The Empire strikes back: Andy Murray and the Davis Cup

November 29, 2015

Great Britain has won the Davis Cup, defeating Belgium.

More accurately, Andy Murray has won the Davis Cup.

Any Cup championship is, first and foremost, about teamwork, with the country of the winning team getting the honors. Sports are forever entwined in politics as I illustrate in “Water Music,” the first novel in my series, “The Games Men Play.”

But tennis, like swimming, is also among the most individualistic of sports, and the tension between the individual and the team in these sports– another theme of “Water Music” – is part of their flavor. ...

The terrorist bombings and the literature of rejection

November 19, 2015

If you’re a reader of this blog, then you know that one of its motifs – which also occurs in my forthcoming novel, “The Penalty for Holding” – is what I call “the literature of rejection,” that is the disproportionate rage at rejection found among certain antiheroes in literature and among assassins, mass murderers and terrorists.

I was reminded of this – or rather, my sharp-as-a-tack blog administrator reminded me of it – in reading an interview with Arie Kruglanski, co-director of the National Consortium for the Study of Terrorism and Responses to Terrorism (START), founded in 2005 at the University of Maryland with funds from the Department of Homeland Security.

Kruglanski has walked the walk. He was born in Nazi-occupied Poland and spent 15 years teaching psychology at Tel Aviv University. In this interview he echoes 19th-century psychologist-philosopher William James’ view of heroism as a primary spur in human nature, even unto, and perhaps especially if it means, death itself. ...

Paris burning

November 15, 2015

There is a moment in “Casablanca” in which Resistance leader Victor Laszlo (Paul Henreid) – having escaped from a Nazi concentration camp – confronts a group of German officers in Rick’s Café Américain through music. The Germans are loudly, arrogantly singing “Die Wacht am Rhein,” an anthem that has its roots in French-German antagonism, when Victor orders the house band to strike up “La Marseillaise,” the French national anthem, to which club owner Rick Blaine (Humphrey Bogart) acquiesces. One by one the club patrons rise and join in, all but Victor’s wife – and Rick’s former lover – Ilsa Lund (Ingrid Bergman). As the others sing lustily, she sits thinking and marveling at all that has been lost and yet still remains.

It is one of the most moving moments in the history of cinema, one I couldn’t help but flashing on as the City of Light was plunged into the heart of darkness. The fans leaving the Stade de France – where one in a series of coordinated ISIS attacks took place on Friday the 13th – burst into “La Marseillaise.” The exchange students in Manhattan’s Union Square held hands as they sang it that night. And Placido Domingo led The Metropolitan Opera Chorus in it at Lincoln Center Saturday afternoon. It, too, is a symbol of all that has been lost and yet still remains. ...

‘Reign’ and the don system

November 10, 2015

Well, things are heating up on the CW’s “Reign” now that Catherine de’ Medici, the mother-in-law from hell, is back in her son Francis II’s somewhat good graces. Meanwhile, the plot thickens across the Channel as Elizabeth I entertains Don Carlo, heir to Philip II of Spain, as a possible husband – throwing the tortured triangle of herself, her soul mate Robert Dudley and Dudley’s scheming wife Amy into sharp relief along with Elizabeth’s ambivalence toward marriage. Good stuff.

In reality, Don Carlo – the subject of an equally fanciful opera by Verdi, “Don Carlos” – was not the dashing, romantic figure of Verdi or the TV series but a deranged hunchback who may have been killed by his own father, who was in tur once Elizabeth’s brother-in-law, the husband of her sister and predecessor “Bloody Mary” Tudor. And to make things even cozier, Philip ended up marrying Elizabeth Valois, daughter of Catherine de’ Medici and BFF of her sister-in-law, and Francis’ wife, Mary, Queen of Scots. ...

American Pharoah, Novak Djokovic: What defines greatness?

October 28, 2015

American Pharoah has arrived at Keeneland in Lexington for the Breeders’ Cup Classic Saturday, the final race of his career. He’s going to face an older woman, Beholder; older guys like Tonalist and Honor Code; and old rivals like Frosted and Keen Ice.

But hey, is that any worse than the naysayers, the ones who remark that he’s good but not great – certainly not as great as the greats of the 1970s, Secretariat, Seattle Slew and my beloved Affirmed; and, that if he doesn’t win the Breeders’ Cup, he really won’t be considered great.

This is the same conversation about Novak Djokovic, who will lead the field at the BNP Paribas Masters Paris, which begins also on Saturday and runs through Nov. 8. If he doesn’t repeat in Paris and at the Barclays ATP World Tour Finals in London the following week, he won’t have had a great season.

Let’s review, shall we? ...

Playboy unplugged

October 20, 2015

Whenever I was asked about my “walls of inspiration” – which have followed me to each new job, albeit with a changing cast of characters – I always responded that they were a feminist gesture, that I would remove them the day Playboy magazine folded.

Well, Hell has frozen over and I’ll have to remove my men. (Yeah, right. More on that in a bit.) ...

Shadow in the sun: The real Elizabeth I

October 19, 2015

Goodness, I don’t know how much longer I, an Elizabeth I fan, can hang with “Reign.”

This season, The CW series about Mary, Queen of Scots has introduced another nemesis apart from her ever-hating mother-in-law, Catherind de’ Medici – Elizabeth I of England.

But portraying Elizabeth as a mean girl is so limiting – particularly when the truth is more delicious than the fiction. ...