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The Age of Reinvention
By Karine Tuil
Reading Group Guide
An international bestseller and finalist for the Prix Goncourt, France's most prestigious literary award, The Age of Reinvention is a "suspenseful...Gatsby-esque odyssey...laced with provocative observations of prejudice, politics, and sexism" (Publishers Weekly, starred review).
Top Manhattan criminal defense attorney Sam Tahar seems to have it all: fame, fortune, an enviable marriage to a prominent socialite, and two wonderful children. But his success is built on a lie—he isn't the person he pretends to be.
Growing up a poor Muslim immigrant inside a grimy Paris apartment tower, Samir Tahar seemed destined for a life on the margins—until he decided "he was going to cut through the bars of his social jail cell, even if he had to do it with his teeth." At law school in Montpelier, France, he became fast friends with Jewish student Samuel Baron. The two were inseparable until the irresistible Nina, torn between the men, ultimately chose Samuel. Samir fled to America, where he assumed Samuel's identity and background while his former friend remained stuck in a French suburb, a failed, neurotic writer seething at Samir's overseas triumphs.
Decades later, the three meet again in this dark, powerful story of a deeply tangled love triangle that becomes subsumed by the war on terror. Called "a masterful novel" (Paris Match) and "a work of great magnitude" (Le Figaro), The Age of Reinvention is an intriguing tale about the wonderful possibilities and terrible costs of remaking oneself.
The Age of Reinvention 1
Let's begin with his wound. Yes, let's begin there. The last of the stigmata inflicted during a brutal upbringing that Samir Tahar spent his whole life escaping, it was an inch-long gash on his neck. He'd gone to a plastic surgeon in Times Square who attempted to sand it off with a grinding wheel, but it was too late: he would keep the scar forever as a souvenir, would look at it every morning and remember where he came from, from what place/what violence. Look at it! Touch it! They looked, they touched. The first time was always a shock: the sight of/the contact with that whitish scar which betrayed the fury of its creator, signaled the taste for a power struggle, for contradiction—a form of social brutality that, brought to incandescence, presaged eroticism—a wound that he could hide beneath a scarf, a foulard, or a turtleneck sweater, so that nothing could be seen of it. That day, he was concealing it behind the starched collar of a $300 shirt—purchased in one of those luxury clothing stores that Samuel Baron only ever entered now with the vague hope of stealing from the cash register—and everything about him breathed opulence, complacency, consumerism, a zero-defect design. Everything about him denied what he had been: even his manners were affected, his voice tinged with an aristocratic accent, this man who, in law school, had been one of the most vocal supporters of the proletarian left! One of those radicals who had used their original mortification as a social weapon. Now, newly rich, an A-list lawyer, a big spender, a thunderous orator, a lex machina, everything about him spoke of identity change, vaulting ambition, social redemption—the exact counterpoint of what Samuel had become. Was he hallucinating? Maybe. This isn't real, thinks/prays/screams Samuel; that can't be him—Samir—that brand-new, famous, deified man, a personal and original creation, a prince surrounded by his camarilla, with his slick, specious rhetoric. On TV, he is primped and sexy, appealing to men and women, worshipped by all; an object of jealousy, perhaps, but also of respect; a virtuoso of the bar, fearless and shameless, smashing the prosecution's argument to pieces with the jackhammer of his wit . . . That can't be him, that artificial courtroom wolf, there, in New York, on CNN, his first name Americanized in capital letters—SAM TAHAR—and beneath it, his occupation: lawyer, while he, Samuel, was wasting away in a dingy apartment in Clichy-sous-Bois, rented for €700 per month, was slaving eight hours a day as a social worker for a charity, helping troubled youths who always seemed to ask: Baron—is that Jewish?, and would spend his evenings reading/posting on literary blogs (with the username Witold92)/writing pseudonymous books that were systematically rejected—His great social novel? We're still waiting for it—that can't be him, Samir Tahar, transformed beyond recognition, his face covered with a layer of beige foundation, eyes turned to the camera with the perfect command of an elite actor/lion tamer/marksman, his dark eyebrows waxed and shaped, his body corseted in a bespoke designer suit that was possibly even bought for the occasion, chosen specifically in order to seduce/persuade/attract attention, the holy trinity of political communication, the lessons that had been rammed down their throats at law school and which Samir was now putting into practice with the arrogant self-assurance of a campaigning politician. Samir, a guest on American television, representing the families of two U.S. soldiers killed in Afghanistan,1 intoning a paean to interventionism, glorifying moral fiber, trying his hand at sentimentalism! Samir, being questioned by the journalist2—who treats him with deference, as if he's the conscience of the free world!—and remaining calm and confident, apparently having muzzled the beast within him, controlled the violence that for so long contaminated his every gesture. And yet, when you first met him, that was all you saw: the surreptitious wound, the tragic echoes of the horror of his formative years, spent inside the grimy walls of a twenty-floor tower block, fifteen or twenty of them (maybe even more) crammed on a stairwell that stank of dog/human piss; all those years spent pent-up there, on the eighteenth floor, with a view of the balconies of the tower block opposite, sweat suits swaying in the wind—fake Adidas, Nike, Puma bought for nothing in Taiwan/Ventimiglia/Marrakesh/the local Goodwill store, sweat-stained grayish undershirts, frayed underpants, rough toilet paper, plastic tablecloths, panties misshapen by too many washes/pounds lost or gained, hung out to dry in front of the satellite dishes that swarmed over the roofs/façades like rats in darkened basements where nobody ever went anymore out of fear of theft/rape/violence, where nobody ever went unless threatened with a pistol/knife/box cutter/knuckle-duster/billy club/bottle of sulfuric acid/pump-action shotgun/pepper spray/rifle/nunchuks (this was before the unrest in the East and the arrival in bulk of weapons of war from the ex-Yugoslavia—what a godsend! Just take a family vacation and—bingo!—load the good stuff in the trunk among all the kids' toys: assault rifles, automatic weapons, Uzis, Kalashnikovs, explosives with electronic detonators . . . even [whatever floats your boat] rocket launchers, if you buy them cash-only. So you go off to a forest where you can practice alone, no witnesses, and then you wage war in underground parking garages sticky with puddles of engine oil and urine where nobody ever went anymore unless accompanied by a cop—and cops never went down there anymore. You wage ideological warfare in squats where twenty-five-/thirty-year-old lepers rejected/remade the world, or sexual warfare in basements stinking of damp and dope smoke where fourteen-/fifteen-year-olds roasted NONCONSENTING minors, ten or twenty of them taking it in turns, 'cause they had to prove they were men, 'cause the violence inside them had to force its way out somehow—they told the judge this in their defense—'cause they needed some kind of outlet for it. Or gang warfare carried out on wasteland turned into a battleground, night and day, by dozens of people crowding around to watch rheumy-eyed pit bulls fighting, each of them named after some fallen dictator—Hitler being the most popular—betting heavily on the biggest, the most rabid, the most deadly, yelling at the beast to tear its opponent to shreds, to bite its fucking eyeballs, turned on by the blood/the ripped flesh/the groans of pain and dying), while Samir stayed upstairs, studying like a freak, refusing to accept a life with no future, no money, having to choose between a job as a cleaner/warehouseman/delivery driver/caretaker/security guard, or dealer, if you aim really high, if you're ambitious; wanting to impress his mother, Nawel Tahar, a cleaning lady for the Brunet family.3 Nawel, a petite, black-eyed brunette and model employee, knows all about them: she cleans their laundry, their dishes, their floors, their children, scouring, scrubbing, polishing and vacuuming, declaring only half her earnings, working Saturdays and public holidays, sometimes evenings in order to wait on them/their friends, politically committed men, feverishly scanning the papers for their name, googling themselves whenever they hear that someone has written an article on them—good or bad, who cares, as long as people are talking about them—happy to fuck women under thirty in rooms rented by the year, preoccupied by their weight, the ups and downs of the stock market, their wrinkles, obsessed by the loss of their youth, their savings, their hair; people who sleep together, work together, swap jobs, wives, mistresses, take it in turns to big each other up, lick ass, and get their cocks sucked by Albanian whores—the best in the world, apparently—whom they will attempt to liberate from detention centers where they were kept by ambitious administrators, whom they will try to save by using their connections—vainly, alas—sickened by immigration policies that tear away their objects of desire, their cleaning ladies, their kids' favorite babysitters, the construction workers paid cash-in-hand who transform industrial wastelands into luxury lofts where they continue the revolution until the Assemblée Nationale Métro station because beyond that it's not really their area anymore, Nawel, you can have the leftovers it's a shame to waste them and we don't have a dog, yes, the tragic shards of fate and hate that twenty years spent swallowing the choke pear have burned into their gaze—a hardened, shadowy gaze, sharp as a carbide knife that will scalp you and yet you'll like it all the same. But all that was before Samir's social success as a TV puppet, animated for your pleasure: Bravo, you've done it! She was conquered. Because there were two of them in front of the screen, two of them suppressing their hysterical aggression, two accomplices in failure: Nina was there too, Nina who had loved him, at twenty years old, when everything was still to play for, when everything was still possible. What ambitions does she have now? (1) Obtaining a raise of €100 per month. (2) Having a child before it's too late—but what kind of future would the kid have? (3) Moving to a two-bed apartment with a view over a soccer field/trash cans/a muddy lakeside area where two ivory-colored swans flap their wings/die—the lost territories of the French Republic. (4) Paying off their debts—but how? Short-term solution: a government debt forgiveness commission. Long-term solution: God only knows. (5) Take a vacation, one week in Tunisia maybe, at an all-inclusive beach club on Djerba . . . well, they could dream.
"Look at him!" Nina shouted, eyes riveted to the screen, hypnotized by the image, drawn to it like a moth to a halogen lamp—a moth that will burn alive—and, watching him too, Samuel felt certain that Sam Tahar had long ago put behind him what had happened in 1987 at the University of L.—the incident that had destroyed Samuel forever. Twenty years spent trying to forget the tragedy of which he himself had been the unconscious orchestrator and the expiatory victim, and all for what? For it to be broadcast on CNN, at prime time.
They had met in the mid-eighties, at law school in Paris. Nina and Samuel had been together for a year when, on their first day back at school, they made the acquaintance of Samir Tahar. Like them, he was nineteen years old, but he seemed slightly older: a muscular man of medium height, with a nervous walk, whose beauty was not instantly obvious but who had you spellbound as soon as he opened his mouth. You saw him and you thought: Yes, that manly authority, that animal magnetism—fuel for sex. Everything about him promised pleasure; everything about him betrayed his desire—an aggressive, corrupting desire. That was the most disturbing thing about him, this guy they knew nothing about: his sincerity in conquest. It was the first thing you noticed: his taste for women—for sex, his weakness even then—perceptible in his ability to seduce them instantly, almost automatically, his sexual voracity, which he didn't even try to control, which he was able to express in a single gaze (a fixed, piercing, pornographic gaze that unveiled his thoughts and was constantly on the lookout for the slightest hint of reciprocation) and which he had to sate—quickly, urgently; his self-proclaimed and unabashed hedonism, his absolute coolness in conversation, as if every friendly or social relationship with a woman or a girl could only be justified by the possibility of its being transformed into a different kind of relationship.
