the travel issue (09.17.09)

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09.17.09 vol. xli, no. 3

2 [email protected] 09.17.09 The Harvard Independent

The Indy dreams of distant lands.

Cover art by PATRICIA FLORESCU

Sports

News in Brief

Travel Photo Feature

Kayaking on the Charles

The Final DestinationThe Boy Who Knew Too MuchWine and BaudelaireTeaching Modern Classics

As Harvard College's weekly undergraduate newsmagazine, the Harvard Independent provides in-depth, critical coverage of issues and events of interest to the Harvard College community. The Independent has no political affiliation, instead offering diverse commentary on news, arts, sports, and student life.

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Staff Writers Peter Bacon ‘11 John Beatty ‘11

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[email protected] 3The Harvard Independent 09.17.09

indynews

The US Open tennis championship

concluded on Monday, after rain delays

washed out more than a day of play. The

headline results--men’s and women’s

singles--were both upsets of varying

magnitude. On the men’s side, Juan Martin

del Potro dug deep to come back from a set

down and win in the final against Roger

Federer, who was riding the wave of two

consecutive Grand Slam victories, 3-6 7-6

4-6 7-6 6-2. Del Potro, only 20 years old,

and with weapons including a powerful

serve and penetrating forehand, is on the

vanguard of the next generation of tennis

players and has steadily ascended the

rankings ever since he joined the pro tour

as a teenager; he’s now ranked fifth in the

world and still climbing. Federer looks to

be playing as well as ever, though, and

commentators expect him to continue to be

among the top two or three favorites to win

Grand Slam titles for years to come.

Kim Clijsters came out of self-imposed

retirement with an 18-month-old child

in tow and showed excellent form and

consistency to win the women’s title.

Short & SweetNews that you could conceivably use.

Compiled by SUSAN ZHU, FAITH ZHANG, and SAM JACK

In a week of interesting events, two

acts of rudeness stole the spotlight

in national media. The first was by

Republican Congressman Joe Wilson

of South Carolina, who, when President

Obama declared that his health plan

would not cover illegal immigrants

during a speech to Congress, couldn’t

contain himself and yelled, quite

audibly, “you lie!” A series of boos

ensued throughout the chamber.

Though Wilson has since apologized

to the White House (apology accepted,

according to White House press secretary

Robert Gibbs), the House still voted to

formally admonish Wilson, who then

said that he would not apologize again.

Republicans cry foul at the Democrats’

rebuke, calling it a political ploy, a

hypocrisy, and flung the usual mud,

but Dems justified their action by

maintaining that Wilson should not be

allowed to “deligitimize” the president.

The incident has also sparked new

discussions (or at least one op/ed article

by Maureen Dowd) on racism and have

also filled the 2010 campaign coffers

of both Joe Wilson and his Democratic

opponent Rob Miller.

In a less sober incident, Kanye,

famed for having worse gaffes than Joe

Biden, got himself in deep publicity

doo-doo during MTV’s annual Video

Music Awards (VMAs). Taylor Swift

won for Best Female Video with “You

Belong With Me” – her first ever VMA.

Before she could cover more than two

sentences of her acceptance speech,

Kanye ran up on stage, grabbed the

mic from always-adorable Taylor, and

proceeded to declare that Beyonce’s

“Single Ladies,” which won Video of

the Year at the VMAs, should have

won instead. "Beyoncé had one of the

best videos of all time!" said Kanye, as

boos rang out. "One of the best videos

of all time!"

After the media frenzy (CNN had it on

its front page), Kanye wrote an all-caps

still-looks-drunk apology on his blog

(see picture). OMG I LOVE THAT PART

ABOUT BEING A CHEERLEADER AND

THE BLEACHERS TOOOOOOO!!!!

When Beyoncé won Video of the Year,

she invited Taylor back up to the stage

to have her moment and finish her

acceptance speech. Now that’s sweet.

Kanye? You lie! An eventful US Open.

The body of Annie Le, a doctoral

student in pharmacology at Yale

University who had been reported

missing earlier this week, was discovered

stuffed into a wall in the basement of

her research lab on Sunday—the day

on which she was to have been married.

