Folio,” Benjamin Johnson, the book’s publisher, addresses the reader to look, “not on his Picture, but his Booke.” Ultimately the exhibition is not only about the man himself, but the ever changing and complicated connection of his legacy with the culture that has embraced him. “Shakespeare Remembered” highlights this dynamic relationship in a way that is truly unforgettable.

“Shakespeare Remembered” will be on exhibit from Feb. 1, 2012 to June 4, 2012 at the Beinecke Rare Book and Manuscript Library.

Contact CAROLINE MCCULLOUGH at caroline.mccullough@yale.edu .

ruption from captions. Even more, the short length is unlike other depictions of “Nicholas Nickleby” and allows the film to be comprehensible and digestible in a short 20 minutes. Other stage performances of the novel have been said to last upwards of eight hours, with multiple meals served as respites. While all shots are taken from a static camera, it’s important to evaluate the film in its historical context with the technological limitations of the times.

Ultimately, “Nicholas Nickleby” is both culturally relevant and a well-selected choice.

The YCBA has outdone itself in screening such a rare interpretation of Dickens’ third novel — you’re unlikely to encounter this rarity anywhere else. Silent film is seeing its resurgence, and so is Dickens’ memory.

Happy 200th, Mr. Charles Dickens.

Contact JACK LINSHI at jack.linshi@yale.edu .

“COMMON RIGHT IS NOUGHT BUT THE PROTECTION OF ALL RADIATING OVER THE RIGHT OF EACH. THIS PROTECTION OF ALL IS TERMED FRATERNITY.” VICTOR HUGO

YALE DAILY NEWS · FRIDAY, FEBRUARY 24, 2012 · yaledailynews.com

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WEEKEND BIKES

NEW HAVEN BIKE POLO RIDES, NEVER STOPS ROLLIN’ // BY CAROLINE TRACEY

F R I D AY F E B RUA RY 2 4

Haven from his hometown of Albuquerque last year so that his wife, Amy Coplen FES ’12, could attend the Yale School of Forestry and Environmental Studies. When not playing bike polo, Rivera works for Whole-G Bread and bakes at Book Trader Café twice a week.

Rivera didn’t play bike polo in New Mexico, but after following the blog of Albuquerque players, he decided to get it going in New Haven this summer. Its early players included friends of the couple — other FES students, Book Trader employees and their spouses. But helped along by Rivera’s black-and-white flyers featuring a silhouetted polo player surrounded by stars, word got out, and Rivera and his friends were joined by others.

Some of the newcomers turned out to be holdouts from an older — and rougher — episode of New Haven Bike Polo’s past. In September, Acock, a graphic designer and vegan baker who rides a black fixed-gear covered in stickers and spoke cards, and who has a fully tattooed right arm, appeared on the lot. He already had a mallet — made not of a ski pole but from a wooden dowel spraypainted black — and was well more maneuverable on the polo court than anyone else. After the games, he slipped references to how polo in New Haven used to be, before everyone involved got old, moved away, or “quit riding bikes” (“how do you quit riding bikes?” replied Rivera). He lauded Rivera for picking the same parking lot where polo used to be played, talked about the “Saturday Night Bike Fights” of yore, and started bringing friends from the old scene. Two of his friends came on BMX bikes one day, and joined the match at the very end, zooming in circles around everyone else like the seekers in a Quidditch match. Marty, a Devil’s Gear Bike Shop employee, started coming after the shop closed for the day. After games the group usually hangs around to talk, sometimes about v e g a n cup-

// NEW HAVEN BIKE POLO

Bike polo comes to New Haven.

cakes or local music landmarks, but mostly about fixing up bikes.

In the fall when leaves fell, Dude used a leaf-blower to clean the court; when snow fell in winter there were jokes to be made about “snow-lo” and a lot of sliding on curbside ice to wrangle the ball back into play. Daylight savings time in October meant that polo’s hours were suddenly dark, but Dude charged a glow-in-the-dark roller hockey ball with his headlights. Combined with the lights overhead, the game rolled on.

When the weather gets warmer, Rivera hopes to play more than once a week; Dude wants to make t-shirts to look extra official; there is always talk of matches against players from other cities.

On account of my enthusiastic attendance, Dude presented me this winter with my very own polo mallet. Instead of the communal ski poles, I now get to swing a wooden mallet with a design of purple, black and yellow stripes. And though I have a trophy shelf of Directed Studies tomes and a couple welldesigned t-shirts from my summer on the Yale Farm, I have to think that when I leave New Haven, it might be my best token to remember this eccentric city.

New Haven Bike Polo plays every Sunday from three to five at the AT&T parking lot at the corner of Audubon and Orange streets. You can learn more and stay in the loop at facebook. com /newhavenbikepolo, where it reminds you, polo is “free, fun, and casual!”

“

WHEN THE WEATHER GETS WARMER, RIVERA HOPES TO PLAY MORE THAN ONCE A WEEK; DUDE WANTS TO MAKE T-SHIRTS TO LOOK EXTRA OFFICIAL; THERE IS ALWAYS TALK OF MATCHES AGAINST PLAYERS FROM OTHER CITIES.

Contact CAROLINE TRACEY at caroline.tracey@yale.edu .

“THREE DAYS OF RAIN”

“CLUTCH YR AMPLIFIED HEART”

“THE GERSHINS GO CAMPING”

They tell us: “So, then, this is the story as I know it so far: My father was more-orless silent; my mother was more-or-less mad.” Review on p. 11.

And holy moley it’s GPSS night — free stuff and reductions. Read our review on p. 11.

All-star cast & crew, so we gon’ be there.

Calhoun Cabaret // 8:00 p.m.

“

According to the flyers, here is what you should bring to New Haven Bike Polo: 1) a bike. 2) a helmet. 3) a mallet (if you have one). 4) a good attitude.

That’s all you need. But if you have them, also useful are: 1) tattoos. 2) vegan baking skills. 3) past membership in a punk or metal band.

You won’t find polo shirts.

When you show up at the AT&T parking lot, you’ll be offered a mallet — a ski pole fitted at its base with a length of PVC pipe and taped up with colored stripes by Dude (not “the Dude,” just Dude). The mallets are constructed by Scott Rivera, who founded the current iteration of New Haven Bike Polo this past August. Next, Scott will give you a roller hockey ball so that you can practice before the game starts.

