Word: towered
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Dates: during 2000-2009
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...hill in the center of Mount Auburn Cemetery, there is a white tower like the rook from a giant chess set. Ninety-nine steps spiral to the crenellated parapet, where you can look out on Boston and Cambridge spread before you. When I got to the tower, I had been in the cemetery for an hour; the shock of the wasps had worn out, and I felt at peace with death...
There is a door at the bottom of the tower and then you walk up the narrow, spiraling steps. Windows in the tower light the staircase only intermittently, so that as you climb you are plunged from light into darkness again and again, and although I was climbing up I kept matching my step to the rhythm of the lines from “Dirge Without Music” by Edna St. Vincent Millay that run, “Down, down, down into the darkness of the grave, Gently they...
...scuttled over to the rail and clutched it. Do not let me die, I prayed, oh, please don’t let me die. As soon as I could rely on my legs again, I descended the 99 steps, dragging my arm against the cool, solid core of the tower to ground...
...nails the claustrophobic, poisonous atmosphere of academia, but the recounting of life in the bamboo tower quickly grows didactic and stale. The reader tires of it faster than Jian does. It doesn't help that Jian is an affecting character but too often a lifeless narrator; like a typical grad student, he often misses the greater point for the stubborn detail. He watches his future father-in-law ignited by a Lear-like madness and wonders obtusely, "Perhaps he should be treated by a psychiatrist; acupuncture or acupressure might help...
...circle this date on our calendar as the day on which we can reveal our conceited confidence and get a perverse kick out of it. Yale is our only other true partner in the Ivy ivory tower (Princeton is disqualified because, well, that’s also a different story) and we relish the annual opportunity to push Yalies around. Calling Yale a “safety school” is funny in a deeply ironic and moronic way, and for some reason, we just can’t get enough...