Though bloodstained clothing had been

discovered earlier in the ceiling of the

same building, the police also spent time

searching a Hartford landfill for clues

to her fate after early speculation that

she was a “runaway bride” gave way to

suspicion of foul play.

Lab technician Raymond Clark

has been identified as a “person of

interest” in the case, but the police

have thus far refused to name a suspect.

Investigations continue.

Yale murder investigation continues.

A team of US scientists, led by Dr.

Katherine Mancuso of the Medical College

of Wisconsin, have cured colorblindness in

adult squirrel monkeys. The two monkeys,

Sam and Dalton, lacked a pigment that

cones (color-detector cells in the eye) need

to see red and green. To them, both colors

were previously shades of grey, and other

colors like brown, blue, and orange, appear

to be washed-out. The scientists injected

their eyes with millions of copies of a

human gene needed to make the pigment,

and four months later, the monkeys’ vision

improved. Though they did not do as well

on color tests as a female monkey who

had normal color vision, they were able

to detect the difference between and see

red and green. The study was published

in the journal Nature.

Does seeing green make you see red (or vice versa) because you’re colorblind?

A “cure” through gene therapy might be on the

way.

Courtesy of Wikimedia Commons

Clijsters was the first unranked player

ever to win a Grand Slam title. Many of

the top-ranked women’s contenders exited

the field early in the tournament, many

in flurries of error and double-faults,

leaving Clijsters to defeat Serena and

Venus Williams on the way to an easy final

against the young Caroline Wozniacki.

Apart from the Williams sisters’ doubles

title, the only really big positive news at

the US Open from an American perspective

was the break-out performance of Melanie

Oudin. Oudin showed great tenacity,

knocked out a series of big-hitting but

error-plagued Russians on her way to a

defeat in the quarter-finals at the hand

of eventual runner-up, and fellow teen,

Wozniacki.




indy special

Nicosia is the last divided capital in the world. The Green Line, the somber wall which separates the Turkish occupied part from the de facto Republic of Cyprus, passes right through the old town. Dilapidated houses such as this one mark the buffer zone between the two sides of the wall.

Embroidery handicraft shop in Leftkara. This world famous traditional style of lace embroidery is called “Lefkaritika”.

Cyprus is a great place for a lazy summer vacation or for intensive hunting for ancient ruins and mythological places.

Bastille Day is the equivalent of Independence Day to the French, and it happens just ten days after the American one, on July 14. It celebrates the day that Parisians rose up and stormed the Bastille, a jail, marking the 1789 French Revolution. I watched with my friends from the Champ de Mars, a long field/park in front of the Eiffel Tower. It was PACKED. The fireworks were accompanied by a montage displayed on the Eiffel Tower, showing the history of Paris and the Tower through its 120 year history.

The Arch was constructed by Napoleon himself, who envisioned his empire as a revival of the old Roman order. The Arch sits at Place Charles de Gaulle (Etoile) on the Champs-Elysees, the long boulevard that the military parade marches down for Bastille Day.

The line to go up to the top of Notre Dame took about an hour and a half. Once up there, you realize that there's really not a lot of space to move around. But the view is gorgeous. You can see all of Paris, from Sacre Coeur to the Eiffel Tower. The lower level is home to the stone gargoyles, made famous by Hugo in The Hunchback of Notre Dame.

The monument, located in front of the flags at Omaha Beach, site of the American DDay invasion, was created and dedicated to the American soldiers who gave their lives to free France and Europe from Nazi rule. The people of Normandy genuinely still like Americans - a rarity in France, though the French love Obama a lot more than Bush.

The American flag flies over the American Cemetery in Normandy, where most of the soldiers who died in the European front of World War II are buried. Rows upon rows of white crosses and stars of David dot the fields. I've never been the flag-waving in-your-face patriot, but I have never felt more patriotic about being an American than when I was there at Normandy. The soldiers' sacrifice for a cause they believed in, for the idea of liberty and freedom, for people thousands of miles away whom they never met, is truly inspirational.