The rules of bike polo are simple. Two sets of orange cones, spaced the width of a bike, make a goal at each end of the parking lot. Teams — two, three, four people, depending on how many players show up — start at their own goal and the ball is set in the middle, where Rivera has taped an X on the asphalt. Someone yells, “3-2-1-POLO!” and the teams charge forth towards each other trying to pass and dribble the ball towards the opposite goal. You can use either side of the mallet to play, but must use the small side to score. Contact is discouraged, but between like things (bike to bike; mallet to mallet) it’s accepted. You cannot put your feet down. Bikes sometimes collide and people sometimes fall, but not so often as a cautious outsider might expect.

As Anthony Acock, one early New Haven Bike Polo player, said, “it never stops being an awkward game.”

Rivera is tall, has dark hair and wears hoodies, skinny jeans, and purple Converse sneakers.

He rides a white fixed-gear bike with black handlebars and at polo he is always friendly.

He came to New

Yale Cabaret // 8:00 p.m.

Trumbull College, Nick Chapel // 8:00 p.m.

“THE SPIRIT OF BROTHERHOOD RECOGNIZES OF NECESSITY BOTH THE NEED OF SELF-HELP AND ALSO THE NEED OF HELPING OTHERS IN THE ONLY WAY WHICH EVER ULTIMATELY DOES GREAT GOOD, THAT IS, OF HELPING THEM TO HELP THEMSELVES.” THEODORE ROOSEVELT

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YALE DAILY NEWS · FRIDAY, FEBRUARY 24, 2012 · yaledailynews.com

WEEKEND COVER

A SOCIETY OF FRIENDS

administrators interviewed.

Avi Arfin ’14, president of Alpha Epsilon Pi — one of the few campus fraternities registered with the Dean’s Office — said he thinks Yale has a smaller Greek culture because of the University’s housing system and the presence of senior societies.

Fraternities provide additional housing and dining options that might encourage students who are unsatisfied with their universities’ living arrangements to join a fraternity, Arfin said. But because most Yale students find the University’s housing situation “good enough,” they do not feel a need to move off campus or join a fraternity to give themselves that option, he said.

He added that Yale’s residential colleges already offer a social niche that is not as readily available at other universities and that senior societies have historically functioned as the campus’ social groups, thus removing the need for fraternities as a sphere for intimate social interactions. Though Arfin said he thinks the importance of senior societies has since declined, their previously strong role in Yale’s culture established a social environment that simply did not need fraternities in order to thrive.

“To some degree, there’s no good reason [why Yale does not have a larger Greek culture],” he said. “[The idea that] because fraternities haven’t been popular before, they aren’t popular now … [means] that that inertia doesn’t exist.”

Similarly, Meeske said he thinks Yale’s smaller fraternity presence is a “natural thing.” Students don’t come to Yale immediately expecting to join a fraternity, he said, adding that when students do decide to pledge, they make a “choice” rather than follow a social expectation.

ADPhi president Jamey Silveira ’13 said Yale’s fraternity culture is “unique” in that many fraternities are connected to different athletic teams, adding that he thinks the University’s fraternities can generally function as the “social arms” of varsity athletic teams. As a result, Silveira said, it is already “sort of predetermined” who will get involved with fraternities.

In addition, Silveira said Yale students are so active in other extracurricular activities that

S AT U R D AY F E B RUA RY 2 5

fraternity life becomes more of a “temporary commitment” than a part of college identity, a characteristic of Yale’s culture that Silveira said is not necessarily true at other universities.

“We’re so involved with so many different things,” he said.

“Like literally from the day you step on campus, you have hundreds of organizations giving you their pitches … so people get involved with fraternities, but it’s not like they play a huge role.”

But Silveira said he still thought fraternities fill a necessary role for students at Yale who need a place off campus where they can “just go and blow off steam.”

Cultural fraternities — including the African-American fraternity Alpha Phi Alpha — are among the plethora of fraternities represented in Yale’s past. Despite a long history that dates back to the early 1900s, Director of the AfroAmerican Cultural Center Rodney Cohen said in a Thursday email that Alpha Phi Alpha currently does not have any active members on campus.

He added that this is not unusual among cultural fraternities at Yale’s peer institutions, which he said have also experienced an “ebb and flow” in recruitment over the years.

Cohen said cultural groups have played an important role in the University’s historical development: members of Alpha Phi Alpha were active in helping form the Afro-American Cultural Center and Black Student Alliance at Yale. Cohen added that cultural fraternities — which he said were initially established on predominately Caucasian campuses to provide a “brotherhood” for African American men — continue to “promote community” among the African American population.

Just as fluctuations in membership are not uncommon among cultural fraternities, these vacillations can also be experienced by other social organizations on campus.

REACTING TO NATIONAL MEDIA

But Yale’s recent fraternity history has taken a more turbulent turn. After one of the University’s fraternities, DKE, came under national scrutiny in Oct. 2010 for its controversial hazing practices, in which pledges chanted “Yes means no, no means anal” on Old Campus, University administra-

“NICHOLAS NICKLEBY” SCREENING YCBA // 2:00 p.m.

Watch a silent film for Charles Dickens’ 200th birthday celebration! And bring your cake and eat it! Maybe outside, because it’s probably not allowed in the auditorium.

tors publicly condemned their actions and imposed restrictions on the fraternity.

In response to the controversy, Yale College Dean Mary Miller said in a May email to the student body that the Executive Committee had placed a five-year ban on all DKE campus activities and formally requested that the DKE national organization suspend the chapter for five years. Miller added that though it was unusual to announce ExComm’s decisions publicly, she thought it was important to share the Committee’s conclusions, since a “wide range of community members [had] been affected by this incident.”

Despite the sanctions, DKE members interviewed last December said they did not think the ban has significantly affected the fraternity’s activities. One senior DKE member, who wished to remain anonymous in order to maintain a positive relationship with existing DKE brothers, said he thought the ban’s primary effect was to “change the tone” of the fraternity.

“Each individual is more vigilant about what’s going on now than [they were] in the past,” he said. “I think now we pay more attention to basically how the actions of the fraternity affect people in the Yale community.”

Still, he said he did not think the controversy necessarily limited the group’s routine activities or ability to recruit new members, in part because DKE has traditionally drawn its membership from the football team. He added that he did not think DKE was a “particularly bad place or that there was anything wrong with it internally,” but that the recent scrutiny encouraged members to be more aware of the fraternity’s actions.

