Volume 67, Issue 2

(Mis)reading in the wake of Trauma:  Responses and Responsibility
Holly Haahr

 Albert Camus’ The Plague is the anchor text of the 2002 Yeshiva College book project, “Writing in the Wake of Trauma: Responses and Responsibility.”  Although cast as a chronicle of the bubonic plague in the Algerian city of Oran in the year 194X, from its publication in June 1947, readers have read the novel as an allegory for the Nazi Occupation.   Camus’ personal experience explains in part why he would render it as a plague in Oran.  Born in Algeria to French parents, Camus was a resident of Oran when he first began work on the novel in April 1942.  The nearly 30-year-old writer had been suffering from tuberculosis for all of his adult life, and was obliged, like Rieux’s wife will be, to leave Oran for health reasons.  Camus arrived in France just months before the Nazi invasion of the Free Zone and the ally embarkation in North Africa, events that left him in exile in France, separated from his wife for two years.   In January 1943, he mused in his notebooks as to his literary project:  “I want to express by means of the plague the suffocating and menacing atmosphere and the exile in which we live ... The plague will give the image of those in this war who criticized or remained silent and those who suffered (Carnets II, p. 72, my translation)...

Table Tips: BAROUGE RESTAURANT
By Jessica Russak

 Barouge calls itself a French restaurant, but its current identity crisis leaves me befuddled. My friend and I have decided to experiment with a restaurant that has changed its ownership three times since we started college, and we are seated at the same shaky booth in which we sat when it was Italian dairy a few years back. The décor is different now, with French writing on the mirrors and vintage French advertisements framed on the walls.

Hackneyed Miracles on 42nd Street
By Tzvi Kahn

 
When a show promotes itself as “The Broadway musical for people who love Broadway musicals,” as the new adaptation of “42nd Street” does, it should come as no surprise that it abounds unabashedly with clichés.  This is not necessarily a bad thing.  Broadway’s recent revival of “Kiss Me, Kate,” which completed its over two-year run at the Martin Beck Theatre last December, took a classic story with a classic script, classic songs, classic characters, and a predictably predictable happy ending and produced an endearing musical full of charm, wit, and relentless vivacity.  But “42nd Street,” playing at the Ford Center for the Performing Arts and directed by Mark Bramble, wants so desperately to reproduce the energy and excitement of Broadway hits of old, to fill its audience with nostalgia for a bygone era where all dreams come true and the good guy (or girl, in this case) always comes out on top, that the resulting product feels artificial and contrived, and fails to draw its viewers under the idyllic spell of Broadway bliss it is trying so frantically to cast.

How to Get in to the MTV Video Music Awards
By Evan Alan 

Did you ever want to go to the MTV Video Music Awards but didn't even bother trying because you thought that it would be impossible to get tickets? Or have you ever gone and wanted to go backstage but didn't know how?  Well, if you answered yes to these questions, then trust me: If you act smooth enough, then you can do both.  On Thursday, August 29, yours truly was contemplating whether to stay at Yeshiva’s Wilf Campus or to head on over to Radio City Music Hall for the 18th annual VMAs.  It didn't take me long to decide that I would try my luck and head on over.

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