The Chambord Castle was constructed by Francois I (Francis I) as a hunting lodge and is probably the most famous of the Loire Valley castles. However, due to its sheer size and the coldness of the stones, nobody actually liked to live there. Today it attracts visitors from all over the world. The cashiers in the gift shop even ask you where you're from and record it for their statistics.

Cyprus is one of the first wine producing countries. There are more than 200 types and styles of wine you can try in Cyprus.

FRANCEBy SUSAN ZHU

CYPRUSBy PATRICIAFLORESCU


indyspecial

Man in a traditional costume playing the bucium, a type of horn used by mountain dwellers in Romania. Behind him, you can see samples of Romanian ceramic work.

Sighisoara hosts a week-long medieval festival every year. The town has preserved its medieval atmosphere so well that princesses wearing heavy brocade dresses and knights in shiny armours don't look anachonistic.

The Clock Tower is the landmark of the Romanian city of Sighisoara, one of the best preserved mediaeval citadels in Europe. The clock is equipped with moving figurines that represent the days of the week or the times of the day.

ROMANIABy PATRICIA FLORESCU

SPAINBy DIANA SUEN


indy special

Motmot: a beautiful bird our professor mist-netted. It was released moments after this photo was taken.

Mid-elevation tropical old-growth forest. It took twenty minutes to navigate twenty meters of off-trail hiking without damaging the undergrowth, and much of our work at this site involved plant identification well off the trail.

A spider monkey lying low at Palo Verde National Park. These monkeys are quite bold, and people have been ambushed by groups of Capuchin monkeys. The monkey in this photo was part of a large group that surrounded me and my hiking buddy on our way down from the mirador, and we worried that they were going to turn on us. (A group of students from my course had things thrown at them and one monkey urinated on someone)

Two rat snakes underwent an hours-long mating ritual right beside our dormitory. We snapped photos and took video, but they didn't seem to mind. It rained, and they weren't fazed.

The view after a lengthy hike up a steep, rocky trail to a mirador, or lookout point. The effort was well worth the payoff, especially at sunrise. There were crocodiles in the wetlands around the river, and we saw a baby skulking behind a tuft of aquatic grass.

COSTA RICABy RIVA RILEY

Corcovado, the 700 meter statue of Christ the Redeemer, overlooking the beautiful and vibrant city of Rio de Janeiro.

Sunrise: Rosaria da Limeria, Minas Gerais. The glorious sight in the mountains of Minas at 5am.

BRAZIL &THE

NETHERLANDS ANTILLES

By EMELYN RUDEL

This boy was one of the participants in the Diognostico Rural Participativo (Diagnostic Rural Participation) of Babilonia, Minas Gerais Brazil. These meetings served to map the important areas of the community to be submitted to the local government to be utilized in the creation of protected forested areas.

This obelisk marks one of the four cardinal points on the island of Bonaire in the Netherlands Antilles. Just north of Venezuela, these islands are famous for their coral reef and some of the best diving in the world.


indyspecial

One Friday afternoon, a raucous socialist protest errupted in the street outside my building. Here is a view from the balcony of my apartment in Buenos Aires' neighbohood of Recoleta.

A view from the banks of Buenos Aires' Rio Plata. The river is known as one of the dirtiest rivers in the world.

ARGENTINABy ALYSSA BLAIZE

UGANDA&

RWANDABy DIANA SUEN


indy sports

THERE’S SOMETHING GLORIOUS AND

completely natural about being

in water. It’s speculated that our

affinity for water first started when we

were floating around in our mothers’

embryonic sac. And in the Bible, water

was so marvelous that it could turn

into an arguably even more marvelous

substance — wine. And in literature,

countless authors have explored the

theme of water; Mark Twain, to name

just one, devoted entire books to

chronicling the simple pleasures of

being on the river.

So what cou ld be bet ter than

returning to our element and floating

down the river, basking under the

sun in the blissful serenity of your

own thoughts? Or … returning to that

element and battling it to (almost)

certain death?

I bet you’ve all seen the annoying

tourist or two (or dozen!) kayaking

on the Charles, ruining your almost

perfect view of Boston. And I’ll also bet

that every time you see them, you’ve

thought to yourself, “Ugh, who are

these people?”