Shortly after the DKE incident, 16 Yale students and alumni filed a Title IX complaint in March with the Department of Education’s Office for Civil Rights alleging that the University had a hostile sexual environment. In response, University President Richard Levin convened the Advisory Committee on Campus Climate last April to evaluate the University’s sexual culture. In the Advisory Committee’s report, which was released last November, Committee members recommended that University officials establish a leadership council to govern Yale’s fraternities.

“IN ADVANCE OF THE BROKEN ART: THE SOCIAL AND THE POLITICAL IN THE MUSEUM TODAY” YUAG // 3:00 p.m.

Kenneth Reveiz brings us into the political, mind-bending FUTURE.

But at a “Yale Greek Roundtable” held with administrators and Greek organization leaders last fall to discuss the possibility of creating such a council, several fraternity presidents interviewed last semester said they were resistant to the idea. Some said they saw a new leadership council as a way for University administrators to exercise additional control, and others said such a council was unnecessary since fraternity presidents already communicate informally.

“It seems to us that the fraternities on campus are more independent… than [those] on other campuses,” Meeske said. “[Campus fraternity leaders] think in general that rules are stifling, whether they’re made by Yale administrators or the fraternity’s administration; it’s still someone telling them what they can or can’t do.”

“

administrators were “clearly reacting” to national media criticism without fully understanding how to prevent future accidents.

The new regulations will likely decrease tailgate attendance in the upcoming years, he said, adding that he thinks the lower turnout might discourage alumni who frequent football games and negatively affect Yale’s football program as a whole.

AN OPEN QUESTION

As Alpha Sig continues its informal recruitment efforts and Chi Psi decides whether to expand to Yale, fraternity leaders’ insistence that their groups’ daily activities have not been sigificantly affected indicate the relative independence of Yale’s Greek organizations and student body.

Despite campus discussion surrounding Yale’s fraternities, Silveira said he did not feel as if

EACH INDIVIDUAL IS MORE VIGILANT ABOUT WHAT’S GOING ON NOW THAN [THEY WERE] IN THE PAST.

Meeske added that Yale students were “independent in general” and typically preferred to make their own decisions.

Indeed, several fraternity leaders interviewed last month said they thought the University’s stricter tailgating policies, which banned kegs and unauthorized U-Hauls from all future tailgates, unnecessarily restricted fraternity activities. While some Greek organization leaders said they understood the need for the tighter regulations, others said the new policies — which were implemented after a U-Haul headed for SigEp’s tailgate crashed during the Yale-Harvard Game last November — were limiting. “[SAE] will certainly not be tailgating to the same capacity and numbers as before,” former SAE President Ben Singleton ’13 said in a January email. “The new rules are so overbearing compared to what we have been used to that I would assume there will be little interest among brothers in the fraternity.”

Singleton said he thought

“140 YEARS OF YALE CARTOONS”: PANEL & EXHIBIT OPENING TD South Common Room // 4:30 p.m.

We know that the Beinecke did a cartoon exhibit last semester, but this one is all about Yale. And we don’t know … maybe we just like Yale best?

“

BROTHERS FROM PAGE B3

he were “constantly walking on eggshells,” adding that he did not think students have “shied away” from fraternities any more than usual.

“It’s not like the cops have driven past [the ADPhi] house any more than they would normally,” Silveira said.

Still, the recent challenges that Alpha Sig has faced in returning to Yale — particularly in light of SigEp’s success less than a decade earlier — suggests that fraternity culture at Yale is not the same as it was when Shelley first began his recruitment efforts nine years ago.

Though Chi Psi representative Froeber left campus Thursday, the fraternity may return to the University if it decides to reestablish a chapter on campus.

For students hoping to join a fraternity, it remains to be seen whether they will have two additional options to select from during the rush season this coming fall.

Contact CAROLINE TAN at caroline.tan@yale.edu .

“WE ARE A GROUP OF FRIENDS, SCHOLARS, AND UNIQUELY TALENTED INDIVIDUALS. BUT AS BROTHERS, LIVING BY A COMMON CREED, WE ARE FAMILY.” SIGMA PHI EPSILON YALE UNIVERSITY — CT DELTA

YALE DAILY NEWS · FRIDAY, FEBRUARY 24, 2012 · yaledailynews.com

WEEKEND OFFICE

PAGE B9

SPACE

LOST UNDER PAPERS, A HISTORY: THE STORY OF YALE’S DESKS // BY TAPLEY STEPHENSON

Mas ter L aura ns There’s an impostor sitting in the president’s office.

But the fraud is not University President Richard Levin — it’s the desk he’s sitting behind.

When distinguished lawyer Francis Patrick Garvan 1897 and his wife donated the desk — part of the University’s 10,000-piece Mabel Brady Garvan Collection — Garvan said the desk was made by famed mid-18th century British furniture maker Thomas Chippendale. When he became president in 1993, Levin found the desk in his office, still on loan from the Yale University Art Gallery.

With its detailed wood and brasswork, the desk matches the master’s style so closely that even a furniture connoisseur like Garvan was convinced, and he made it his own personal desk. But Levin told WEEKEND that more recent scholarship suggests the fraudulent desk was made almost a century later than it appears.

“From Yale’s point of view, it’s nice because it’s the desk of Mr. Garvan, who gave Yale such a significant collection,” Levin said.

“It’s not an original Chippendale, but it’s a beautiful piece of furniture with a lot of ornate decoration.”

He added that atop this “beautiful piece” sits “a great picture of my wife, Jane.”

Today, Levin’s desk is one of the only pieces of furniture still lent out by the Yale University Art Gallery, said John Gordon, an assistant curator of American decorative arts at the Gallery. In the past, University administrators and college masters also borrowed pieces from the collection, but the policy ended several years ago, and most pieces have been returned to the Art Gallery.

Still, the desks of Yale’s administrators and masters have stories of their own, though many histories are fractured and unverified.

Perhaps the most historically compelling desk at Yale belongs to Penelope Laurans, Master of Jonathan Edwards College and special advisor to President Levin.

The front-drop desk is believed to have belonged to Jonathan Edwards 1720 himself. His family donated the desk to

r e l l i M n Dea

the college centuries later, along with the Joseph Badger portraits of Jonathan and Sarah Edwards, which also hang in the Jonathan Edwards master’s house.

The desk sits in the master’s house framed on three sides by a series of cupboards, which are also assumed to have belonged to Edwards, though Laurans said she was less sure about the cupboard’s origin.