But there was something else too . . . You could sense the predatory nature of this son of Tunisian immigrants; you could sense the belligerence, fed on a feeling of humiliation so powerful that it was impossible to work out who, in his personal history of relationships marked by mistrust, could have had such an enduring and forceful effect upon him. He had his mother's ambitions for himself: he wanted to succeed, to break the cycle of failure and poverty, of surrender and defeat; the family cycle, in short, which had already cost the life of his father, destroyed the dreams of his mother, and caused the breakup of a family. He was going to cut through the bars of his social jail cell, even if he had to do it with his teeth. A social climber? Sure, if you like . . . He was an immigrants' son who refuted social mimicry—one of those who had assimilated the republican message: study hard, work hard. A role model. People envied his provocative, transgressive boldness, his aggressive way of thinking, which was not without charm. How could you not be won over by this slightly mocking student who could tell you about his childhood in the poorest part of London or in a dilapidated ghetto, then his adolescence in a tiny attic room and his return to a seedy public housing project, with a flair for the sordid details that could move you to tears and, five minutes later, talk about a meeting between Gorbachev and Mitterrand as if he had been there? His strength was his taste for politics and for stories. He could spend whole evenings reading autobiographies and speeches by Nobel Prize winners; he liked learning about these people who had achieved greatness, because that was what he wanted for himself: greatness. The aura, the charisma . . . he already had those.
For a man like Samuel, for whom the whole of existence was nothing but a mass of neuroses and whose only ambition was to use this mental suffering as material for a great book, it was a providential friendship. Because when he first met Samir, he was in pieces. Out of nowhere, he had just learned the truth about his origins—and it was chaos. His parents had waited until his eighteenth birthday to inform him that he was actually born in Poland as Krzysztof Antkowiak. There you go, son, your innocent childhood is over—welcome to the adult world! An open world of perfect transparency is opening its doors to you! Samuel would have preferred to remain in ignorance. He didn't know what shocked him most: learning that his parents were not really his parents or discovering that his true first name was a derivative of Christ's: Samuel had been raised, after all, by a couple who were first secular (a pure, hard, uncompromising secularism, loudly and proudly proclaimed, according to those who knew them at the time) and then Jewish Orthodox—a spectacular turnaround with no rational explanation. That story alone could fill a book. A few hours after his birth, Samuel was abandoned by his mother, Sofia Antkowiak,4 placed in an orphanage, and then adopted by a French couple of Jewish origin, Jacques and Martine Baron. Their names no longer provoke even the tiniest spark of recognition, and yet they were among the most active agitators on the French political and intellectual scene in the sixties and seventies. Members of the Union of Communist Students and the French Communist Party, friends with Alain Krivine and Henri Weber, Jacques and Martine Baron—both of them from the same middle-class assimilated Jewish background—had long ago given up any desire for recognition. Rejecting determinism and gregariousness, they decided to reinvent themselves, transforming their identity in a sort of magic trick. Both of them gravitated toward the major intellectual figures of the time. Together, they had attended a prestigious École Normale Supérieure and had passed the philosophy exam. They taught literature and they were young, beautiful, feverishly committed; they had everything, except "what mattered most"—a child. Jacques was sterile, and for a man like him, who had based his whole life around transmission, this was an unbearable situation. They applied for adoption and, after two years of waiting, were finally approved. That night, they celebrated the imminent arrival of their child, along with about thirty of their closest friends. After several glasses of wine, someone asked what name they were planning to give the child. To their shock, they realized they had never even thought about it. Martine replied first: They could name the child Jacques, like her husband. Or Paul, perhaps, or Pierre. Everyone nodded their agreement and they drank to the future PierrePaulJacques. For Jacques and Martine, that night would be remembered as one of the happiest of their lives. Two weeks later, however, Jacques surprised all his friends by deciding to have his son circumcised, even though he wasn't circumcised himself. He named the boy Samuel—which, in Hebrew, meant literally: His name is God—and organized a huge party to which all his friends were invited. And then, just as the rabbi pronounced the child's name out loud, something completely unexpected occurred: Jacques told the rabbi that he wanted to revert to his real surname, Bembaron, and to change his first name: from now on, he would be Jacob. He wished to follow his son into the bosom of the church. The partygoers—consisting essentially of journalists, writers, professors, activists from the extreme left, and atheist intellectuals—were dumbfounded. Their eyes showed incomprehension, even consternation. So he's returning to the ghetto?—that was what they were thinking. Jacques/Jacob appeared a man transfigured: his face was hot and red and he looked exultant, and yet he had not touched a drop of alcohol. But he saw the rabbi, he saw the golden embroideries that decorated the Torah scrolls, he heard the heartrending notes of an organ hidden in the attic, and he had a flash of illumination: there was no other explanation for this sudden turn toward the sacred. Later, he would refer to this event as his "return"—not a return to the ghetto, but a return to himself, to the sacred text. They left the center of Paris behind—the Latin Quarter, the Café de Flore—and they left behind their friends, who no longer understood them, who said, They're crazy, it's so sad, it's a tragedy, they're going through some sort of crisis, they'll come back. They never went back. They moved to a two-bedroom apartment on Rue du Plateau, in Paris's nineteenth arrondissement, and enrolled their son in an ultra-Orthodox Jewish school where teachers with beards and black hats taught prayers and sacred texts. There, in the presence of his own teacher—a man in his seventies with a magnetic charisma—Jacob felt good. He had never been as happy as he was with this man who taught him Hebrew and initiated him into the mysteries of the Torah, the Talmud, the Kabbalah. He felt reborn. No longer was he political, rebellious, angry. And if he did, ultimately, keep his surname—Baron—it was only because he was forced to by French law. Samuel knew nothing of his origins. Jacob waited until he was eighteen before revealing the truth. When this finally happened, Samuel at first did not react at all. Then, after a few minutes, he left the room without a word, and then the house. No more than an hour had passed. In a public bathroom, he shaved his beard, cut off his payot, and threw away his black robes. Lies. Bullshit. Betrayal. It was over. His parents had anticipated some anger, but not this brutal rejection, this sudden and absolute rupture. Samuel squatted in various places, and met Nina in college. So she wasn't Jewish? Good! That was what he wanted—to provoke his parents. Because for practicing Jews, worried about the perpetuation of their race, this was a serious issue. They told him: Either you come home or you stay with her and you will never see us again. Nothing could have been better calculated to dissuade him from returning than this unequivocal ultimatum, this aggressive demand. He stayed with an aunt. She kept his parents informed. They colluded with her, the hypocrites, but for them it was better to know that he was safe, was not living on the street. He was deeply in love with Nina at this point, dependent on her to a frightening extent. But Nina, raised in a rather strict military family, was extremely moral: faithfulness mattered to her. Her mother had gone to live with another man when she was seven years old. She woke up one morning and found a card on the living room table—one of those brightly colored postcards that people generally send to thank someone who has invited them to a party. On the front, it said, "THANK YOU." On the back, a few words in a shaky handwriting. Thank you for the years we spent together. Thank you for not judging me. Thank you for forgiving me. Nina's father burned the card with a cigarette lighter, in front of her. Neither of them ever recovered from this incident. He started drinking, and she filled the vacuum where her confidence had been with morality and rules. Samuel nicknamed her "French Justice."
Samir's sudden appearance in their lives caused the first cracks in their suffocating union: from now on, there were three of them, joined at the hip, moving as one, like a wave. You could see them from afar: the gang, friendly and complicit, without even a hint of jealousy or deceit; the loving couple and the free electron. Everyone in college gossiped about them: look at them, always together, showing off their intimacy, their collusion. And, deep down, they were excited by this: it was their own private game. But then, out of nowhere, tragedy hit. A few days before the oral exams, not having heard from his parents since the ignored ultimatum, Samuel learned that they had died in a car accident. A policeman told him at dawn, having first asked if he was the son of Jacques and Martine Baron. Yes, that's me. And he truly was his father's son in that moment when the policeman told him that their car had veered off the road and fallen into a ravine. Samuel does not remember how he reacted—the aftermath of the announcement is a black hole. Perhaps he collapsed, cried, yelled out, It can't be true I don't believe you Tell me it's not true! And the policeman: I'm sorry, but it is. But he remembers the wake, the vision of the two corpses covered in a shroud, with those men in black praying around them and him standing there with his prayer book in his hands, saying Kaddish for the peace of their souls. Samir was there, in the background, wearing a skullcap, hands crossed over his stomach. He too was thinking of his father: there had been no one at his funeral, no one to cry for him. That same day, Samuel, accompanied by his aunt, repatriated his parents' bodies to Israel, in line with their last will and testament. But before leaving the morgue, he took Samir to a quiet corner and solemnly told him: "Look after Nina for me. Don't leave her on her own. I'm counting on you." And that was exactly what he did. He took her out to eat, to watch movies, he gave her books, he went with her to bookstores and museums, he helped her revise, and barely a week after Samuel's departure, when she returned from an oral exam in tears, Samir led her to a room that a friend had lent him, took her in his arms to calm her down, and there, within a few minutes, was on top of her (she was still crying) and removing her clothes (she was wearing a skirt, luckily) and pacifying her the only way he knew. Sex was his form of consolation, his way of making things better; it was his reply to the brutality of life—the purest reply possible, he had never found a better one. That might have been the end of it, but no, it was impossible. Whatever there was between them was too strong, too powerful. It overwhelmed them. They were suddenly defenseless, interdependent—they had never expected this. And while he should have told her that it was a mistake, while he should have walked away—this was how he normally acted, in all sincerity, because he got bored quickly; he didn't like to repeat his conquests—instead he fell in love. Not only did they see each other again, they never left each other's sides. For several days, they were inseparable. He loved her, desired her, wanted to live with her, and he told her this. It was the most terrible betrayal: Samuel would return; he'd just lost his parents in tragic circumstances; Samuel was his friend. In a fair, just, moral world, his behavior was outrageous, but, We do not live in a fair, just, moral world. That was what Samir thought. I know what I'm talking about, because I know where I'm from. The world is violent. Violence is everywhere. This was all he could find to tell her. Love is violent too. You must choose.
Samuel returned, but they did not confess their affair. Samuel thanked Samir—a true friend, someone you can rely on when things get tough, a brother you can trust. It went on like that for nine months, maybe more. Nina did not want to tell Samuel anything. He was living alone in the apartment his parents had been renting, surrounded by their furniture, their belongings—a death chamber. She never went to see him and he never went to see her. It was over between them. They never made love anymore. And when the school year ended, Samir gave her an ultimatum: It's him or me.
Samuel had no trouble remembering those years, and soon he would no longer be able to hold back the tide of images of Samir the Star that flooded his mind, the waves of Samir crashing through the barriers that had been repaired, smashing down the fragile interior edifice he had spent years reconstructing and which now exploded and was drowned and dispersed by Samir Samir Samir.
You're impressed, aren't you? By his success. Admit it!
Nina looked at him with a mixture of pity and anger.
It's true
So here we are . . .
For a brief moment, she had imagined what her life might be now had she gone with Samir twenty years ago, had she made a different decision when he commanded her to choose: irresistible Samir, so confident, so self-assured, versus Samuel, weak in love, cowardly in adversity, devastated by the violence of the break that Nina had provoked and who could find no better way of keeping her than slicing open his veins with a box cutter in the college auditorium, one of those small knives with a retractable blade, made of blue plastic—you just push the safety catch, once, twice, you have to do it in a single movement, press down hard, even if it hurts, then let the blood pour out and the sadness with it—Samuel who had found no better way than this of proving that he loved her, that he was ready to die for her, to put an end to this unbearable pain, to cure all his ills with the stroke of a blade.
