Ben Letzler

On the Containment of Children
Mon, Apr 7, 2003, 12:00am

The state budget this year plans reductions of $1.2 billion for schools. The New York Times reports that hundreds of teachers and librarians will be fired.

The Progressive Reaction
Wed, Jul 31, 2002, 12:00am

There is a book to be written about the behavior of cultural producers after September 11. It will be an inventory of grotesques as lugubrious, moralizing and overlong as anything in Solzhenitsyn.

Dusty Dreams, Tawdry Town
Wed, Jul 17, 2002, 12:00am

You are soaking in the whirlpool tub at the Comfort Inn, Atlantic City, New Jersey. You are reading Soloviev's monograph on Plato, on the five varieties of Eros, including divine androgyny and the "satanic abyss." Soloviev reveals that even Plato ended terribly. It is time to gamble.

Against The Postwar
Thu, Jun 20, 2002, 12:00am

A Sleazemonger Gives Back
Fri, May 3, 2002, 12:00am

I want everyone who reads this to donate to the Columbia College Senior Class Fund.

Talking movies: Discussing Visconti's Senso
Fri, May 3, 2002, 12:00am

When the introduction of a half-dozen complimentary six-foot subs from Milano Market into the Schapiro Hall lounge created a natural setting for a symposium, Spectator film critics Ben Letzler and Franklin Laviola lost track of time and soon realized it would be impossible to catch our screening

Mo Money, No Problems
Thu, Mar 14, 2002, 12:00am

Spectator's suspended production gives me a rare chance to cheat: I can review All About The Benjamins, the new "action-comedy" starring Ice Cube and Mike Epps, after having read the competition.

The Sweet Autumn of the Documentarian
Fri, Feb 15, 2002, 12:00am

Along with the various other positions The New York Times has taken over the years, they may now be anti-Stratfordian. That is, they do not believe that Shakespeare wrote Shakespeare.

Three Puffs for Revolution
Fri, Dec 7, 2001, 12:00am

An outsider arrives in a venal and corrupt society. Denigrated and excluded, he
rises up in righteous anger to proclaim his own humane values, and by dint of
an eloquent tongue, a stout heart, and a bounty of strong-jawed masculinity, he

Mythological Grandeur Qi Shu Fang and Peking Opera
Thu, Oct 11, 2001, 12:00am

Peking opera (jingju or jingxi, "theater of the capital,") is usually said to have been born in 1790, when the Sanqing drama troupe first brought its innovative art to the grand festivities in Beijing for the 80th birthday of the Qianlong emperor.

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