“I do not use it as a desk, it is rather fragile — it is on display in the house, though,” Laurans said.

“There are little cupboards built around the desk, and it is said that Jonathan Edwards kept his sermons in the cupboards.”

Lauran’s work desk sits in the college’s master’s office, inundated by a sea of papers. The desk has remained tied to the position since the tenure of Beekman Cannon, who served as college master from 1961 to 1974.

Many of Yale’s desks have been tied to one position or another, though sometimes their histories have been less clear. Yale College Dean Mary Miller’s desk originally belonged to Henry Wright, who served as Yale College dean from 1884-1909. Since then, it has been used by every subsequent person to hold the post.

The desk is a “partners desk,” with a table laid over two large blocks. It is the same style as the “Resolute” desk that currently occupies the White House Oval Office, but unlike President Obama’s desk, Miller’s desk features a number of cabinets that face towards the visitor. She said it was likely that it had been used by two people in the past, with a set of cabinets for each person.

Miller added that she found a small document scotch-taped into a desk drawer, detailing the desk’s history, and she said she sent the piece to Yale’s Manuscripts and Archives. But archivists said they didn’t recall receiving any such document, so the story has since been lost.

Other desks at Yale are much less noticeable. University Secretary and Vice President Linda Lorimer’s desk

sits in a corner of her Woodbridge office, far away from the table where Lorimer has most of her meetings.

“When I arrived back at Yale, the desk in my office was about the size of a small aircraft carrier and didn’t give an inviting feel,” Lorimer said. “I scavenged around and found in University storage this beautiful drop front desk that Bart Giamatti had used in the same office that is now mine.”

University Archivist Judith Schiff said that many desks, along with other furniture items, are stored at the University’s library shelving facility in Hamden, Connecticut. The same facility stores Yale’s non-circulating library collection.

Lorimer added that Giamatti was president when she first worked at Yale as an assistant to the general counsel and then as the University’s youngest deputy provost, so the desk brings back “warm memories” from her earlier time at Yale.

But it’s not just the desk that has a special meaning. H.W. Fowler’s “Modern English Use” sits on the top of Lorimer’s desk as a tribute to her first executive assistant, Kathy Perrone, who died suddenly in the late 1980s.

“She was the best editor and grammarian I have ever know, and this book reminds me of her,” Lorimer said.

The Mabel Brady Garvan Collection is part of the Yale University Art Gallery’s American Decorative Arts Collection, which has 18,000 pieces.

Contact TAPLEY STEPHENSON at tapley.stephenson@yale.edu .

// JOYCE XI AND TAPLEY STEPHENSON

If the desk fits

Pre side nt L evin

Vice President Lo rimer

S AT U R D AY F E B RUA RY 2 5

YALE SCHOOL OF ART MFA THESIS EXHIBITION PART II RECEPTION Green Hall Gallery // 7:00 p.m.

WE LUV GRAD STUDENTS WHO MAKE ART and School of Art events coordinators who make really long event titles.

ISO DATE AUCTION

Toad’s Place // 7:30 p.m.

THE HAVEN STRING QUARTET PRESENTS “OUT OF AFRICA, INTO EUROPE”

Word on the street is an evening with Unitarian Society of New Haven some of our very own WEEKEND babies // 7:30 p.m. will be auctioned at this international dream show. We swoon.

Performing Steve Reich’s “Different Trains,” once described as “the only adequate musical response — one of the few adequate artistic responses in any medium — to the Holocaust.”

“I BELIEVE IN THE BROTHERHOOD OF ALL MEN, BUT I DON’T BELIEVE IN WASTING BROTHERHOOD ON ANYONE WHO DOESN’T WANT TO PRACTICE IT WITH ME. BROTHERHOOD IS A TWO-WAY STREET.” MALCOLM X

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YALE DAILY NEWS · FRIDAY, FEBRUARY 24, 2012 · yaledailynews.com

WEEKEND COLUMNS

RAVEL: THE GREATEST SWISS WATCHMAKER

Let’s Get Physical!

We live in a society that is glued to its laptops, iPads, smartphones and pagers. It’s rare when a concert isn’t interrupted by at least one ringtone, and if you don’t update your Facebook status at least five times during the course of a lunch, you’re not being social enough. The pocket and purse have become temporary holders for devices that get taken out again 30 seconds later, because checking email is only done obsessively or not at all (and *never* not at all).

This is a problem, for two reasons. First, we keep wasting lots of time reaching into our pockets to pull out our phones — time that could be better spent playing Angry Birds on our phones.

Second, the minimal movement needed to constantly store and un-store these devices prevents our arm muscles from fully atrophying the way nature intended.

Enter The Future. These problems are a thing of the past, because we no longer interact with the world through screens, but instead project our own images into the world. (Think: “Help me, Obi-Wan Kenobi.

You’re my only hope.”)

Seem too far-fetched? The New York Times just reported that Google is building headsup display glasses scheduled for release by the end of 2012.

The glasses will display live data based on the surroundings, and overlay that data on top of what you see, like the glasses in “The Terminator,” “RoboCop” and pretty much every other sci-fi movie ever. By controlling them with subtle tilts of the head, you can play Fruit Ninja in seminar while the professor sees you as simply nodding enthusiastically or cracking your neck or having a seizure.

But that’s something only you can see. What about projecting images out into the world, like that miniature flickering Princess Leia in “Star Wars”?

Researchers at the University of Arizona say they’re close to having the technology for real-time 3D holographic video projection, using the same basic principles that underlie security holograms on drivers’ licenses. Which means that instead of floating in midair, the projections lie on a thin screen, though the researchers are quick to point out the difference between a 3D movie like “Avatar” and this technology, as it allows you to see different perspectives by moving your head.

In The Future, Skype will use this technology (though hopefully it’ll have evolved beyond the low-resolution, “Matrix”-green laser images of the UofA demo videos), and people will never

JACOB EVELYN THE FUTURE again have to suffer the injustice of moving their heads and not having a video’s perspective change. Oh, and nobody will talk on phones anymore, obvi.

In The Future, we’ll react and interact with the digital world through our surroundings, rather than escaping through a tiny screen on something once designed for calling friends and being more social. But don’t worry: we’ll still do a whole lot with the Internet. Take, for example, online shopping. Right now the biggest problems with online shopping are logistical: How quickly will items be shipped? What happens if they don’t arrive at all? What do you do if you want to return something?

