![]() ![]() He introduced me to bridge, to poker, to statistics, things that to other people might seem completely unrelated. The coexistence of these radically different aesthetic possibilities made me see ways that I could be a writer, things that I could do. He introduced me to Sergio Leone and Kurosawa and Mel Brooks. Among tragedians, he likes Aeschylus, whereas I’m a Euripides person. DeWitt elaborates:ĭavid had this entirely different sensibility. (He’s now a professor at NYU.)ĭeWitt characterizes the difference between Levene and her as a difference between radically different aesthetic preferences-between “spaghetti westerns, Mel Brooks, Wagner, Melville, Faulkner, Aeschylus” (his) and “Proust, Euripides” (hers). In graduate school, she recalls, “a British Jew introduced me to Kurosawa and Sergio Leone and Dennis Potter, to the power of imaginary Americas.” That “British Jew” was David Levene, who was also completing a DPhil in classics at Oxford. She also left because she discovered an alternative to the academic pursuit. She didn’t leave, or didn’t only leave, because Oxford failed to live up to her fantastic standards. ![]() Oxford University Press wanted to publish her dissertation. She won the prestigious Ireland Prize for young classicists and might have been able to make a career in the academy. Unlike her character Sibylla, Helen DeWitt did successfully complete her degree. ![]()
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