Well, I’m one of them!

It was a beautiful sunny day, and

a few of my friends and I decided it

would be a shame not to enjoy the river.

Swimming in the river was a no-go; I

wasn’t sure that I wanted to risk any

weird disease from the now-less-toxic-

but-still-potentially-unsafe river. And

most of us had never been kayaking

before, so we decided to give it a try.

Sitting in that little two-seater

kayak made me a little nervous in the

beginning. When the guy pushed us off

the dock, I could feel myself tilting from

side-to-side, and I kept envisioning the

boat flipping over and being trapped

under it. (I blame this on the somewhat

intense safety questionnaire they made

us fill out before we started.)

Of course, I was just being ridiculous.

I doubt anyone’s ever flipped over on

their own, and if they have, that’s what

lifejackets are for.

Kayaking was very simple and

relaxing. I could go at my own pace,

choosing to power-paddle, take it easy,

or just not paddle at all whenever I

wanted. And the Charles River was so

calm that even when we saw the wind

picking up a little, it hardly changed

our tempo. Paddling on the water and

occasionally accidentally splashing

myself with water from that paddle, I

thought to myself, “I really like this.”

But then it started to get mundane.

After the first ten minutes of just

enjoying the view, I started getting

a little bored. “This is too simple, too

relaxing, too calm,” I thought to myself.

“We need to spice things up.” Luckily,

my friend was more than willing to go

along.

We first tried a trick she learned in

crew. One person would power-paddle

while the other person took off their

shoes and skimmed the top of the water

with the bottom of their feet. There

was nothing really to it — it just felt

good.

Next, inspired by our initial shaky

launch, we decided we’d actually try

shaking things up a bit, literally. We

looked for the biggest motorboats on the

river we could find and rowed towards

them in hopes of riding some big waves.

(I’m sure this is against Charles River

Canoe and Kayak’s safety regulations,

but whatever, we were confident we

could handle them.) Sadly, most of the

motorboats we saw would slow down

when they saw us, probably out of

courtesy. They had no idea how great

a discourtesy that actually was! We

did manage to catch a few large waves

though, and when we did, we raised our

paddles into the sky, tossed back our

heads, and laughed in delight as our

boat shook forcefully.

But still, that wasn’t enough to

satisfy our adrenaline bug. We decided

we would attempt the ultimate —

standing in a kayak. Everyone’s seen

movies where standing up equates to

kayak capsizing.

My friend stood up first. She’s

of a smaller stature than I am and

naturally has better balance, so while

the boat wobbled a bit, it didn’t seem

unsafe. I was inspired: I wanted to

stand up too. I planted my feet evenly

on the ground, and holding my arms

out, slowly inched upwards. Next

thing I knew, we were standing! I was

so delighted I shouted and threw my

hands up in the air … and lost my

balance. The kayak tilted dangerously,

and I plopped myself down immediately

— just in time to prevent it from tilting

over completely.

I was satisfied though. As we rowed

back towards the dock, we had huge

grins on our faces. We had made the

ordinary extraordinary.

Tune in next week for my adventures

white-water rafting (and almost dying!)

on the Nile River.

Diana Suen ‘11 (dsuen@fas) is rowing her boat gently down the stream. Merrily. Merrily. Merrily.

Water, Water EverywhereMaking the most of kayaking on the Charles.

By DIANA SUENCourtesy of Wikimedia Commons


indyarts

“YOU HAVE TO BE ALWAYS DRUNK,” SAYS BAUDELAIRE IN one of his famous writings. “That’s all there is to it--it’s the only way. So as not to feel the horrible

burden of time that breaks your back and bends you to the earth, you have to be continually drunk.”

“But on what?” you may ask, and he gives you the answer: “Wine, poetry or virtue, as you wish. But be drunk.”