Science fiction solves these problems with teleportation, also known (in bad sci-fi plots) as “3D faxing” — sending a tangible object electronically and reconstructing it at the other end. The real-world version of this is called 3D printing, and the concept is simple: send a printer blueprints, and it builds an object by stacking lots of tiny layers of glue-like material. Right now, 3D printing is mostly a way for nerdy people to fabricate 20-sided dice for Dungeons and Dragons, but a company headed by engineer Enrico Dini suggests using it for houses, with a printer the size of a warehouse. The building material is sand mixed with a sort of magic super-strong sand-glue.

Proponents of 3D printing see it as the next generation of online shopping — want a book or a Wenzel or a pet spaniel? Buy the plans online and print it in seconds! — and to an extent this may be the case (3D food printers, for example, already exist).

But 3D printing isn’t just for the realm of humans: the GOLEM project in 2000 was a Brandeis University robotics experiment that automated the coevolution of robotic bodies and brains. The project automatically printed real robots, and allowed the cruel physics of the real world to naturally select and evolve the best ones. In The Future, when our smartphones become just a little too smart, that new iPhone will evolve and 3D-print other iPhones, which will print other iPhones, which will finally take over the world. If only Siri believed in birth control …

In my freshman year of high school, my piano teacher, an ebullient, shrewd Japanese woman, plopped down a thick manuscript on the desk before me. “This,” she said, with a devilish glint in her eye, “will be our next project.” Let me preface this anecdote with a confession: I am not, nor have I ever been, a fine pianist. I peered at the yellowed cover — “Piano Concerto in G – Maurice Ravel” stared back at me. Sensing my bewilderment, she quickly added, “Don’t worry, we’re just going to learn the first movement!” I gulped. My dread, however, quickly turned to fascination, for this concerto was exotic, peculiar and unlike anything I’d ever heard or played before.

Born on March 7, 1875 in Ciboure, a small French town nestled by the Spanish border, Maurice Ravel was a bit of an oddball. At the tender age of 14, Ravel enrolled in the Paris Conservatory, whose distance from home he felt keenly. He was not an average boy, and certainly not a “bohemian”: he was short and slight, and took great care in grooming himself. Amidst several trying decades — which included a horrific deployment in World War I and the death of his mother — Ravel swiftly found his muse. In 1928, he undertook a four-month performance tour in the United States, an experience that had profound effects on his subsequent musical style. While in New York City, Ravel met storied American composer George Gershwin, who took the Frenchman to hear live jazz in Harlem. As legend has it, Gershwin let on that he would like to study with Ravel; the Frenchman retorted: “Why do you want to become a

Contact JACOB EVELYN at jacob.evelyn@yale.edu .

BRAD TRAVIS BACK TO THE CLASSICS second-rate Ravel when you are already a first-rate Gershwin?”

It was on this tour that Ravel intended to play an original concerto, but his busy schedule postponed his work on the score until 1929. Though delayed further by a commission from a one-armed Austrian pianist (the result of which was his famous Piano Concerto for the Left Hand), Ravel finally completed the score for his Piano Concerto in G on Nov. 14, 1931. The process, however, was far from painless. Ravel remarked not a few times that the concerto was giving him considerable trouble — “The concerto is nearly finished and I am not far from being so myself,” he wrote to friend and conductor Henri Ribaud.

The second movement, one of the greatest things to come from his pen, especially tormented him. He wrote of the opening, “That flowing phrase! How I worked over it bar by bar! It nearly killed me!”

Despite his frustration, the finished product was magnificent. Smitten with the jazz he had heard first-hand with Gershwin, Ravel cleverly wove his own bluesy elements into the score (most notably in the first movement). And although the second movement caused him great consternation, he later revealed that Mozart had been his guiding muse in crafting its opening theme, immediately recognizable and supremely placid. Unfortunately, Rav-

// CREATIVE COMMONS

Maurice Ravel was born on March 7, 1875.

el’s constant poor health — exacerbated by his maniacal practicing of Lizst and Chopin — precluded his premiering the work. Instead, he took the podium while renowned French pianist Marguerite Long debuted the concerto in 1932.

Since its American debut on April 22, 1932 (in actuality, simultaneous performances given by the Philadelphia Orchestra and Boston Symphony Orchestra), Ravel’s Piano Concerto in G has left a lasting mark on the modern piano repertoire. It is at once fiery, impassioned and yet remarkably cerebral. Ever the perfectionist, Ravel crafted his Piano Concerto in G with an incredible precision. Igor Stravinsky, in fact, referred to Ravel as “the most perfect of Swiss watchmakers.” As I struggled through that first movement, I felt as though I was building a hopelessly complex machine myself. Yet, despite his machinelike meticulousness, Ravel never composed without sensitivity. That evening, nearly six years ago, as I listened to a recording of this very concerto for the first time, I felt as though I understood Ravel when he said that “Music … must be emotional first and intellectual second.”

Contact BRAD TRAVIS at brad.travis@yale.edu .

Who will win big at the Oscars?

At this point, guessing the major Oscar winners is worthless — we pretty much know who’s going to win the big ones.

Instead, what makes the prediction process fun is its capacity to inspire debate: Sure, we know Meryl Streep is going to win, but should she?

And for those of us filling out mock ballots, this argumentative gray area provides just about all the excitement we can hope to glean from the Oscars, especially considering that half the celebrities who end up winning don’t seem to care. (Given the choice between Sean Penn’s acceptance speech from 2009 and Three 6 Mafia’s party on stage in 2006, I’d choose DJ Paul and Juicy J every single time.)

So without further ado, let’s jump right into this Sunday’s four biggest Oscar categories by sorting out who deserves to win from who actually will, making our bold predictions as we go.

MICHAEL LOMAX CINEMA TO THE MAX BEST PICTURE

“The Tree of Life” most deserves the Oscar, and my defense is simple: no movie was more daring and had more to say about humanity than Malick’s all-encompassing work of art.

That being said, it’s a movie made by Terrence Malick. First of all, the famously reclusive auteur probably won’t even show up to the ceremony, and second, the universal one-line description of the film is “DINOSAURS!!!!”

That’s not a good sign.

Instead, most Hollywood voters only have two options: “The Descendants” and “The Artist.” On the one hand, we have an Alexander Payne movie (think a better “Sideways,” with less Paul Giamatti and more Hawaii). On the other hand, we have a silent French film about a silent Amer-

S AT U R D AY F E B RUA RY 2 5

ican movie star caught in a career slump. Please. This pick is much easier than people seem to think.

