Roberto Abraham Scaruffi

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This week on nybooks.com: Politics and protest in Egypt, a year in fragments, the campaign against Chuck Hagel, Rilke’s advice to a young poet, the romantic deferral of sitcoms, and a selection of upcoming events, including the Review’s 50th anniversary celebration at the Town Hall.
LETTER FROM CAIRO Egypt: Whose Constitution? Yasmine El Rashidi While Egypt’s new constitution raises many important questions, the more immediate problem may be the larger political divide that has opened during its passage. There is not only a crisis of trust. There are also the very clear beginnings of sectarian and civil strife.
ESSAY A Year in Fragments Charles Simic Her life, she said, was an out-of-tune piano played with passion. This evening I sat listening to five presidential candidates offering their imaginary solutions for a country that doesn’t exist. “Imaginary maladies are much worse than the real ones, because they’re incurable,” an old friend was telling me.
POLITICS The Preemptive War on Hagel Elizabeth Drew In Washington it’s quite simple to get someone labeled “controversial.” All it takes is an attack by a prominent person, followed up by similar arguments by allies; throw in a couple of senators whom the press loves because they make controversial statements—John McCain has been the reigning champ for years—and, voila! someone is seen to have “a lot of opposition.”
TELEVISION Single Women and the Sitcom Elaine Blair Like any kind of comedy, a sitcom can have a marriage at its very end, but a marriage somewhere in the middle is narrative disaster. And since sitcoms are, effectively, comedies without end, it’s hard to write a marriage into the show in a way that encourages our illusions of its rightness.
					EVENT Celebrating 50 Years On February 5 at the Town Hall, spend an evening with New York Review contributors John Banville, Mary Beard, Michael Chabon, Mark Danner, Joan Didion, Daniel Mendelsohn, Darryl Pinckney, and editor Robert B. Silvers. Tickets are available online or at the Town Hall box office.
DISCUSSION Daniel Mendelsohn With John Freeman at The Morgan Library		FILM Japanese Underground Cinema 70 independent films at MoMA		THEATER An Iliad A brave attempt to encompass Homer’s epic in a monologue		MORE EVENTS See the calendar for J. Hoberman’s recommendations on what to see at the movies, listings for lip reading puppets at MoMA, the Pre-Raphaelites at the Tate Britain, the new photography branch at the Louvre, and the Chinese Hamlet at the Swan Theatre.
LETTERS TO A YOUNG POET Study the Panther! John Banville Rilke’s tone may be elevated and his manner at times that of a dandy, but the advice purveyed in his letters, and the observations and aperçus that they throw off, contain true wisdom, and are anything but platitudinous.