Following my favorite poet’s straightforward advice, I got two tickets to a wine tasting event which took place last Friday evening at the Bulthaup Design Showroom in downtown Boston. My intention was to learn about some beautiful European and Latin American wines and take a bottle home. However, it didn’t turn out to be as easy as I thought. Although there was already a charming young man who accompanied me during the evening, I felt like I was mildly flirting with each glass

that I had, trying to understand its characteristics and figuring out whether I would like to spend the rest of

the night or the next weekend with it. A two-minute wine tasting experience is like a

simulation of a first date. First, you need to gather some

information. You ask people about where it comes from and what it consists of. Then, you sort of develop an initial perspective of how your experience is going to be like. Third stage is when you actually hold it in your hands. Nervous and curious, you start to glance at it, aiming to guess its inner qualities by studying the way it looks, but you always have to keep in mind that the looks can be very deceiving. Fourth stage comes with the notion of delaying the pleasure i.e. you grab some food before you get somehow intimate with your glass of wine. Nothing fancy though; just a piece of bread, a slice of cheese or fruit. Then ‘the moment’ finally

arrives. You slowly bring your glass closer to your mouth; close your eyes and make yourself enjoy every minute of it. When you open your eyes again nothing but your own unique experience leads the way. If you love it; you don’t care about the color, age or the price tag; because you just cannot imagine yourself without it. But if you don’t like it, you put a little “x” next to its name on your chart and move on to the next one without looking back.

The event successfully highlighted local wine shops that were full of passion and had regional specialties in their inventories. Every presentation was unique and informative and every single guest was walking around with enthusiasm. However, it didn’t take too much time for me to figure out that it couldn’t be my

preferred way of buying a bottle of wine because I knew that whatever I tasted there would not taste the same if I took it home. Besides, I would prefer someone to give me a single bottle, drink it slowly over the course of a day and evaluate my experience in the end. That must be the type of drunkenness that Baudelaire talks about. It has to come from a single source and has to spread itself through your veins slowly so that you don’t even realize it happening.

Did I go home with a bottle of wine from the event? No. I was exhausted and equally frustrated with myself for not being able to be more decisive. Ignoring the heavy rain and the empty streets, my friend and I left

By PELIN KIVRAK

An alternative approach to wine tasting.

IMPOSSIBILITY, LIKE WINE

Impossibility, like Wine

Exhilarates the Man

Who tastes it; Possibility

Is flavorless - Combine

A Chance’s faintest tincture

And in the former Dram

Enchantment makes ingredient

As certainly as Doom –

By EMILY DICKINSON

the place. We went to a restaurant, sat next to a huge window and started conversing about everything and anything. Ten minutes later, the waiter approached our table to take our order. “Can I have a glass of Argentine red wine?” I said, without hesitation. “Of course,” he replied and came back with a glass of the only red Argentine wine that was on their wine list. Was it the best Argentine wine in the world? Well, I’ll let the experts argue about it. But it was certainly the best glass of wine I’ve had that night because I was finally

sure about what I really wanted. All those wines that I tasted in less than two hours were probably too much for me to handle but at least, as wine experts would say, “the aftertaste was sweet and smooth.”

Pelin Kivrak ‘11 (pkivrak@fas) doesn’t have any truck with Merlot.


indy arts

THE BOY WHO KNEW TOO MUCH… IT almost sounds too philosophical and pensive to be chosen as the

name of a pop album. It echoes the words of Oscar Wilde, who famously proclaimed: “I am not young enough to everything.” Neither is Mika, the 26-year-old singer-songwriter, who rose to fame at the start of 2007. However, his new album, The Boy Who Knew Too Much, which was released on September 21, has a coming of age theme and deals with his transition from childhood to the present. The same theme was the connecting element of Mika’s debut album, Life in Cartoon Motion, in which, Mika said, most songs were autobiographical.

Mika has a unique and impressive musical education background: he was trained by Alla Ardakov, a Russian opera singer, and later graduated from the Royal College of Music in London. Although he claims that his vocal range is close to three and a half octaves, he is rumored to be able to go up to five octaves. His first

album, Life in Cartoon Motion, was a very successful debut: the single “Grace Kelly” stayed at #1 in the UK for five weeks, and

it became the fifth best-selling album in

the world in 2007. Any album following this modern pop music phenomenon would be waited for with very high expectations. Maybe not everything, but Mika surely knows what to prepare for and present to his impatient fans.