It’s awkward tragicomic Alexander Payne versus a heartwarming success story with an innovative plot — book it. Harvey Weinstein isn’t leaving Kodak without an Oscar. Terrence Malick and his dinosaurs be damned.

Pick: “The Artist”

BEST DIRECTOR

Again, Terrence Malick has earned this Oscar. “The Tree of Life” is definitively his film; no other director poured as much of himself into a movie as Malick did this year. But the film is too metaphorical, too sweeping, too Malick (“DINOSAURS!!!!”). He really doesn’t have a shot in hell of winning, and that’s truly too bad.

So it comes down to kooky Alexander Payne and newcomer Michel Hazanavicius (“The Artist”). And even if their films were true competitors (not at all, in

“GOOD GOODS”

Yale Rep // 8:00 p.m.

Last day to see the Yale Rep’s world premiere of “Good Goods”! Get ’em while they’re hot.

my opinion), the general rule of thumb is to predict the winner based on how cool his name sounds. Hazanavicius. Seems like an Oscar winner to me.

Pick: Michel Hazanavicius

BEST ACTOR

George Clooney and Jean Dujardin are in the only real battle of the evening. Dujardin is the sexy pick — the suave French throwback actor whose one line of dialogue in “The Artist” makes your knees quake “with pleasure.” But across from him is Hollywood humanitarian George Clooney, the American whose role as Dr. Ross on “ER” through the mid-’90s did the same thing that Dr. House did in the 2000s: make being a doctor cool.

The problem here is perception. People seem to think that George Clooney is overdue for an Oscar — but what should he have won it for? “Batman & Robin”?

Clooney is a very good actor, and he’s recently been in some pretty

YALE PHILHARMONIA: WILLIAM CHRISTIE

Sprague Memorial Hall // 8:00 p.m.

Guest honcho Christie leads the show.

good films, but what’ll carry him to the Oscar is his status of being George Fuckin’ Clooney. In comparison, Jean Dujardin doesn’t stand a chance, even if he gave the best performance of the year.

He’s handsome, yes, talented, yes, and starred in what will probably win Best Picture, yes, but he’s still not George Clooney. Only the French equivalent.

But in a lot of ways, the time seems a little off for Clooney.

The field is too open. When Clooney wins Best Actor, it’ll be because he was the absolute hands-down favorite to win. No debate. And if you think about it, Clooney probably wouldn’t have it any other way.

Pick: Jean Dujardin

BEST ACTRESS

Michelle Williams did work in “My Week with Marilyn,” and the Oscars love biopics (and their quasi-counterparts). And Rooney Mara (in my personal favorite female performance of

SOMETHING EXTRA’S 35TH ANNIVERSARY JAM WHC // 8:00 p.m.

Do you a cappella?

the year) was equally provocative and captivating in “The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo.” But these two young ’uns cancel each other out.

Enter: Meryl Streep. The reigning Hollywood goddess is a surefire win this Sunday, for not only was her acting topnotch, but if you want to make a list of overdue Oscar winners that are still alive, I’d nestle her somewhere in the top five. (It still astounds me that she’s gone 30 years without a Best Actress Oscar.)

Pick: Meryl Fuckin’ Streep So that’s that — I’ve done the best I can. Hopefully I’m more right than wrong, but then again, hopefully there are some surprises this year.

Either way, at least we’ve got Billy Crystal to entertain us.

Contact MICHAEL LOMAX at michael.lomax@yale.edu .

“HAVING CHILDREN IS LIKE LIVING IN A FRAT HOUSE — NOBODY SLEEPS, EVERYTHING’S BROKEN, AND THERE’S A LOT OF THROWING UP.” RAY ROMANO

YALE DAILY NEWS · FRIDAY, FEBRUARY 24, 2012 · yaledailynews.com

PAGE B11

WEEKEND THEATER

REDISCOVER LOVE WITH AN ‘AMPLIFIED HEART’ // BY NATASHA THONDAVADI

I have a confession. I can’t count the times when, listening to a song with a pumping beat and trying to stay awake through those last 100 lines of Latin, I have just wanted to get up, flail my arms around and dance. Let’s not lie, I do this all the time. It’s obviously one of the best parts of having a single. Unfortunately, I can’t dance.

But the cast of the Yale Cabaret’s “Clutch Yr Amplified Heart Tightly and Pretend” can really shake it. With a sense of looseness and freedom it would

take countless hours of yoga to achieve, the seven men and two women in the show bounced and shimmied energetically enough to enliven my mind, deadened as it was by midterms and housing and all sorts of “yalegrlproblems.”

“Amplified Heart” explores the full range of emotions surrounding that most discussed and least understood of subjects: love.

Beginning and ending with powerful monologues on subjects ranging from love’s ability to be defined to any and all underlying

AT TIMES I FELT WARM AND CAREFREE, AS IF I WERE RUNNING ON A BEACH.

existential angst, the majority of the show was composed of short dance (and other movement) sequences set to an inspiring soundtrack of easily recognizable indie pop hits with escapable names.

The show’s specific plot is indescribable. Rather, the hybrid effect of lighting changes, movement, vocal tone, and music creates a set of images and feelings in the viewer’s mind. I could say how I felt at every moment, but I know that these feelings would apply only to me, since every scene surely evokes some memory of romantic experience in each individual. At times I felt warm and carefree, as if I were running on a beach. At others, the cold, dark atmosphere of the Cabaret faded to the warm and fuzzy feeling of cuddling in my bed. The lack of specific characters normally would have irked me, but in “Amplified Heart,” it was refreshingly universalizing.

Such intangibles are not overwhelming in the context of the cast’s light tone and willingness to make fun of themselves. One memorable scene follows a couple through their day as a third actor creates a range of sound effects from a corner. The ventriloquism is flawless and the noises range from cartoon-like squeaks to dead-on animal impressions.

Not a single member of the cast or audience shied away from a smile during one of the many carefree dance sequences.

Yet this sense of humor does not detract from the show’s ultimate introspection. The many light scenes are tempered by moments of hurt and relationship carnage. One dance routine, in which the majority of the cast donned masks made of colored, transparent material, ended in the seeming automation of the group. One actor was left out.

