Anna Shcherbakova, newly minted Olympic women’s figure skating gold medalist, in happier times atop the podium of the 2021 Russian Figure Skating Championships. Photograph by Yuuliiya.
In my last post, I wrote that short of a meltdown, embattled Russian figure skater Kamila Valieva was a shoo-in for the gold medal in the women’s free skate Thursday, Feb. 17.
Later I thought the better of it and said to myself, “I bet she finishes fourth.”
Yeah.
Read MoreEdvard Munch’s “Vampire” (1895), oil on canvas. Munch Museum. Anne Rice’s romantic vampires and witches have resonated with late-20th and early-21st century readers and writers.
It’s a cliché in publishing that writers who are popular aren’t good and vice versa. There’s a bit of sour grapes to that notion, as if it were a consolation for those acclaimed writers who’ve never found a wide audience.
Certainly, there were those critics who pooh-poohed Anne Rice — who died Saturday, Dec. 11, at age 80 of complications from a stroke . Her prose could be purple, while her plots at times alternated between the meandering and the static. But Rice, whose 30 novels embraced the sacred (Jesus) and the profane (an S and M Sleeping Beauty trilogy, an escapist “Exit to Eden”) would create one of the most seminal novels, “Interview With the Vampire,” and characters, Lestat de Lioncourt, in American literature. By her own standards, her best-selling books (more than 150 million copies sold) were great, because they resonated with the tectonic shifts in our perceptions of gender, sexuality and race in the second half of the 20th century.
Read MoreA portable typewriter that belonged to Ernest Hemingway. Unfortunately, much of what is “written” on the internet today is not Hemingway-caliber prose but rather what H.L. Mencken or Truman Capote once referred to as merely typing. Photograph by Jim Heaphy.
Lost in all the hoopla surrounding former President Donald J. Trump being banned from Facebook for two years is the news that his blog and website are kaput after 29 days. As a blogger myself, I was more than intrigued by this. Apparently, it was due to lack of interest on the part of the public. But could it also be that domain contracts, like prenups, have shelf lives? Maybe 30 days was the free trial.
Read MoreRep. Liz Cheney (R-Wyoming) in 2016. Courtesy Office of Liz Cheney.
You have to wonder what Nathaniel Hawthorne would’ve made of ousted House Republican Party Conference chair Liz Cheney. Would she have been standing on the scaffold with Hester Prynne and her out-of-wedlock baby, Pearl, wearing a big scarlet “O” for ousted or a scarlet “B” stabbed with an interlocking “L” for “Big lLie”?
Read MoreThe original Karen? In the Gospel According to St. Luke, Jesus tells the parable of the persistent widow, who receives a judgment against her adversary from an unjust judge simply so he can be rid of her. One person’s nagging is another’s tenacity. Image from “Christ’s Object Lessons” by Helen Gould Harmon White (Pacific Press Publishing Co., 1900).
The latest edition of what I call “the literature of rejection “— the disproportionate rage at some insult by life, as evinced by the antiheroes of such fictional works as “The Iliad,” “Paradise Lost” and “Wuthering Heights” and in real life by mass murderers, assassins and terrorists that have included John Wilkes Booth, Adolf Hitler, Lee Harvey Oswald, Timothy McVeigh and Osama bin Laden — is the case of the Nashville bomber, Anthony Quinn Warner.
He fits the profile of the literature of rejection — angry, generally white and always male. What was Warner angry at exactly? AT &T? 5G? His father, who had worked for AT&T? Life? Himself? Unlike many of these monsters, he had a girlfriend — or ex-girlfriend — and that’s where things get really interesting.
Read MoreAmerican Vice President Joe Biden with Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu at the United States Embassy, then in Tel Aviv, in March 2016. In congratulating Biden on being elected president, Netanyahu reminded him of their warm relationship. Netanyahu had been one of President Donald J. Trump’s biggest boosters, but in the words of French President Emmanuel Macron when he first met Trump: “Nobody is forever.”
“This is one of the happiest days of my life,” a business manager told me yesterday. I couldn’t but concur. I , too, was happy, proud and content to be an American — something I haven’t been for four long, dark years.
In their victory speeches, President-elect Joe Biden and Vice President-elect Kamala Harris struct the right notes about unity and hope. President Donald J. Trump’s “American carnage’ may have been fine for some when they were making oodles of money. But when everyone’s actually in American carnage, as we are with the coronavirus, systemic racism, a crashed economy and climate change denial, people want change. They want a leader who can create a vision for going forward together, communicate that vision and execute it. And that’s what Biden laid out Saturday night, while Harris in suffragist white gave women of color in particular a symbol of belief fulfilled.
Read MoreDemocrratic presidential candidate Joe Biden at his campaign kickoff rally in Philadelphia on May 18, 2019. All eyes are on Philadelphia and the rest of Pennsylvania as the vote count continues. Photograph by Michael Stokes.
So, I’m in the finals at Wimbledon, up two sets to love against Novak Djokovic, who has once more secured the number one ranking in men’s tennis for the year. (Congratulations, Nole.)
In the third set, however, Nole comes roaring back. As he serves at 4-3, I halt play and, motioning to the umpire, announce, “You know what? Im good. Let’s just call it quits so I can hoist the trophy since I’m ahead and I’m sure I would’ve won had play continued anyway.”
LOL. Welcome to a sports metaphor for the 2020 presidential election, in which President Donald J. Trump has declared victory over former Vice President Joe Biden despite being behind in the electoral and popular vote count, with several key states — Georgia, Nevada, North Carolina and Pennsylvania — still to report.
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