‘Shipping’ news

February 23, 2015

Still checking out the newly redesigned New York Times Magazine – so far, so good. But I was excited to see a page on “shipping” in the column Search Results by Jenna Wortham. And no, it wasn’t a column about Fed Ex.

Shipping is about relationshipping, or a romance between characters who are not otherwise romantically linked, such as Benedict Cumberbatch’s Sherlock Holmes and Martin Freeman’s Dr. John Watson on PBS’ “Sherlock.” (Drawings of them from the Tumblr website are featured on the Search Results page.)

Shipping, then, is the umbrella term for things like slash – gay pairings of characters who were not originally gay – and slash in turn includes male/male romance, which is where I come in. Though the characters in my series “The Games Men Play” – the swimmers and tennis players in “Water Music” and the football players in the forthcoming “The Penalty for Holding” – are entirely fictional, I won’t pretend that I wasn’t influenced by male/male romances I read on the Internet that either used real people (called RPF or real person fiction) or well-known fictional characters. ...

The once and future king

January 26, 2015

The Greeks – who find themselves once again, or still, in economic straits – were scheduled to go to the polls Sunday, Jan. 25. So should it surprise you that Prime Minister Antonis Samaras, who is fighting for his political life, has been busy invoking the name of his country’s hero, Alexander the Great?

Samaras is among those stirred by the excavation in Amphipolis in the region of Macedonia. The site contains the remains of a woman, two men, an infant and someone who was cremated. While they were no doubt figures of importance, they may not be Olympias, mother of Alexander, and various relatives, and the site is certainly not the tomb of Alexander, who may be buried under a mosque in Egypt.

But the presumed lack of a direct connection to Alexander has not stopped Samaras from evoking the memory of a man who set out from Macedonia at age 20 and conquered the known world. Everyone loves a winner. ...

Alexander the Great’s world (still)

November 29, 2014

My family, friends and colleagues often tease me about my fascination for Alexander the Great. I get it. Who cares about someone – a single-minded Greco-Macedonian conqueror, no less – who lived some 300 years before Jesus?

But you see, the fact that we call Jesus Christ “Jesus Christ:” – and not Joshua bar Joseph, his historical Hebrew name – is because of Alexander and the spread of Hellenistic culture. Before Alexander, culture flowed east to west. After his conquest of the Persian Empire (331 B.C.), it would tend west to east. And the resulting tension between the two has reverberated down through the ages, particularly in the Middle East, the heart of his empire.

Our soldiers have been following in his footfall since the start of the Iraq War in 2003, as I wrote then for the Gannett newspapers. We’re still living in Alexander’s world. We just don’t know it.

Fed’s (Davis) Cup runneth over

November 24, 2014

So Roger Federer and Switzerland finally have their Davis Cup. Fed defeated Richard Gasquet 6-4, 6-2, 6-2 to win the opening singles match Sunday, Nov. 23 and give Switzerland the three matches (out of five) it needed against France.

"It's not for me. I've won enough in my career and did not need to tick any empty boxes," Federer said of the emotional win. "I'm just happy for everybody else. I'm happy we could live a great tennis historic moment in our country."

Yeah, uh-huh. Let’s not pull any punches here. Winning the Davis Cup was the only thing Federer hadn’t done in tennis. Tennis and thus, the Davis Cup may no longer be a big deal in this country, as American men’s tennis is somewhat in disarray. (If you want to see America win the Cup, check out my novel “Water Music,” part of “The Games Men Play” series, in which Iraqi-American prodigy Alí Iskandar delivers the goods.)

But tennis and the Cup are still a big deal internationally. With this win, Fed’s career is complete. It has to be satisfying, particularly as rivals Rafael Nadal and Novak Djokovic helped the Spanish and Serbian teams respectively to Cups.

But Spain and Serbia have a lot of tennis depth. Switzerland has Feddy and Stan “the Man” Wawrinka. Credit “the Stanimal” with playing lights out against Jo-Wilfred Tsonga on Friday, then teaming with Fed to win the doubles Saturday. ...

To have and have not: Roger Federer – a (grudging) appreciation

September 23, 2014

All biography – Alí, one of the tennis players in my new novel “Water Music,” notes – is selective history. And all history is selective truth.

The accomplishments of those we love shine brighter than the achievements of those we don’t. Yet there is a common, middle ground in which we can assess those we dislike, or at least there should be.

So I’ve come not to bury but to praise Roger Federer, subject of a glowing cover profile in October Town & Country and, in analyzing him, to understand something of myself.

The subtitle of the article by Ed Caesar is “The Romantic Comedy Life of the World’s Greatest Tennis Player.” (Really, Ed? Greater than Rafael Nadal, who dethroned him? Or Novak Djokovic, who beat both to become No. 1?) Understand that Town & Country is a luxury magazine. Luxury magazines are in the business of selling luxury. The interview took place “in the high-ceilinged Directoire drawing room of Moët & Chandon, for whom (Federer) works as a brand ambassador.” Enough said.

The picture that emerges...

The war that never ends, again

August 20, 2014

When I was younger, I called Vietnam – the conflict of my youth and my generation – “the war that never ends.”

Now Iraq is threatening to become that war as we are drawn back into its political and humanitarian crises. It was, of course, the wrong war, which President Barack Obama pointed out when he was a senator, the war for al-Qaeda being the province of Afghanistan. But we went anyway, little understanding the culture (echoes of Vietnam) or the lesson of Alexander the Great – that to conquer you must immerse yourself in a place and be prepared to risk being seduced, being conquered, by the place itself.

Alexander – the Greco-Macedonian conqueror of the Persian Empire – never left Iraq, dying in Babylon a month short of his 33rd birthday. We left, but in leaving, stayed.

Iraq figures into one of the four story arcs that make up my new novel, “Water Music,” about the tennis prodigy Alí Iskandar – a favorite character of my readers...

Skin deep: Colin Kaepernick, Michael Brown and the problem of profiling

August 18, 2014

At first glance, Colin Kaepernick and Michael Brown would seem to be as far apart as San Francisco and Ferguson, Mo. But in a week in which Brown became yet another unarmed young black man killed by a police officer, Kaepernick was telling Bleacher Report why he thinks he’s criticized as the 49ers quarterback:

"Stereotypes, prejudice," Kaepernick told Bleacher Report when asked about the criticism. “Whatever you want to call it. I think between the tattoos, the way I dress, the way I talk. People don't think it should go together with a franchise quarterback or someone that's leading the team or representing the organization. At the end of the day, you have to look at, 'Are they knowledgeable? Are they doing their job?' Not what their appearance is."

Appearances were on the mind of Sen. Rand Paul, who wrote a piece for Time magazine in which he talked about the fact that as a white kid mouthing off, he wouldn’t have expected to be shot.