Happiness quickly turned to lack, tranquility to frustration, as the lone sheep grew more and more paranoid about his isolation. The eventual flight of the cast out of

‘Three Days of Rain’ lets the love shine through // BY YANAN WANG

“This is the day, Nan. We’re going to finally find out what belongs to us.”

“Three Days of Rain” at the Calhoun Cabaret tells the story of two architects and their children’s quest to piece together their parents’ legacies.

Beginning in a sparse Manhattan studio apartment, siblings Walker (Tommy Bazarian ’15) and Nan (Christine Shaw ’14) are reunited after a year of separation. Walker, who disappeared after their father Ned Janeway’s birthday, has returned to take possession of the Janeway House, his father’s architectural masterpiece. They meet with their childhood friend Pip (Paul Hinkes ’15), whose father, Theo, was Ned’s business partner. The three of them read Ned’s will only to discover that the Janeway House was bequeathed not to

his children but to Pip. Tensions escalate as Walker accuses Pip of having manipulated his father, and what ensues is a whirlwind account of their parents’ parallel and interconnected lives.

The set of the production is designed like the blueprint of a house. Since the stage is surrounded by a skeletal frame built of white beams, you are given the sense of entering an architect’s mind. Near the beginning of the first scene, the characters address the audience in a sort of monologue, chronicling the key moments of their parents’ lives with poetry and emotion.

Walker breathlessly describes the Janeway House, designed by his father, as work of such architectural brilliance that it could only have been created from “an intuition held in reserve.”

“There’s a different kind of

THE HOUSE IS THE FANTASTICAL CREATION OF NED’S SILENT, TORTURED MIND.

S U N D AY F E B RUA RY 2 6

light in every room, at every hour,” Walker says.

The house is the fantastical creation of Ned’s silent, tortured mind, made even more complex by his wife Lina’s insanity. The plot is forwarded by Walker’s discovery of his father’s journal.

His first entry reads: “1960, April 3-5. Three days of rain.” In the following scenes, the same actors play the roles of Ned (Bazarian), Theo (Hinkes) and Lina (Shaw), retracing the fateful happenings of that documented downpour.

While this shift in perspective is a little abrupt, the actors’ seamless chemistry makes it work. Bazarian, as Ned, skillfully embodies the role of an anxious, slightly neurotic young architect trying to make a breakthrough.

As Theo, Hinkes provides force to the narrative, but the story is really about the two lovers dancing around him. While Shaw is slightly too melodramatic as Nan, she portrays her always-on-edge mother, Lina, with grace and balance. Even though she comes across as poised and witty, we are also able to glimpse a bit of the madness that will plague her in the future. On a rainy drive through Ned’s neighborhood, the two of them run into each other

POETRY AND MYSTICISM, A SYMPOSIUM Bingham Hall // All day

And from day there was night, and from night day.

the Cabaret recalled the undeniable and universal pain of a break-up.

When combined with the show’s overall aesthetic, the wounds are quickly bandaged up and, for the most part, forgotten about. Beautiful symmetries in both the show’s overall structure and each individual scene impart the message that despite heartbreak, the cycle of life and love keeps on. You realize that you may even enjoy the melancholy of too much emotion, you may even benefit from it.

After all they’ve been through,

the cast ends up sitting on the floor of the Cabaret with their backs to the audience, connected by their shared experiences — both the happy times and the losses. A group of stars, simulated by shining a light onto a disco ball, flashes in front of them. The speed of their orbits increases with the pace of the music. The interaction of music and the star-speckled darkness invoked the simultaneously collective, yet deeply personal experience of an outdoor concert on a warm summer’s evening. I can still acutely remember being

and proceed to spend the next three days braving the downpour in each other’s company. Between salad and religious debate, Ned and Lina fall in love.

The banter between the characters sets a rhythmic pace for the play. Each anecdote leads to another, and the dialogue is rife with literary references to keep you on our toes. Back in the present, the conflict between Walker and Pip is caused by Pip muttering, “Oedipus doesn’t make sense.” Other times, though, the allusions probably cause more confusion than amusement: for instance, when Walker burns his father’s journal, he declares, “I feel like Hedda Gabler!”

The pieces of introspective monologue interwoven between

action scenes help to slow down the otherwise accelerated pace of the production. There is a particularly poignant scene at the beginning where Walker stands alone on stage and recalls his 8-year-old self chasing a drugcrazed mother down “thousands of flights of stairs.”

“She was rocking back and forth on her haunches,” he said, “muttering to herself in a language of her own invention. And then she ran.”

Through a child’s eyes, he describes the almost surreal feeling that overcame him as he watched his mother escape from his reach and propel her body through the apartment building’s glass façade: “There was this moment, before the blood

“THE CONVERSATOR’S DILEMMA: SCIENCE, ETHICS, AND ART” YUAG // 2:00 p.m.

DJ LoMo in da house!

“LACRIME DI LEO”: A CONCERT FOR THE POPE LEO X

Yale Collection of Musical Instruments// 3:00 p.m.

Ladiladila Sundays are Churchy, you know.

// KAMARIA GREENFIELD

“Clutch Yr Amplified Heart Tightly and Pretend” at the Yale Cabaret.

blown away by the magic of such an occasion and the sheer size of the spectacle. Somehow, being in the tiny cabaret with just nine actors and a few members of the crew made me feel the same way.

Contact NATASHA THONDAVADI at natasha.thondavadi@yale.edu .

started, that she looked like crystal.”

The plot of “Three Days of Rain” is simple, but endearingly so. There are times when the narrative is predictable, but the play doesn’t put on any airs — it lays out life as it is through the eyes of young, struggling architects. As Ned proclaims to Lina, “There’s no secret to be found: just energy, whims, personality!”

Contact YANAN WANG at yanan.wang@yale.edu .

// KAMARIA GREENFIELD

“Three Days of Rain” at the Calhoun Cabaret.

“NO MATTER THE LETTER WE’RE ALL GREEK TOGETHER.” GREEK PLEDGE QUOTE

PAGE B12

YALE DAILY NEWS · FRIDAY, FEBRUARY 24, 2012 · yaledailynews.com

WEEKEND BACKSTAGE

ROYA HAKAKIAN

// ROYAHAKAKIAN.COM

Passionate, introspective, strong // BY NATASHA THONDAVADI

Q. Is it difficult for you to write about Iran, knowing that you can’t go back?

A. Yes and no. It’s a mixed bag of lots of different feelings. On the one hand, I have created my own Iran in a virtual, literary, intellectual fashion, and that’s the Iran that to some degree I can remember. That’s the Iran I like the most.

