The Harvard Advocate is proud to announce the launch of its Fall 2013 issue! Below, listen to Robbie Eginton reading his poem, “Fum,” which is published this edition of the magazine. I was also thrilled to talk to him after making this recording; an abridged transcript of the interview is published here. You can subscribe to The Harvard Advocate here.
- Kevin Hong ’15
Image courtesy policymic.com
“Ten dollars,” the man behind the counter intones, hardly bothering to look up from the register. In mere seconds I am handed a ticket — an old fashioned, receipt-paper square that leaves a slightly chalky residue on my fingers — marked for the film I hadn’t even had time to indicate. His wry smile betrays amusement at the reason he had guessed my order — the string of college-aged customers who had arrived for the same purpose, the 8:30 pm showing of this year’s Cannes Palme d’Or winner.
Rather than pirating an illicit copy for private viewing like fifth-graders at a sleepover secreting an R-rated movie in a duffel bag, as we might have in another time and place, my friends and I were received at Blue is the Warmest Color without question or controversy. Unlike our Idahoan counterparts, we watched it like any other film, seated amid the sounds of crackling popcorn and commentary from the couple behind us.
A classroom scene: students crowd around an oblong seminar table, poring over the author’s explanatory key to an intricate text. At one end of the room, latecomers quietly negotiate seating. At the other, two professors gesture toward a stack of volumes. The work in question is Ulysses, the reason for our supplementary after-hours gathering. Eighty years earlier, we would have been hard-pressed to locate even an underground copy of the novel save voyaging to Paris’s Left Bank, but few would give a second look (except perhaps a sympathetic one) to a student reading it on the T today.
The November 1951 issue of The Harvard Advocate addressed a single theme: William Faulkner. Reviews, essays, and excerpts from dissertations crowded the now-yellowed pages of the magazine, tackling everything from the author’s novels to his childhood. Two names in particular jump out from the list of contributors: Albert Camus and Thomas Mann. The Advocate editors were eager to milk this literary windfall, placing their names in bold print on the cover of the issue, and noting their “gracious acknowledgment” to contributors including Camus and Mann “for making this issue possible.” In the Contributors’ Notes, the two are described as follows:
“ALBERT CAMUS, possibly France’s leading contemporary novelist, has seen his novel The Plague translated into nearly every modern language. A critic as well as a novelist, M. Camus has read widely in American fiction.
“THOMAS MANN is perhaps the most distinguished living novelist of the twentieth century, and his fictional and critical works need doubtless no introduction.”
Sunset With Moon and Birds, My Ngoc To
My Ngoc To, a member of the Advocate’s Features Board, is author of the recently-published The Washing Room: A Story of Stories. Last week, she recorded the final essay of her book for Notes from 21 South Street. I followed the reading with several questions, which were formulated by Victoria Baena ’14 and myself. I hope you enjoy “The Washing Room II” and the following interview.
- Kevin Hong ’15
On October 19, L.A. Jeff performed live at The Harvard Advocate. Check out this recording of part of their set! You can read an interview of L.A. Jeff’s Nico Schwalbe here on Notes from 21 South Street.
Consider Sisyphus, brushing the dust across his bruised ribs, sighing curselessly as Zeus’s impossible rock thumps again down that clay hill in Corinth. Imagine how the old king takes his time coming down to meet the stone, how the rock must wait while he, without worry, may keep to a gentle descent, even pausing when appropriate to lookout below. Think of the view from the top: the whole world pressed into flatiron plains. There, below are the bluegrass fields where in early October boys run wind sprints past the line between the swing-gate and shed, where cleats catch mud in solemn ritual, and where young rushing bodies smash young rushing bodies and footballs are tucked underarm. There, even farther, is the hill that you and I used ascend every day in autumn, attempting to catch sight of eggs hatching in the chickadees’ nest; and there are the tracks, ridged over lopped stems from the mower that one day minced grass with eggshells. The ridgelines are still there, you’ll see; rain pours through them like slag.
To prove himself at hero, an Athenian champion once came to Corinth and successfully pushed a boulder up the Sicyonian hill. Only when the rock balanced in place, the Corinthians laughed. To them, the only thing the champion had proven was that the gods didn’t believe he was worthy of being pushed back. Keep an eye out for champions, kid. But most of all, pay attention to the way the break-winds unearth the shrub-root and the slugger Sisyphus, who is feeling quite good: the tall mound diminishes behind without surcease, the stadium lights warm on his shoulders — rushing 282 yards, and after today’s work it’s 317. Oh, hell, who gives a damn that he must lift the boulder again from the start? He carries like a champ, and gets to spend half his life walking down mountains.
So for chrissake, kid, listen: Nice grab today on that skinny post.
By Noah Pisner ’14
Illustration by Kiara Barrow ’16
Children Swimming in the Monument of the Dead, Belem, Portugal
End of the March, Paris, France
Boys Wrestling, Lyon, France
By Isaac Dayno ’15
