thursday, september 23, 2010


BOOK WORLD Roald Dahl’s


GIFTS


biography The celebrated children’s author (“James and the Giant Peach”) had an eventful life beyond his fiction. C3


Kennedy Center David Rubenstein gives $10 million. C3


Style ABCDE C S MUSIC


‘The Gershwin Project’ The composer’s work is explored at the Clarice Smith Center. C9


THE TV COLUMN


‘American Idol’ judges The winning candidates: rocker Steven Tyler and pop star Jennifer Lopez. C6


TV PREVIEW “


JULIA EWAN/THE WASHINGTON POST


PEARLS TOP-SIDERS JOSHUA YOSPYN FOR THE WASHINGTON POST ST. ALBANS SCHOOL


Even the most self- infatuated 20-somethings do


not deserve the punishment of


wallowing in . . . ‘My Generation.’ ” — Hank Stuever, in his preview of the ABC faux-documentary. C2


3LIVE TODAY @ washingtonpost.com/discussions Got plans? The Going Out Gurus are here to help 1 p.m. • Celebritology Live with Jen Chaney 2 p.m. Giving preppy its props RICKY CARIOTI/THE WASHINGTON POST


JOHN KERRY’S HOUSE


YORKIE


JULIA EWAN/THE WASHINGTON POST TRISCUITS


FRANK JOHNSTON/THE WASHINGTON POST THE TOMBS


ROWING JOHN MCDONNELL/THE WASHINGTON POST J. SCOTT APPLEWHITE/ASSOCIATED PRESS JOANNA C. PECHA/ISTOCKPHOTO.COM


LACOSTE JULIA EWAN/THE WASHINGTON POST


by Jura Koncius W


hen Lisa Birnbach launched “The Offi- cial Preppy Hand- book” in 1980, Washingtonians bought tweed jack- ets at Britches, and


a 1225 on your SATs was enough to get into Georgetown. Preppies were only those who went to the right schools or were to the WASP manner born. Her book shared their subculture secrets: Their footwear, propensity for frayed cuffs and recipe for Bloodies. The prep code was cracked. Thirty years and 2.3million copies


Lisa Birnbach waited 30 years for an “Official Preppy Handbook” sequel.


later, Birnbach is back with “True Prep,” an updated field guide to the preppy lifestyle in 2010. You know, things like rehab (the new boarding school) and texting (not at the dinner table). There’s vital information on how to keep that


sporty tan in an era when overexposure to the sun is frowned upon, without re- sorting to Snooki-type tanning salons. “The first book was about stuff. They wanted pictures of our cars, dogs and drinks,” says Birnbach, 52. “This book is about the complications the 21st centu- ry has brought to nice people from nice families who wear nice clothes.” For example, the people in the White


House. We’ve got two prepsters in chief, one a serial J. Crew shopper. “President Obama went to the private Punahou School in Hawaii. She went to Prince- ton, and they both went to Harvard Law,” Birnbach says. “He smokes a little bit. And he chose to address a social


preppy continued on C10


The capital of prepdom


The preppiest places in Washington, as chosen by Lisa Birnbach, pre- eminent arbiter of prep: 1. The parking lot at St. Albans School 2. The Tombs — crew prints on the walls, beer by the pitcher 3. Social Safeway — check out the tonic or tuna aisles 4. Smith Point — it is named after a Nantucket landmark 5. City Tavern Club — lots of new young preps joining 6. The Sports Club/LA at the Ritz-Carlton — where yummy mummies go to Pilates 7. George — a new prep bar in the courtyard in back of Cafe Milano 8. John Kerry’s Georgetown house 9. R.I.P.: Light a candle at the site of the legendary prep 1980s hook- up spot, the Chinese Disco (Chidi), a frat party/beach bar that sprang up Friday nights at the former Day Lily restaurant near Foggy Bottom


‘Some Sing’ in two-part harmony


by DeNeen L. Brown For those who think the Broadway


play “For Colored Girls Who Have Con- sidered Suicide / When the Rainbow Is Enuf” was a cultural moment in the 1970s, the author has this news: “Well, the book ain’t over,” says Nto-


zake Shange, who was 28 in 1976 when she became a literary and feminist icon for her work demanding that society pay attention to the struggles of black wom- en.


