Andrey Rublev at the 2023 Monte Carlo Masters. After losing to Carlos Alcaraz at the Nitto ATP Finals in Turin, Italy, recently, he reacted by hitting himself in the knee to the point of drawing blood. Photograph by si.robi.
From the courts of the Nitto ATP Finals in Turin, Italy, to the halls of the United States Congress, these have not been the best of times for men and anger management.
Read More“Achilles in the Court of King Lycomedes“ (marble, 240). Musée du Louvre. The Greeks’ greatest warrior and a king in his own right, Achilles is the main character and antihero of Homer’s “The Iliad.” His rage at his humiliation by Agamemnon, the Greek high king and commander, during a quarrel over women as war prizes sets in motion the catastrophic events of Homer’s “The Iliad,” about a critical moment in the Trojan War.
Do we believe in coincidence or predestination? Is everything happenstance or is it a case that there are no accidents (Freud) and that “God does not play dice with the universe” (Einstein)?
Is that universe sending us a message by releasing a new translation of Homer’s “The Iliad” by University of Pennsylvania classics professor Emily Wilson just as Hamas savagely attacked Israel and Israel responded with a ferocious declaration of war? It would seem so, for the ancient Greek epic has much to tell us about issues that speak to our time, not the least of which are overweening male pride and rage, power as a zero sum game and stupefyingly bad leadership.
Read MoreFormer Speaker of the House Kevin McCarthy on the day he was elected speaker — Jan. 7, 2023 — after 15 attempts. Now he is gone after almost nine months, about the time it takes for a full-term pregnancy and with no baby to show for it. Courtesy the former Speaker.
The Oct. 3 ouster of House Speaker Kevin McCarthy — a man brought down as much by his own ambition as by the hard right of the Republican Party and the united Democrats, who refused to oppose it — echoes ancient Greek and Shakespearean tragedies, to say nothing of the Hindu/Buddhist principle of karma and Randy Rainbow, who parodied McCarthy’s pathetic groveling for the speakership in a takeoff on “Les Misérables’” “Master of the House.”
Read MoreMy favorite photograph of Novak Djokovic ,at the moment it all began to happen for him, defeating Jo-Wilfried Tsonga in the semifinals of Wimbledon 2011 to become the number one-ranked men’s player.
In our endless summer of discontent — the heat, the humidity, the devastating wildfires, the smoke, the wayward storms, the indictments, the losing Yankees, to name but a few — I’d like to take a break and return to a subject that helped inspire my fiction and this blog, tennis and in particular Novak Djokovic, whose career trajectory has a lot to do with two pairs of themes that fascinate me — power and rivalry and context and perception.
Read MoreWith my books prior to Westfair Communications Inc.’s first literary luncheon, “History: Fiction and Nonfiction,” held Feb. 23 in White Plains, New York. Photograph by Sarafina Pavlak/Westfair.
There are few things in life more satisfying than living the life you see in your head. Such moments are rare, but when they happen, you have to savor them. Such was the case Thursday, Feb. 23, as Westfair Communications Inc. presented its first literary luncheon in White Plains, New York.
“History: Fiction and Nonfiction” was the theme of “Literary Westfair,” featuring Mary Calvi’s new “If a Poem Could Live and Breathe: A Novel of Teddy Roosevelt’s First Love” (St. Martin’s Press) – about his first wife, the former Alice Hathaway Lee – and John A. Lipman’s biography “Alfred B. DelBello: His Life and Times” (Atmosphere Press). As Westfair’s chief cultural writer and luxury editor, I had a lot of skin in this game, serving as moderator and one of the authors who would be reading.
Read MoreEugène Delacroix’s “Medea About to Murder Her Children” (1862), oil painting. Musée du Louvre. The ancient Greek myth — the subject of Luigi Cherubini’s “Medea” at The Metropolitan Opera — has also been misinterpreted, most recently in Maureen Dowd’s column on Vladimir Putin.
In his perceptive eulogy for Queen Elizabeth II, Justin Welby, archbishop of Canterbury, observed: “People of loving service are rare in any walk of life. Leaders of loving service are still rarer.”
Ain’t that the truth. At the risk of sounding like the hammer always in search of a nail, I must nonetheless note once again that we are in an increasing crisis of leadership, from Vladimir Putin’s bungling attempts to conquer Ukraine, which would be laughable if they weren’t so horrific and dangerous, to the ham-fisted handling of Miami Dolphins’ quarterback Tua Tagovailoa’s concussion. (The doctor/consultant who cleared him to play was fired. Really? The team’s front office and ownership should all be fired.
What does it mean to be a leader? it means you are a steward of everything and everyone in your care, a servant of others. It means you take responsibility, even when you are not directly involved in the action. Say what you want about QEII, put she saw herself as a steward, one who remained on the job till her dying day.
For most, however, it’s me, me, me all the time, and it doesn’t help that people don’t really understand this, because they have a limited understanding of culture.
Read MoreJacques Louis David’s “Leonidas at Thermopylae “(1814), oil on canvas. Musée du Louvre. Adolf Hitler compared the Germans at Stalingrad to the Spartans fighting the Persians at Thermopylae. Of course, the Nazis were more like the invading Persians. But Hitler’s point was that it would be in a clash of civilizations, a fight to the death.
I’ve been watching PBS’ “Rise of the Nazis,” which focuses on the Eastern front of World War II’s European Theater, and I’m just astounded at the parallels between that conflict and the one in Ukraine. Then as now, you have the irresistible force of a dictator — well, two in fact — determined to maintain chaos to stay in power and the immovable object of a people determined to go all in to save their homeland. The names have changed, but the issues behind the Nazi siege of Russia and the Russian siege of Ukraine remain depressingly familiar, particularly as brought home in the recent episode on Stalingrad, the turning point of World War II in Europe.
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