When he awoke, he understood that she had chosen him. Putting her love to the test. The risks and dangers of this. And yet, it had to be done. And there she was, hair messed up, face pale, almost corpselike—he is suffering, so I suffer too—sitting on the edge of the bed, practically at his feet, like a dog, he thinks. There she was: Nina, fully present, plumping his pillow, holding his glass as he drank, helping him to eat—time to atone, to set in motion the mechanism of expiation—Nina, surrendering to the heroic romanticism of suicide for love. How beautiful it was, how powerful, how great. Nina never leaving the room except when the nurses asked her to. As for Samir, the case was closed. Neither of them ever attempted to see him again. His name was taboo. They pretended to forget him.
Upon his release from the hospital, Samuel quit his parents' apartment (too expensive), donated their furniture to charity, rented an efficiency, and gave up pursuing his law degree. (He even wondered why he had begun it: to piss off his father, he supposed, but he was no longer very sure. His suicide attempt and the spell in the hospital that followed it seemed to have annihilated all his determination and willpower; from now on, his vision of life was blurred and murky, everything ambiguous.) He took a literature degree by correspondence and began a job teaching foreigners to read and write. Nina too gave up her studies—she had never liked law—and became first a sales assistant, then a waitress, then a receptionist. Nowadays she worked as a model for a few major store catalogues—Carrefour and C&A, mostly.
Look at him! My God, look at him!
There was something masochistic in the way they kept watching Samir's media consecration. They could have changed channels, but no—their suffering fed their rage, their fury. (Finally fuel for a book, thought Samuel. Finally a chance to write a novel that might actually be published!) Samuel and Nina sat petrified in front of their Firstline TV set, bought at Carrefour for €545, payable in three installments, interest-free—an object whose acquisition had caused so much tension and discord between them, with Nina pleading for its purchase for years while Samuel argued against, seeing it as a threat, before finally yielding—realizing that nothing would ever be the same again, that something had been corrupted/destroyed/soiled forever, something like innocence, like the artificial bliss that ignorance provides.
Moving closer to the screen, Samuel examined Samir, wondering if he'd had a nose job, scrutinizing his tumid lips, his amazingly smooth forehead, the way he shone and swaggered on the screen, and seeing his own reflection superimposed on Samir's image, in a cruel comparison. "Get out of the way!" Nina shouted. "I can't see!" Samuel moved aside, then walked behind Nina, watching her as she knelt in front of the TV, in a sacrificial posture, intoning something—but what?
Samir smiled mechanically at the journalist, proud and happy to be where he was, where he belonged—you could see it in his puffed-out chest, the quiver in his upper lip. He lit up the screen. Nothing they had been through seemed to have affected him in the slightest. He was like a man who escapes from a crashed and burning car without a scratch, while the vehicle's other occupant is dead at the wheel.
1. Santiago Pereira, twenty-two, and Dennis Walter, twenty-five. The former dreamed of becoming an artist but was pressured into enlisting by his high-ranking father. The latter stated: "Success, to me, means fighting for my country."
2. Kathleen Weiner. Born in 1939 in New Jersey to a shoemaking father and a housewife mother, Kathleen graduated from Harvard. But her greatest claim to fame remained her supposed liaison, at the age of sixteen, with Norman Mailer.
3. Her employer, François Brunet, is a French politician, born September 3, 1945, in Lyon, Socialist Party member and parliamentary deputy, the author of several books, the latest of which, Toward a Just World, had been a best seller (source: Wikipedia).
4. The daughter of Polish farmers, Sofia Antkowiak dreamed of becoming a famous dancer but became pregnant after a one-night stand with a soldier. Two months after giving birth, she threw herself under the wheels of the Warsaw-Lodz train.
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This reading group guide for The Age of Reinvention includes an introduction, discussion questions, and ideas for enhancing your book club. The suggested questions are intended to help your reading group find new and interesting angles and topics for your discussion. We hope that these ideas will enrich your conversation and increase your enjoyment of the book.
Elite Manhattan criminal defense attorney Sam Tahar seems to have it all: fame, fortune, good looks, an enviable marriage to a prominent socialite, and two wonderful children. But his life is a house of cards; everything that he has achieved stems from a single lie he told in a moment of weakness.
Born into a poor Muslim family, Samir clawed his way to law school, where he befriended Jewish student Samuel Baron. The two were inseparable until the alluring Nina, torn between the men, ultimately chose Samuel, the weaker of the two. Determined as ever, Samir fled to America, assuming his old friend's Jewish identity while Samuel remained stuck in a French suburb, a failed, neurotic writer still bound to an increasingly resentful Nina.
Twenty years later, the three meet again. Now, all their fates hang in the balance as their tangled love triangle collides headlong with the complex realities of life at the start of the twenty-first century.
Questions and Topics for Discussion
1. The author opens the novel with quotes from Turkish novelist Orhan Pamuk, French intellectual Simon de Beauvoir, and Belgian writer Marguerite Yourcenar. Why do you think she chose to begin with these three epigraphs? How did they set the tone for your reading experience, and did their meaning shift once you finished the novel?
2. The Age of Reinvention opens with the following line: "Let's begin with the wound. Yes, let's begin there," referring to a scar on Samir Tahar's neck, the remnant of a brutal gash that he received as a young boy. Why is Samir's scar a launching point for this story? How does the wound function symbolically in the novel?
3. The novel is written in a close third person point of view, telling the story from inside the heads and hearts of its characters. But at the same time, the narrator is also somewhat of a know-it-all, or a gossip. Did you find this style of narrator to be appropriate for the novel? Did the narrator seem male or female to you? Can we trust everything that he or she says?
4. Much of the novel is written in run-on sentences, with frequent slashes and parentheticals populating each chapter. How does this book's unique syntax contribute to its tone and feel?
5. Footnotes play a key role throughout the novel. Since footnotes are much more frequently utilized in nonfiction—and for academic writing in particular—why do you think the author chose to employ footnotes in her novel, and what affect do they have on the experience of reading the novel? How do you think she decided what to include in a footnote versus within the body of the text?
6. On pages 8–9, the narrator describes Samir's sex appeal, saying that "everything about him promised pleasure; everything about him portrayed [a] desire . . . which he was able to express in a single gaze." Why is Samir's sexuality important to his character? How do sex and power connect in this novel?
7. At the beginning of the novel, on page 10, Samuel is described as a person "for whom the whole of existence was nothing but a mass of neuroses and whose only ambition was to use this mental suffering as material for a great book." Do you find Samuel's morals to be questionable? What about as compared to Samir?
8. At some point in their lives, both Samuel and Samir assume identities that aren't technically their birthrights—one inadvertently, and one intentionally. If the identity that you present to the world isn't the one you are born with, does that necessarily mean it isn't true or authentic? Does intention matter?
9. Compare and contrast Samir's experiences with prejudice in his early years in France and as an adult in America. If Samir had been open about his true ethnic background during his time in America, do you think the authorities would have treated his case differently?
10. Did you find Nina's character to be as fully developed as her male counterparts? Or is she a construct of how the protagonists view her? If so, is this indicative of her role within society, or is it more of a commentary on Samir's and Samuel's limited perspectives?
11. In the same vein, if Samir and Samuel had been women and Nina a man, how would this have shifted your experience of the book? Would Samir have been able to attain the same level of success? What role does gender play in this book?
12. New York is often painted as the center of the world, and this is certainly true in Samir's eyes. To what degree is this reality, and to what degree is this a projection on Samir's part? How is Samir's success in New York possible in a way that it wouldn't be in France?
13. What did you make of Ruth's reaction to discovering the truth about her husband's identity? Did it surprise you? Was she justified? How else might she have responded?
14. Success is a major theme in The Age of Reinvention. Do you agree with the characters' definitions of personal and professional success? In your own experience, can the two truly co-exist? Are morality and success portrayed as opposites in the world of the novel, and where does money figure into the equation?
15. In the last scene of the book, a newly-freed Samir "suddenly stops and gazes up defiantly and the skyscrapers stretching up above him . . . an outrageous, arrogant aesthetic, the lurid beauty of the city awakening, a dusty landscape pierced with shards of iridescence" (pp. 397–399). This is a moment of profound reflection for Samir, but what are the particular realizations he has come to? When you read the last line ("the next step is his"), how do you interpret it? How will Samir live his life from now on?
Enhance Your Book Club
1. Purchase a copy of Memoirs of a Beautiful Daughter by Simone de Beauvoir. Read about her experience growing up in a bourgeois French family shackled by the expectations of her social class and see what connections you can draw between this writer's experience and that of the characters in The Age of Reinvention. In your view, how do fiction and nonfiction differ in their ability to tackle these real world themes?
2. Search the internet for information about recent examples of anti-Muslim activity and Muslim-led acts of violence in France. Do you think France is more vulnerable than the US to such activities? If so, why would that be the case? Did you find it surprising that Samir would find it much easier to get a job at a top law firm when he was perceived to be Jewish? What was it about Samir's brother that made him susceptible to extremist organizations, whereas Samir would never have considered joining such a group?
3. Dust off your old copy of The Great Gatsby by F. Scott Fitzgerald or watch the 2013 Baz Luhrmann adaptation starring Leonardo DiCaprio. Discuss the similarities and differences between Jay Gatsby and Samir Tahar, and between Daisy Buchanan and Nina. Both tales are primarily set in New York, but how do the differing time periods—roaring twenties versus the present day—change the way the characters respond to moments of crisis? Near the end of both books there's a moment when the wealthy and elite close ranks against an outsider who has infiltrated their world, but Gatsby's fate is far different from that of Samir. Compare and contrast what happens to these two outsiders.
Jean-François Paga
Karine Tuil
Karine Tuil is a playwright and the award-winning author of eight previous novels. She lives in Paris.
Publisher: Washington Square Press (September 6, 2016)
Fiction > Thrillers > Suspense
Fiction > General
"Sensational . . . Tuil is pursuing something sophisticated [with] this high tension plot . . . Aside from the wit and intrigue of this ingenious story, chasing these troubled characters around the wheel of fortune makes the thrashing effects of modern life seem all the more apparent."
"A grounded, sharp and astonishing novel that immerses us in fear, politics and the cold-blooded terror recounted in today's trending news stories."
– The Chicago Tribune
"[J]uicy...entertaining."
"Karine Tuil's astonishing fictional saga… makes you understand the relentless agony of being left out in the cold simply because of who you are. Tuil describes her fully fleshed-out characters with an explosive and original narrative style."
– The Jerusalem Post
"Suspenseful . . . [A] Gatsby-esque odyssey laced with provocative observations of prejudice, politics, and sexism. . . . [A] secret lights the fuse on the twisty plot, but where it eventually explodes comes as a complete shock."
– Publishers Weekly, starred review
"Karine Tuil – who should be admired for the boldness of her exploration of the thorny issues of 21st-century racial prejudice in France and the United States – plots her story like a pro, the twists and turns that lead to Samir's downfall so teasingly interwoven that when the penny drops it does so with a thunderous crash."
– The National (UK)
Book Cover Image (jpg): The Age of Reinvention
Author Photo (jpg): Karine Tuil