And for those who thought Shange’s career as an artist had ended after a stroke six years ago left her unable to speak, walk or write — well, Shange now has an answer to that question, too. Last week, Shange, 61, released a new novel that she has written with her sis- ter, Ifa Bayeza, an award-winning play- wright. “Some Sing, Some Cry” chroni- cles the lives of seven generations of mu- sically gifted black women — from slavery into the 21st century. On Nov. 5, a


MICHAEL S. WILLIAMSON/THE WASHINGTON POST SISTER ACT: Co-authors Ifa Bayeza, left, and Ntozake Shange, in mirror image.


movie version of “For Colored Girls” is set to be released by director Tyler Perry. The two sisters read from their book on a recent evening at the Smithsonian’s National Museum of Natural History. The audience was packed with many Af- rican American women who remem- bered “For Colored Girls” on Broadway and had been struck by the way in which the play explained so beautifully for a mainstream audience what they had


long felt: that because they were neither male nor white, they had not been given the luxury of the benefit of the doubt. “When I saw it for the first time in the


1970s, I felt empowered,” said Miriam Kearse, 47, of Silver Spring, who came to hear Shange. “I learned it was okay to vo- calize not being okay. It was okay to feel bad to the point you are going to snap. It


sisters continued on C9


Holocaust film a testament to different types of survival


by Sarah Kaufman


A little boy, no more than a heap of bones, is huddled on a sidewalk, his hand out, his mouth slack. People hur- ry past him, oblivious. This is a scene from a Nazi film, shot in the crowded, stinking, typhus-ridden Warsaw ghetto in 1942, preserved by a government in- fatuated with the camera. The German lens captured a horrific


reality — and a cynical form of theater. As a new documentary makes clear, scenes such as this were staged by the filmmakers. It was an effort to con- struct a narrative, at least in part to fab- ricate a picture of Jewish indifference to the plight of other Jews, and legiti- mize a nation’s hatred. So what do the images tell us now?


What can we take away from this cor- rupt choreography? “A Film Unfin- ished,” which opens Friday at Land- mark’s E Street Cinema, puts before us layers and layers of interpretation. There is the way the largest of the


ghettos that confined Jews during World War II fascinated the Nazis, and how they exploited it; how life was ex-


OSCILLOSCOPE LABORATORIES


RAW FOOTAGE: “Unfinished” contains an hour-long Nazi propaganda film.


perienced by the Jews imprisoned there; and even how some who sur- vived the Warsaw ghetto interpret the Nazi interpretation now, 70 years later, while viewing the old footage. In proposing how a film’s meaning can change over time in ways both dra- matic and exquisitely nuanced, this


unfinished continued on C4


Page 1  |  Page 2  |  Page 3  |  Page 4  |  Page 5  |  Page 6  |  Page 7  |  Page 8  |  Page 9  |  Page 10  |  Page 11  |  Page 12  |  Page 13  |  Page 14  |  Page 15  |  Page 16  |  Page 17  |  Page 18  |  Page 19  |  Page 20  |  Page 21  |  Page 22  |  Page 23  |  Page 24  |  Page 25  |  Page 26  |  Page 27  |  Page 28  |  Page 29  |  Page 30  |  Page 31  |  Page 32  |  Page 33  |  Page 34  |  Page 35  |  Page 36  |  Page 37  |  Page 38  |  Page 39  |  Page 40  |  Page 41  |  Page 42  |  Page 43  |  Page 44  |  Page 45  |  Page 46  |  Page 47  |  Page 48  |  Page 49  |  Page 50  |  Page 51  |  Page 52  |  Page 53  |  Page 54  |  Page 55  |  Page 56  |  Page 57  |  Page 58  |  Page 59  |  Page 60  |  Page 61  |  Page 62  |  Page 63  |  Page 64  |  Page 65  |  Page 66  |  Page 67  |  Page 68  |  Page 69  |  Page 70  |  Page 71  |  Page 72  |  Page 73  |  Page 74  |  Page 75  |  Page 76  |  Page 77  |  Page 78  |  Page 79  |  Page 80  |  Page 81  |  Page 82  |  Page 83  |  Page 84  |  Page 85  |  Page 86  |  Page 87  |  Page 88  |  Page 89