For his new album, Mika worked for with producer Greg Wells, who also produced his debut album. Mika described the new album as the “part two” of his first

album, as he said that the new album’s themes were dealing with his teenage years. “We are Golden” is the first single

from the album, one of the most young-spirited songs from the album. One listen of the album opener makes it clear that Mika will be dominating the commercial radio airwaves for some time to come. The choruses of some songs sounds like a mixture of children and adults, mirroring his own sprawling fan base. One of the main features that make this album a success is that there are almost as many different styles and sounds in various songs as the colors on the album’s multi-colored artwork. Power-ballad “I See You,” the charming sing-along “Blue Eyes,” and “Touches You,” with more than a hint of George Michael, span a wide gamut of

musical styles. One thing that becomes obvious after listening to the album is that Mika has not changed the winning formula that he used in his debut album: his sound is still reminiscent of high school dramas and teenage dreams.

The album came with very exciting news for all those who have been a fan of Mika ever since the first album, or who have just ventured into the world of the boy who knew too much: Mika will be giving a concert on October 15 in the Boston Orpheum Theatre. There is no doubt that this will be a great concert, so you are highly encouraged to get your tickets as soon as possible.

Although Mika is not young enough to know everything, he seems to have a good idea about what makes a pop album unique. The Boy Who Knew Too Much is ready to be the soundtrack of our daydreams in which we travel back to the times when we thought we “were golden,” went to sleep hugging our “toy boys,” hated the days when it “rained,” and “blamed it all on the girls.”

Ezgi Bereketli '12 (ebereket@fas) tried to be like Grace Kelly, but all her looks were too sad.

The Boy Who Knew Too MuchIs Mika "the boy who knew too much" – about how to prepare a

unique album? By EZGI BEREKETLI

WHAT OTHER MOVIE COULD HAVE YOU leaving the theater massively paranoid about, well, absolutely

everything that could go wrong in the world and kill you gruesomely, but one of the Final Destination movies? Their latest installment, The Final Destination (what a creative title!) is supposed to wrap up what has become a four-film saga documenting

the various Rube-Goldberg-esque ways unyielding Death can knock you off.

Let us revisit what happened in film

number one: Final Destination. A troubled teen, the rebel of the class, gets onto a plane for a field trip but — oh — he has

a vision! And what does this vision show him? The plane is going to explode, and everyone is going to die. So he freaks, gets off the plane, and a group of enraged

students and the teacher chaperone get off the plane only to see it explode just after take-off. Soon thereafter, the invisible Death begins picking them off one by one in the order that they were supposed to die.

Well, back in the day, as in sixth grade, when I first saw this it seemed like an

innovative idea, and I have to admit that nearly 10 years later, I’m still quite entertained by the notion that we can die at anytime due to simple malfunctions of machinery, people not paying attention to what they are doing, or that we don’t have control over when we die. It is all rather terrifying don’t you think?

This latest installment combines the usual camp and horror but plays on a bunch of childhood warnings that you

would get from your parents, like don’t mess around on an escalator or don’t go near the suction drain at the bottom of a pool because it can suck your guts out.

The fact that this movie is in 3D also helps with the horror/gore action, making it even more terrifying for those with phobias of things poking your eyes out. To take the movie to another level, movie theaters, such as the Mann theaters in Orange County, CA have turned the movie into one of those simulated rides – except this is a full blown movie where all the thrills are accentuated by sudden seat movements as well. These screenings are available only in selected theaters in the US & Canada, but you can expect other movies to start designing their movies for such theaters in the future.

The Final Destination, though not the scariest of them all, definitely has qualities

that redeem the rather flat acting. The

first, is the definite eye-candy in the movie.

You get your fair share of cute faces, and maybe one hot bod for all you jock-loving ladies out there. Second, this is a character driven thriller, which means they grow to love each other, have rivalries, and disagreements, and eventually grow to be wiser. Oh yeah and then there’s the unexpected, though cheap ending, which I won’t give away. But ask yourself after you watch it: “How does Death make this The Final Destination?” Maybe there’s room for another movie, after all.