Why we love it -The natural texture of linen in a lightweight knit that's casual yet sophisticated. We like it rumpled and relaxed.
From Laundry by Shelli Segal, this gown features: ruched left side with beading and high slit one-shoulder polyester/spandex matte jersey Imported….


HTC ONE Android Smartphone Features, Reviews & Prices in India. ~ All Android Smartphones Mobile Phones Tablets Review Price.
HTC One Smartphone runs on Android 4.1.2 Jelly Bean OS with 4.7 inch Super LCD3 capacitive touchscreen. The premium HTC phone is powered by Quad-core 1.7 GHz Krait 300 CPU processor and uses a Qualcomm APQ8064T Snapdragon 600 chipset board. The phone comes in 32 & 64 GB variant models with 2 GB RAM. The 16M multitouch screen offers a display resolution of 1080 x 1920 pixels. The phone supports loudspeaker feature with built-in stereo speakers amplifiers. The multi touchscreen android smartphone works at 2G frequency of GSM 850 / 900 / 1800 / 1900. The phone operates at a 3G frequency of HSDPA 850 / 900 / 1900 / 2100 and 4G LTE. The phone dimension are 137.4 x 68.2 x 9.3 mm and the android smartphone model weighs only 143 grams. The phone supports vibration, WAV & MP3 ringtones for call alert. The phone supports 3G speed of HSPA+; LTE, Cat3, 50 Mbps UL, 100Mbps DL and WiFi speed of Wi-Fi 802.11 a/ac/b/g/n, Wi-Fi Direct, DLNA. The phone is available in only Black, Silver and Red color.
Explore HTC One 3G Android Smartphone Features, Specifications, Images, Photos, Comments, Review & Price in India in 2013. The smartphone supports EDGE, GPRS, 3G, Wlan WiFi hotspot for internet connectivity and bluetooth v4.0 with A2DP, NFC, microUSB v2.0 and infrared connectivity. The GPU used in the phone is Adreno 320. The smartphone features Accelerometer, gyro, proximity, compass sensors. The phone supports threaded view SMS, MMS, Email and Push Mail. The built-in applications in this smartphone are Google Search, Maps, Gmail, YouTube, Organizer, Calendar, Google Talk. The HTC One smartphone also supports WhatsApp and Skype for internet messenger chatting. The phone uses a 4 MP camera with 2688 x 1520 pixels support and secondary camera of 2.1 MP with 1080p@30fps. The phone supports Stereo FM radio with RDS, Java MIDP emulator, A-GPS and GLONASS. The video player formats supported are DivX/XviD/MP4/H.263/H.264/WMV player. The audio player formats supported are MP3/eAAC+/WMA/WAV/FLAC player. The phone supports 3.5 mm universal audio jack. The phone uses a non-removable Li-Po 2300 mAh battery which supports up to 27 hours of talktime and 479 hours of standby time.
Also check Samsung I9300 Galaxy S III 3G Android Smartphone Features, Specifications, Images, Photos, Comments, Review & Price in India.
Features and Specifications of HTC One.
LTE ( Long Term Evolution ).
No external memory card slot available.
32/64 GB, 2 GB RAM.
Available with built-in stereo speakers.
HSPA+; LTE, Cat3, 50 Mbps UL, 100Mbps DL.
Wi-Fi 802.11 a/ac/b/g/n, Wi-Fi Direct, DLNA.
4 MP, 2688 x 1520 pixels, autofocus, LED flash, 1080p@30fps, HDR.
Google Search, Maps, Gmail, YouTube, Organizer, Calendar, Google Talk.
Non-removable Li-Po 2300 mAh battery.
The Price of HTC One Android Smartphone in India is Rs. 45,950 /- only.


