From next week’s issue, online now: Marc Fisher uncovers the story of Horace Mann English teacher Robert Berman, who enthralled his favorite students with talk of poetry and art, but now stands accused of sexually abusing some of them. One alleged victim tells Fisher, “People think of child abuse as a moment in a shower, like Sandusky. They don’t think of it as essentially abducting and brainwashing. This was a cult of art, literature, and music…”

Continue reading: http://nyr.kr/13jmmRp

A call for the 92nd Street Y to reconsider its decision and maintain 92Y Tribeca, from Richard Brody: http://nyr.kr/11jvrZi

The loss of the Fung Wah bus service between Boston and New York inspired this parody: http://nyr.kr/XGaaWx

Lyrics and performance by Marc Philippe Eskenazi, with apologies to Bob Dylan.

Directed by Myles Kane.

(Source: newyorker.com)

A few weeks ago… several overseas Congolese writers were back in Brazzaville. So were a hundred or so Parisian intellectuals, Belgian essayists, hip Nigerian authors, South African slam poets, and writers and filmmakers from across Africa, especially its French-speaking countries. A special overseas edition of Etonnants Voyageurs, a major French literature and film festival, had landed in Brazzaville like a U.F.O., disgorging these characters into the city, along with a substantial, mostly French, press corps, and assorted international lit-fest habitués. The festival had held previous African editions in Bamako, Mali, but decided to change venue even before the current conflict flared up there, and Mabanckou, its co-director, helped steer it to Brazzaville. TheFrancophonieorganization of French-speaking countries provided support, as did Congo’s government, in part channelled through the semi-official media house that publishes the country’s only daily newspaper,Les Dépêches de Brazzaville.

Etonnants Voyageurs means “surprising travellers.” Perhaps those most surprised in Brazzaville were members of the local hardscrabble writers’ community, who operate with no publishing infrastructure or institutional support, as they watched the festival apparatus spread across the city, with its workshops, readings, screenings, concerts, and parties…

Continue reading Siddhartha Mitter’s dispatch from a Congo literary festival: http://nyr.kr/13FmvNW

Photograph by Gaël Le Ny.

Sasha Weiss considers why people find Anne Hathaway, Hollywood’s “happy girl,” to be so annoying: “Little girls learn very quickly to modulate their excitement if they want to be acceptable… Anne has somehow managed to retain that bright look, and many people would like to wipe it off her face.”

Continue reading: http://nyr.kr/XFpWAi

Photograph by Jason Merritt/Getty.

(Source: newyorker.com)

“By constantly recycling established works, we may remain trapped.”

Ian Crouch on “Parades End,” a five-part interpretation of Ford Madox Ford’s novel coming to HBO on Tuesday night, and television adaptations: http://nyr.kr/X9gXHX

Photograph by Nick Briggs.

“Anne Hathaway: C+” Michael Schulman grades the Oscar acceptance speeches: http://nyr.kr/W8FSgy

…and, read David Denby on the First Lady at the Awards (“Not good, Academy. Pleaes don’t do it again”), and the night’s highs and lows: http://nyr.kr/15KxxRx

and Claire Hoffman on Seth MacFarlane, creepy imitator and Oscars host: http://nyr.kr/13iytgx

(Source: newyorker.com)

This week on newyorker.com, Richard Brody forecast which films are likely to win Oscar’s favor. Now, join Brody and our Culture Editor, Michael Agger to watch the ceremony and discuss it live: http://nyr.kr/WfLwIn

Sasha Frere-Jones weighs in on Baauer and the “Harlem Shake” phenomenon sweeping the web: It “is not a dance craze but, rather, an Internet-language craze, a replication based on imitating the syntax of a particular video. With other dance crazes, you could use whatever music you liked and twerk or do the dougie, but you did have to get those dances roughly right to be part of the phenomenon.” Continue reading: http://nyr.kr/VVaRwp

(Source: newyorker.com)