At eight Boris came to the United States from Russia with his mother, leaving behind an alcoholic father who died a few years later. Boris is brilliant, confident, tough on himself and his peers, searching for his own truth... a "man without a country," his English Lit teacher laments.

4 Ballads of I A Poem by Boris

Tha Dybbuk Another Poem by Boris (from The New Formalist, Volume II, Issue 2)

Excursion into Philosophy by Edward Hopper

Poet Weldon Kees

Artist: Amadeo Modigliani, Edward Hopper

Music: Most Classical music, Tom Waits, Nina Simone, Sarah Vaughn, Ella Fitzgerald, Billie Holiday, Charlie Parker, Max Roach, Robert Johnson, Miles Davis, Bill Evans

Rock: Kinks, Cat Stevens

Magazines: Atlantic Monthly, Economist, NY Times Magazine, National Geographic

Books: Kurt Vonnegut, Herman Hesse, Dr. Zhivago by Boris Pasternak, Ulysses by James Joyce

Movies: Rushmore, Billy Liar, Wild Strawberries, and The Loved One