text:
Nitin Nohria (born February 9, 1962) is an Indian-American academic. He served as the tenth dean of Harvard Business School. He is also the George F. Baker Professor of Administration. He is also a former non-executive director of Tata Sons.

Early life and education
Nitin Nohria was born in Nohar Rajasthan in baniya (traders) family, India. His father, Kewal Nohria, was the former chairman of Crompton Greaves in India, and was one of the reasons Nohria decided to embark upon a career in business.

Nohria attended high school at St. Columba's School in New Delhi, India. He earned a B.Tech in Chemical Engineering at the Indian Institute of Technology Bombay, graduating in 1984, and then received an MBA from Jamnalal Bajaj Institute of Management Studies at the University of Mumbai. He earned a PhD in Management from the Sloan School of Management at Massachusetts Institute of Technology in 1988.

Career

Nohria served as co-chair of the HBS Leadership Initiative and sat on the executive committee of the University's interfaculty initiative on advanced leadership. Nohria is working with fellow HBS professor Rakesh Khurana, the World Economic Forum and the Aspen Institute to create a business oath, like the MBA Oath,  that might be used globally.  In a Harvard Business Review piece published in October 2008, Khurana and Nohria linked the connection between professionalism of a profession and the profession's ability to deliver value to society.

On May 4, 2010, Drew Gilpin Faust, President of Harvard University, appointed him as the Dean of Harvard Business School, effective July 1, 2010. He is the second HBS Dean, after John H. McArthur, born outside the United States and the first Dean since Dean Fouraker in the 1970s to live in the Dean's House on the HBS campus. In January 2014, he tendered an apology on behalf of Harvard Business School for the perceived sexism at the school.

In August 2017, Nohria argued that President Donald Trump's support for "isolationism" was detrimental to American economic prosperity, as it discouraged successful foreigners from immigrating to the United States.

In November 2019, Nohria announced that he would step down as dean in June 2020 but, in light of the COVID-19 outbreak, Nohria decided to stay on as dean through the end of 2020. Srikant Datar took over for him beginning January 1, 2021.