It’s sort of a medley of things I carry with myself that I love and are somewhat being forgotten since there are certain parts of Iranian history and tradition that have been made obscure in the past 33 years. So I connect to that virtual Iran. Also thanks to Facebook and the electronic media, my contacts over the past several years have suddenly increased, and the degree to which I now have access to those inside the country on a day-to-day basis has grown in a way I never expected. So not being able to have access to the physical Iran does cause a great deal of nostalgia, of course, but many other avenues have opened up that I look forward to every day when I wake up and can check messages from friends there.

Q. How does your Iranian heritage impact your journalistic endeavors?

Do you think it’s easier for an Iranian to write about Iran?

A. I never write about things that require me to be anyone other

than who I am. In every piece I have written, it is clearly established that I’m a person in exile, and I don’t try to pretend that I’m going to be objective and have sympathies for all sides. I also don’t cover stories that require me to have access to, say, the president of Iran. So I mostly do stories for which my own particular coordinates need not be hidden.

Of course, there are stories for which my own particular coordinates bring a certain amount of cachet too. Being who I am gives me access to some who would otherwise be inaccessible. For my new book, for instance, I managed to spend tens of hours with those who had been in Europe and were victims of various terrorism operations by Iran, who were Iranian dissidents and had never actually told their stories to anyone. I have something close to 500 hours of interviews with people with whom I simply sat down. I allowed them to talk at any rate in any which way they wanted to. So no, I don’t think you have to be an Iranian to do that, but I think having a certain amount of familiarity does create the possibility for bonding.

Q. You’ve said that connecting to the people you interview is an important step of the journalistic process. How does this differ between television journalism and print journalism?

A. I find that whatever your medium is, you are required to tweak or adjust your strategies. When I was in TV, I couldn’t afford to be as open-ended as I am in interviewing folks for print.

In television, the clock is always ticking, and it costs hundreds of dollars in camera, lighting and sound time — there is a huge team of people involved. Television production in general also does not allow you to arrive at that final interview and still not know what it is that you’re going to hear.

You will have done all your legwork prior to arriving at the point of recording, so that there are no surprises. That really changes the nature of the conversation and in essence you’re doing the reverse of what I just suggested, in that you precisely ask questions to which you know the answers. You have to structure, prior to the final interview, the course of the interview itself.

Q. Do you then feel that people reveal less to you when you interview them for television?

A. No, but I think the processes by which [print and television journalism] unfold are very different.

And what often ends up affecting the amount someone says in an interview is whether they are someone in power or a victim — their willingness to engage you ends up being totally different.

Those who are in power will give you a lot less of their time and are less willing to be flexible, while those who are victims or have been victimized have a very different attitude.

Q. How does that impact your decisions about what to write?

A. I’ve generally been drawn to stories that aren’t ‘hot,’ so to speak. You’ll hardly ever see me write a story about the nukes in Iran, for instance, which is precisely what everyone else is writing. This is not to say that I’m against these stories or that they’re the wrong issues to cover, but I think that there are only so many people who can write about the same thing at once. On the other hand, then, there are those of us who, because of depth of cultural familiarity or other avenues of intimacy with the subject, can open up other windows on the Iranian landscape, which has been covered to exhaustion. So I think the contribution of someone like me to this whole debate about Iran is to open up precisely the windows that aren’t being opened by others on this very covered landscape of Iran.

Q. What, then, made you attracted to the topic of “Assassins of the Turquoise Palace”?

A. It started out really from sheer stubbornness. I had written a memoir that had been pretty successful, and many people including my editors and my publishers were interested in my doing a sequel to the memoir. My first reaction was ‘of course not’ — I’m going to do something different. I realized that in order to remain an artist and be a truly creative person, I needed to try something else. It was in a quest to find that other thing that I initially entertained the idea of writing a novel, but then I had an encounter with a survivor of the Iranian assassination that took place in a restau-

rant in Berlin in 1992. I knew the broad strokes of the incident, but spending time, something close to several weeks, with this survivor, convinced me that not just the killing itself, but also the investigation and the verdict of the trial, were some of the most important yet not properly told stories of the past several decades. I not only thought it would be a challenge for me as a writer to break away from first-person narrative, but that it would also perhaps be a contribution to extending and expanding the current understanding about Iran and the lives of Iranians for Western communities.

Q. In what ways did the project end up satisfying that quest for creative fulfillment?

A. It was like piecing together a mathematical puzzle. Not so much because I had to investigate anything — the material was all there — but because figuring out how to tell a very complex story that involves hundreds or dozens of important characters and takes place somewhere unknown to your readers about a subject they’re unlikely to have heard anything about truly requires mathematical precision. There’s so much background information that needs to be established.

I had to decide which characters to keep in and which to leave out, and what aspects of the story to indulge myself in telling when they were slightly extraneous to

“

the plot. It was interesting to try to figure out how to manage the tempo and how to keep the narrative moving forward while providing background. Everything required a lot of balance.

Q. What was your process for figuring it all out?

A. It took me more than a year after I first began writing. I was just mapping out for myself and trying to figure out the skeleton. In the office where I work at home, I have a wall that is covered with corkboards, and I had index cards that laid out the general chronology and the division of characters.

It then took a year to figure out a skeleton of the story that I thought people could follow.

Q. And now that the project is done, are you looking into trying your hand at other genres? What are you working on now?

A. Certainly not another crime novel. I’ve been looking into the story, another nonfictional one, of the first Iranian who ever became an American citizen. I think the story of this first Iranian-American citizen is emblematic of where we are today. I don’t know if it’s a book yet, but it has certainly captured my attention. I also have an op-ed running this Sunday [in the New York Times].

Contact NATASHA THONDAVADI at natasha.thondavadi@yale.edu .

IT STARTED OUT REALLY FROM SHEER STUBBORNNESS.

“

B

orn to a Jewish family in Iran in the mid-sixties, Roya Hakakian fled to the United States in 1985 on political asylum. She has since become well known as a Persian poet and an Iranian-American journalist, publishing essays in prominent newspapers, such as the New York Times and Washington Post, and a memoir in addition to working on several television news programs.

Her latest book, 2011’s “Assassins of the Turquoise Palace,” delves into the complexities surrounding the 1992 assassinations of Iranian resistance leaders at the Mykonos restaurant in Berlin.