Brian Shen ‘11 (bshen@fas) is never afraid.

By BRIAN SHENThe Final Destination formula still works.

Death Comes Knocking


indyarts

ONE BOOK I COULD TALK ABOUT FOR hours is All the King’s Men, Robert Penn Warren’s Pulitzer-

prize winning masterpiece, but I never get the chance because nobody else has read it. It is a magnificent work,

with a style that is rich and gorgeous and propels the story deliberately. I am rereading it now for the umpteenth time; it has a mysterious pull on me. The descriptions will blow your mind if you have the patience for them, and the slow pace helps the reader, like Jack Burden, find a personal explanation for all of the

events that unfold over the course of the complex narrative. In my opinion, All the King’s Men is literature at its finest,

on par with the most conspicuous of classic works. I am an aspiring writer, and reading Robert Penn Warren’s prose has had a tremendous influence on my

style in ways that traditional classics such as Jane Eyre and A Tale of Two Cities never could have. I use those titles because they are featured on the list of traditional classics that I have read, and that list is not especially long. In fact, compared to many of my friends at Harvard, I have not read much at all.

Having spent a significant portion

of my childhood reading and having attended rigorous English classes throughout secondary school, this surprised me. My closest friends seemed beyond me in literary knowledge, discussing the Brontë sisters, Crime and Punishment, Madame Bovary, and other immortal titles while I looked on, often with the uncomfortable realization that I had no idea what they were talking about. I knew a little bit and had read some prominent literary authors, but my knowledge seemed different from that of my friends and peers. While I could provide insight on Anne Tyler’s Saint

Maybe and had written papers on Life of Pi and The Kite Runner, none of these books seemed to carry the same weight as the leather-bound classics emanating that intangible aura of antiquity. Much of the time when I tried to throw out a title for discussion I was met with one or two people in a large group who had read the work, or a full group of completely blank stares. When I finally found out that a friend had also read Toni Morrison’s novel Beloved in high school, I exalted over the fact so much he probably thought I was a tad strange. For me, though, I felt like my literary repertoire had been validated a little.

As time has passed, however, I have come to appreciate the books I read on my own and as a part of my high school education and have decided that they enhanced my education in unique ways.

By RIVA RILEY

Modern fiction deserves more of a place in schools.

The Classics of Our Own Age

They are the books that call to me when I should be working. They are the books that I have read and turned the pages until they are dog-eared because they make me think about things so hard that I hope to find new answers when I read it the second time around, or the third.

All of them were revolutionary in their way, and all of them are considered modern classics because they are great. One day, I think, they will be read as a part of standard education alongside the “classic” classics that are already read as a matter of course in droves of classrooms around the country.

They are the books that call to me when I should be working. They are the books that I have read and turned the pages until they are dog-eared because they make me think about things so hard that I hope to find new answers when I

read it the second time around, or the third. These are the books that have the power to influence me, perhaps more

than ancient tomes, because they speak from a time I can recognize in language that resonates; I can understand without a prolonged struggle.

In All The King’s Men I understood the narration but it meant a million different things, depending on how I looked at it and interpreted it, and I appreciated it all the more because it wasn’t cryptic or written in a dialect or style that has long since died. It also didn’t feature fusty, inbred British aristocracy, for which I was extremely grateful. When Elizabeth’s mother wanted her to marry her father’s cousin I actually did a double take and mental warnings flashed: their

kids would be at risk for recessive genetic diseases! Luckily, she did not marry him, but the idea that their marriage would be a good idea to anybody was shocking.

These concerns aside, I believe there is value in literature that is not yet widely given a membership to the exclusive classics club that dominate high school reading lists and college courses. There are wonderful books out there that, with enough time, will gain prominence and become famous for their literary mastery. If you read them now, you’ll be able to enjoy them as your own personal valets into wonderful worlds most people haven’t discovered yet.

Riva Riley ‘12 (rjriley@fas) likes to read off the beaten path.

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PATRICIA FLORESCU/Independent

the travel issue (09.17.09)

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