Nohria has won several awards and honors including the 2008 McKinsey Award for the best article in Harvard Business Review for "How Do CEOs Manage Their Time?" and the 2005 PricewaterhouseCoopers Best Article Award for "How to Build Collaborative Advantage".

Criticism

Race issues
In 2013, a lengthy front-page article in The New York Times described HBS efforts to deal with gender inequality. In 2014, Nohria apologized for HBS on how it had sometimes treated its female students and professors offensively.

Under Nohria as dean for 10 years at Harvard Business School, there was a low percentage of African Americans as enrolled MBA students and had nine out of 270 faculty members in the faculty who were black. A faculty member Steven S. Rogers stepped down from teaching at the business school because it had long given short shrift to the black experience and had maintained anti-African practices.

In June 2020, Nohria publicly apologized for failing to mount a more successful fight against racism and pledged to move urgently forward with what he called an "anti-racism action plan."

Personal life
Nohria is married with two daughters, both of whom currently attend Harvard College. Nohria earned "$727,365 in salary and benefits in 2014."

References

External links
 Dean Nitin Nohria (Archived) - Harvard Business School
 Standing and acting together for racial justice (Archived) - Harvard Business School
 Business School Dean Nitin Nohria Announces New Anti-Racist Efforts After Criticism - The Harvard Crimson

Academics of London Business School
American business writers
Indian emigrants to the United States
Harvard Business School faculty
Harvard University faculty
IIT Bombay alumni
Living people
St. Columba's School, Delhi alumni
Jamnalal Bajaj Institute of Management Studies alumni
MIT Sloan School of Management alumni
American male writers of Indian descent
American people of Punjabi descent
American academics of Indian descent
Business school deans
Indian academic administrators
1962 births
American male non-fiction writers
Business educators

redpajama_set_name: RedPajamaWikipedia


Errol Morris is known to many as a documentary filmmaker; but I find that description rather limiting. He's also an alchemist, a philosopher, a synergist, and a sleuth. Snooping out singular subjects, he puts together idiosyncratic moral fables that stimulate lofty existential discourse. With each successive film, Morris gets closer to the core question that motivates his work: Who am I?
Whenever I hear someone say that a particular event changed her life, I'm both skeptical and envious. I'd never had such a turning point. Then one winter's night in early 1998, I saw Fast, Cheap and Out of Control (1997) and in Morris's inspired translucence, I saw myself. He affirmed the direction I was going as an aspiring filmmaker: telling heart-felt human stories that connect and uplift.
Flash forward: The 28th Annual Toronto International Film Festival is in high gear and Errol Morris is in town promoting his new film, The Fog of War, about Robert S. McNamara, Secretary of Defense during the Kennedy and Johnson administrations. It's a beautiful fall day as I amble over to the Hotel Inter-Continental equipped with my day-glo pink 3×5s, psyched for my big meeting with Morris. In the elevator I accidentally step on his foot. Then we're in the hotel restaurant, toasting each other with freshly squeezed orange juice. We're just into my second question when he gets pulled away by the CBC. I try to remain calm amidst the celebrity hubbub all around me, knowing I can always follow up by phone.
While waiting for Morris to return, I think of something Jean-Luc Godard once said, "Art is not a reflection of reality. It is the reality of that reflection." Through the camera lens, Morris holds up all sorts of mirrors, some glitzy and garish, others chipped and old-fashioned. Whether it's getting to know one of the most controversial figures of the 20th century or an inventor who makes "friendly" execution devices, a lion tamer's POV or that of a turkey hunter, insights into the infinitely complex human condition bubble forth. For the viewer, the discovery is one of self-recognition.
He started making films in the late '70s and shares a famous, cult film fact with Werner Herzog, his then teacher at Berkeley. Morris had read an article in the San Francisco Chronicle entitled "450 Dead Pets Going to Napa Valley," was intrigued, and wanted to make a documentary on pet cemeteries. Herzog was skeptical and said, "You make that film and I'll eat my shoe." And he did, sautéed in garlic! Les Blank made a short film on it, aptly titled, Werner Herzog Eats His Shoe (1980). Roger Ebert declared Morris's pet cemetery doc, Gates of Heaven (1978), one of the best films ever made.
Morris reads a lot, which has directly influenced his style and subject choices. The Thin Blue Line (1988) came out a newspaper article, as did Mr. Death: The Rise and Fall of Fred A. Leuchter, Jr. (1999). Stephen Hawking's book A Brief History of Time was the catalyst for the film of the same name, and The Fog of War shares a similar genesis. When he read McNamara's In Retrospect, Morris didn't agree with the media's general critique of it as a mea culpa; instead, he saw the book as a "thinly disguised autobiography." Intensely subjective, often problematic, material can provoke in him a response so strong that a film is born.
In the '80s, Morris's interest in the psychology of criminal behavior led him to become a private eye, and for a time he even referred to himself as a "director-detective." The Thin Blue Line evolved out of this. It's a landmark film, which deserves its dubbing, "the first movie mystery to actually solve a murder." One of the subjects confessed on film that he was the murderer of a Dallas policeman, while another, wrongfully convicted and on death row, was released from prison. A man's life was saved because of Morris's inquisitive and nonthreatening style of filmmaking.
At the heart of each story is the interview — what's revealed and what remains hidden, what's on the surface and what lies beneath. Alchemy is the ancient art of transforming the raw matter of nature into a valuable essence. Morris creates cinematic gold with the help of his secret ingredient, the "Interrotron." His wife coined the name because it's a "mixture of interview, interrogation and terror." It's a revolutionary interviewing device where Morris's face is projected onto the lens creating a direct intimacy between him and his subject, as well as between the subject and the viewer. Concepts about the subjective/objective experience mingle with those of the representation of identity and "the truth." Cinema vérité purists beware!
Morris refers to his role as a "provocateur" and "unseen interlocutor." In what he calls "first-person cinema," he unobtrusively gets his subjects to say the most natural and compelling things. The first words spoken by Albert, an eccentric, Cartesian philosopher in Vernon, Florida (1981), embody Morris's metaphysical musings: "Reality, you mean this is the real world? I never thought of that." In A Brief History of Time (1992) renowned physicist Stephen Hawking strives to know the mind of God: "How real is time? Will it ever come to an end? Why do we remember the past and not the future? Not only does God play dice, he sometimes throws them where they cannot be seen." By contrast, Fred Leuchter's journey in Mr. Death is one of historical revisionism, obsessive self-delusion, and the inscrutability of personal perception.
Noelle Elia: With a few exceptions, you consistently use the singular "I" voice, the monologue. Can you talk about that choice?
NE: And how it relates to the "other." That reminds me of Ray Mendez, the mole rat specialist in _Fast Cheap and Out of Control _. I loved how excited he was by the feeling you get when you look into the eyes of life that has no relation to you, looking straight into the "other" — that it's something to be wondered at. It's essentially about seeing yourself, whether it's an animal or another human being.
EM: I've also always liked that moment myself, when Ray says, "I am. You are." It has a lot of metaphorical content in it that applies to my filmmaking in general, which I like. I think every single one of the films has been motivated by a certain level of curiosity. They're investigations. And as such, I don't know where they're heading. You have hunches about certain things, but you may find out things you could never have possibly imagined.
NE: What comes through is this innate curiosity that motivates all of us. When you talk about your films, you've used a great phrase, "the mystery of personality," how it's the greatest mystery of all. What does that mean to you?
EM: Who we are ourselves, who are the people that we speak with? I'm really fascinated with what people say when asked to give an account of themselves in their own words, and using what they say in so many odd ways that probably do not follow from the interviews themselves. Making connections between things. I probably would not like to call my work over-processed cheese, but there is processing involved.
Morris's unique style is chock-full of layered imagery and rearranged self-disclosure. To achieve this, he relies on lots of visual/conceptual strategies: archival and found footage; re-enactments and super-stylized, symbolic allusions; gritty film resolutions and slick interview techniques. Humor, irony and, ultimately, compassion bleed through; and although his films are highly reconstructed, they also feel logical — like saying, "Yes, of course." As tableaux vivants, they reflect his personal beliefs and aesthetic sensibility—clearly this is someone who has meditated on the complexities of existence.
When Morris returns from his CBC interview, he settles back into his chair and we begin again. The noise has escalated around us—a baby wails at the next table—so I lean in, trying to restore some intimacy. It can be tricky interviewing someone you really admire, but I feel at ease with him. This is probably his tenth interview of the day, yet he's polite and gracious, modest even, a far cry from a posturing, Hollywood filmmaker. There are many things I want to ask about his philosophy and the emotional motivation of his work, but he keeps bringing it back to McNamara. It's a press junket, after all.
The Fog of War is Morris's first overtly historical film and he's well aware that it "runs in the face of how history's normally done. It makes no claim for balance or objectivity." He structured the film as "Eleven lessons from the life of Robert S. McNamara" with chapter headings such as "Rationality will not save us. There's something beyond oneself. Be prepared to re-examine your reasoning." Morris waded through over twenty hours of interview with McNamara, and emerged with an engrossing look at one man's interpretation of history. He covers World War II and the little-known firebombing of Tokyo in 1945; McNamara's rise to the head of the Ford Motor Company; the Cuban Missile Crisis; and culminates with the Vietnam War. Spliced between signature-style collages of archival wartime footage and staged visual metaphors, McNamara tries to derive some conclusions about his actions. He posits a revealing question, "What makes us omniscient?" Once again, Morris's latest film mirrors his attraction to elusive, philosophical conundrums.
NE: You refer to yourself as a "contrarian" with regards to making this film. In what way?
NE: It's the ultimate self-reflexive question. And the gray inevitably wins out. What you do, it's like the Robert McNamara Rubik's Cube.
EM: It's a good comparison; he certainly is the Robert McNamara Rubik's Cube for me. Who is McNamara? Do we like him? Do we hate him? Someone asked about the first lesson (in The Fog of War), "Empathize with your enemy" and whether that applied to my filmmaking as well. The answer is Yes, I do. One of the most troubling things about the politics of our time is seeing things in terms of clear distinctions — good/evil, right/wrong. The truth of the matter is that the world is a gray place, and a very complex place. I set out to make a movie about McNamara in his own words, but I ended up making a movie about right now. It's quite relevant to the situation we now find ourselves in.
I once pointed out that a good documentary film preserves, in some way, the relationship of the filmmaker with his subjects; that it's there in some form or another. I worried during the course of making the movie, am I being fair to McNamara on the one hand, and on the other, am I being a shill for him? What is my role here? I think I've made some sort of peace with myself because I think that question is somewhere in the movie. I don't think I'm either for him; (I'm) not an apologist, and I didn't make a movie trying to prove he's as bad as people thought he was. I would even argue that the attempt to explore how McNamara sees himself and the world is as interesting, if not more interesting, than an objective, historical account which would be from the outside looking in rather than the other way around. The questions that the movie provoked, and perhaps my main reason for even making it in the first place, remain.
NE: The contradictory, coexisting components?
EM: Yes. When you make a movie about a real person and you have a relationship with that person, you have feelings, inevitably. It's inevitable, having spent two years, off and on, talking to McNamara that I have strong feelings about him. It's also quite simply the case that I've grown to like him, which complicates things even more. Liking him doesn't mean I feel any differently about the war in Vietnam, because I don't. I found it abhorrent in the '60s and '70s and I find it abhorrent now, thirty-plus years later. Now that the movie is about to come out and people are starting to write about it, it becomes interesting on a whole other level as well.
There's a poignant moment in the film when McNamara quotes the famous T.S. Eliot line, "We shall not cease from exploration, and the end of our exploring shall be to arrive where we started and know the place for the first time." Such is the circularity of life and of Morris's oeuvre.
This confuses me because I feel so much hope watching his films. It's easy to get down about the state of the world, but then there's Ray Mendez in Fast, Cheap and Out of Control. He's one of my heroes. Ray's whole raison d'être is about self-knowledge through emotional connection, that we don't need to be afraid of the "other," or of difference. And George Mendonça, the topiary artist in the same film, who'll spend years and years shaping one animal, "bringing to it a level of commitment, love, and passion that makes the enterprise almost sublime." What could be more hopeful than that?
A PR gal appears suddenly, telling us very matter-of-factly, "Time's up." Morris looks at me, subtle apologies in his eyes. As I walk out of the buzzing hotel into the sunshine, I feel expanded, yet more integrated — Errol Morris is a genuine conduit for positive change, and it's infectious. A pet cemetery owner in Gates of Heaven sums it up nicely, "As the old timers say, 'to be a success in this world, find a need and fill it.'" Which makes me wonder why, time and again, his work has been described as "oddball," "unorthodox,""weird," and "askew." For me, he's a visionary, and a warm and friendly one at that.
In the end, it's all about bringing something new into creation. Through the watching of his films, we – the viewer, the filmmaker and his subjects – connect. And it's from this connection that change is possible: reflection, dialogue, action, and greater acceptance of self, and of others.


text:
import greenfoot.*;  // (World, Actor, GreenfootImage, Greenfoot and MouseInfo)

/**
 * Write a description of class Evil2 here.
 *
 * @author (your name)
 * @version (a version number or a date)
 */
public class Evil2 extends Enemy implements Monsterable
{
    private int health = 200;
    /**
     * Act - do whatever the Evil2 wants to do. This method is called whenever
     * the 'Act' or 'Run' button gets pressed in the environment.
     */
    public Evil2(){

     GreenfootImage image = getImage();
        image.scale(80, 80);
        setImage(image);
    }

    public void act()
    {

         if (isTouching(Projectile.class)){
        takeDamage();
        getWorld().removeObject(getOneIntersectingObject(Projectile.class));
        }
        if (health <=0){
        getWorld().removeObject(this);
        }
        // Add your action code here.
    }
    public void movement(){
    move(-1);
}

    public void takeDamage(){
    this.health -= 70;
    }
}

redpajama_set_name: RedPajamaGithub


Some people would say that this is what denial feels like. Moments after the Polygon review of DuckTales Remastered went live, I had already copy-pasted the link to my gamer friends and leapt on over to read about what surely would be the next milestone in retrogaming, remakes, and re-imaginings. I'm a fan -- a true believer. I played the original DuckTales on the Famicom/NES to death and there was once a time when I knew every little secret in that game by heart.
That made reading the review all the more devastating.
All the negativity [is] downright baffling.
That's really disappointing. What's more, all the negativity turns out to be downright baffling after I actually got a chance to sit down and play the game myself. DuckTales Remastered is not going to usher in a new age of gaming nirvana, but it's an above average game that features exceptional 2D graphics and animation -- something I would not expect so soon after the sublime Dragon's Crown. It's also one of the few instances when a game has exactly met my expectations of it. Capcom and WayForward promised a beautiful update of a classic 8-bit title, and every single bit of that promise is present in the final build.
If you've never played the original DuckTales, you'll still be in for a treat. The game is as straightforward as they come: as Scrooge McDuck, plow through five differently-themed levels, defeat the level boss, and collect the treasure at the end. Use your pogo cane and golf swing techniques to survive. Collect stuff to drive up your score.
Many reviews painted this scenario as sparse, boring, and obsolete. Today's gamers want complexity, and depth, and choices! I think there's a danger in that reasoning. I think gaming is running the risk of becoming too much of a secluded "gamers-only" club, even as developers scramble to make their games easier and more accessible for the lucrative mass market. Just look at all the concepts we have to juggle and manage even in the simplest games: moving, aiming, attacking, reloading, weapon switching, climbing, ducking, jumping, moving and jumping, pushing, pulling, accessing our journal or inventory or map, and quite possibly, managing teammates.
I won't deny that I love complexity, but there's room for simplicity in games, and not enough new titles deliver. That's specifically why DuckTales Remastered is such an exciting prospect. It's not just a nostalgia blast: the simplicity of the gameplay is both a breath of fresh air and a rediscovery of a challenge to overcome.
DuckTales makes no excuses for being a pure test of dexterity with a real learning curve. I played for almost two hours the night I got the game, losing and continuing three times on the Amazon level and dying to the boss the last two times. I stopped playing, mildly frustrated at my inability to play through what used to be a walk in the park for seven-year-old me.
When was the last time that pure game mastery got you through a game? What's that? Dark Souls? That was a good game too, wasn't it?
The next morning, I beat the damn boss and started to tackle Transylvania, where I immediately got stuck again.
The day after that, after a couple more hours of practice, I beat Transylvania's boss and got into a just-one-more-level cycle, suddenly playing through the whole thing up to the end. That's with zero power-ups or leveling up save for a couple of life bar extensions. I just had to learn the game to make it through.
The Polygon review's statement that "DuckTales: Remastered's controls are imprecise, stiff and unresponsive" is simply untrue. The game plays as tightly as it ever has: with a bit of practice, Scrooge will do exactly what you want him to. And for the retro-savvy out there, the movement and jumping physics are just like classic Mega Man.
Just play this game and revel in the simplicity and the challenge of it all. I won't even mention the amazing music and sound updates because everyone already agrees that nothing bad can be said about them.
An amusing parting note: it seems like my seven-year-old nephew, who belittles me for not owning an iPad to play Plants vs. Zombies 2 on and for not knowing what all the Angry Birds do, is quite crappy at this game. I had the game set to the ridiculously easy "easy" mode and he still couldn't beat the Amazon boss. I don't want to be part of the only generation in history that knows how to manipulate a gamepad. Guys, think of the children.


text:
U.S. Army lengthens tours for soldiers in Europe, Japan
June 2019 Global Defense Security army news industry
Posted On Thursday, 13 June 2019 12:29
The U.S. Army is adding a year to overseas tours for some soldiers heading to Europe and Japan, as part of an effort to boost readiness and reduce moves. Sean Kimmons, Army News Service, reports on U.S. Army's website.
A Stryker from the 2nd Cavalry Regiment fitted with the Common Remotely Operated Weapon Station-Javelin negotiates the terrain of the Hohenfels Training Area, Germany (Picture source: US Army/Spc. Robert Douglas)
Under the new policy, which applies to permanent change-of-station orders published after June 14, tours for soldiers who have no dependents and are not married to other service members will extend from 24 to 36 months. Tours for soldiers accompanied by dependents will remain at 36 months. An estimated 3,000 to 5,000 Soldiers could be affected by the policy each year. "You won't have the turnover," said Mary Sturm, who handles overseas and enlisted assignment policy for the Army's G-1 personnel office. "Anyone staying in one location longer is going to provide a little more stability."
Extra stability could provide benefits all the way down to the squad level, from tank crews to those in office settings, as Soldiers train in the same teams with less turnover. "That enables the crews to actually work together for a longer period of time," Sturm said. "You'll get to utilize the skills you learn, rather than move on to the next location."
The new policy applies to the following areas:
-- Germany: All locations except Donaueschingen
-- Italy: All locations except Mt. Venda
-- Belgium: All locations except Betrix
-- Japan: All locations except Akizuki Kure, ltami (Sapporo), Kumamoto, Kuma Shima, Kyoga- Misaki, Okuma, Osaka, le Shima, Seburiyama, Sendai, and Shariki
Soldiers already on unaccompanied tours for 24 months or less at these locations are also encouraged to request an extension, according to All Army Activities message 042/2019. There are no current plans to expand this policy to other locations.
The policy is also part of the Army's larger efforts to alleviate transportation issues seen by soldiers and their Families when traveling to new assignments.
At a Family forum in February, Army Secretary Mark T. Esper said the service was moving to standardize continental U.S. tours and most overseas tours to 36 months to reduce PCS moves. Esper also mentioned Soldiers should be able to stay at a location for even longer than three years. "That's fine as long as you're performing your role and it's value added to the Army," he said. "We want as much as possible to reduce PCS turmoil."

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Uganda's violent election has exposed divisions of age and class
By The Economist
IN A POOL hall in Kampala, the Ugandan capital, a group of boxers and nightclub bouncers are discussing elections. They were recently taken to meet an army general, who offered them money to wear T-shirts of the ruling party, the National Resistance Movement (NRM), and fight rowdy opposition supporters in the streets. The sum was not enough, they thought. Then disappointment turned to fear when a well-known champion boxer who had publicly backed the NRM was gunned down by security agents in the night, amid rumours that he had fallen out with his erstwhile patrons. Politicians view the urban poor with contempt, says a bouncer. "When […]Read more >
Sadyr Japarov is elected president of Kyrgyzstan in a landslide
A CAMPAIGN ad for Sadyr Japarov, the newly elected president of Kyrgyzstan, shows him galloping across a snowy expanse on a white steed, coattails flying in the slipstream. The message is clear: Mr Japarov is a knight in shining armour (or at least in traditional Kyrgyz garb, which he wore on the campaign trail), racing to save the turbulent Central Asian nation, which has seen three popular uprisings in 15 years, including one this past autumn that put him on the path to power. "I'm not going to repeat the mistakes of previous administrations," vowed Mr Japarov in an interview in his campaign headquarters at midnight on […]Read more >
The expulsion of Donald Trump marks a watershed for Facebook and Twitter
THE MEGAPHONE has been taken away. On January 8th Twitter, a social network, announced that it was "permanently suspending" President Donald Trump's account. Viewed in isolation, the two tweets that led to the ban were, by Mr Trump's standards, fairly innocuous. But Twitter said it had taken its decision in the wake of the riot at America's Congress on January 6th, in which five people died as legislators' offices were ransacked by a crowd of Mr Trump's supporters after Mr Trump had encouraged them to march on the Capitol. The social network said that continuing to give Mr Trump access risked […]Read more >


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Q: Find out whether series diverges or converges I have this math problem: "determine whether the series converges absolutely, converges conditionally, or diverges."
I can use any method I'd like. This is the series:$$\sum_{n=1}^{\infty}(-1)^n\frac{1}{n\sqrt{n+10}}$$
I though about using a comparison test. But I'm not sure what series I can compare $\sum_{n=1}^{\infty}\frac{1}{n\sqrt{n+10}}$ to.

A: Converges absolutely
$|u_n|=\frac{1}{n\sqrt{(n+10)}}<\frac{1}{n}.\frac{1}{n^{\frac{1}{2}}}=\frac{1}{n^{\frac{3}{2}}}$

A: We can use Leibniz theorem: if a_n is a monotone sequence that converges to 0, then the series $\sum_{n=1}^{\infty}(-1)^n a_n$ converges. Let´s have $a_n=\dfrac{1}{n\sqrt{n+10}}$.
So we have to prove that $lim$ an=0 and that it is monotone. If you can show that, you have that it converges

A: Note that the summand is alternating, and converges monotonically to zero in absolute value. This implies that the series is convergent.
The series, $S = \sum_{n=1}^{\infty}\frac{(-1)^{n}}{n\sqrt{n+10}}$, is absolutely convergent:
$$|S| =|\sum_{n=1}^{\infty}\frac{(-1)^{n}}{n\sqrt{n+10}}| \leq \sum_{n=1}^{\infty} |\frac{1}{n\sqrt{n+10}}| \leq \sum_{n=1}^{\infty}\frac{1}{n\sqrt{n}} = \sum_{n=1}^{\infty}n^{-\frac{3}{2}}$$
Since $f(t) := t^{-\frac{3}{2}}$ is positive and decreasing on the set $[1,\infty) \subset \mathbb{R}$, it follows that $\sum_{n=1}^{\infty}f(n)$ converges if and only if $\int_{1}^{\infty}f(t)dt$ converges. Since $\int_{1}^{\infty}f(t)dt = \int_{1}^{\infty}t^{-\frac{3}{2}} = 2$, it follows that the series $\sum_{n=1}^{\infty}n^{-\frac{3}{2}}$ is convergent. Therefore $S$ is absolutely convergent. $\square$

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