On nature and human nature: American Pharoah and San Bernardino

December 3, 2015

Is it right to talk about Sports Illustrated’s controversial nomination of American Pharoah for Sportsman of the Year at a time when there are so many lost souls and unanswered questions amid the mass shooting of a facility for the disabled in San Bernardino, Calif.?

I think it’s relevant. We are divided from nature, of which we are apart, in part because we are divided in our own human nature.

There are two types of people who misunderstand nature. The first doesn’t care about it and ranges from those who toss the ice cream pop wrapper out the car window onto the highway to those who abuse animals. ...

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. ...

Brain freeze: The NFL and concussions

November 25, 2015

Every time I despair of the psychological truth and realism of “The Penalty for Holding” – the second novel in my series “The Games Men Play” – I’m given a sign from the universe.

There’s a crucial moment in the story in which Quinn Novak, star quarterback of the New York Templars, chooses to play on despite sustaining a sub-concussion. I agonized over this plot point because of the new protocols in place that pull players who’ve sustained such injuries immediately from the game. It didn’t seem authentic not to reflect this in my book.

But truth really is stranger than fiction. In the St. Louis Rams’ 16-13 loss to the Baltimore Ravens Sunday, Rams’ QB Case Keenum sustained a concussion and continued to play. ...

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, the city of popular imagination

November 18, 2015

One of the themes to emerge from the Nov. 13 Paris bombings has been why the world – and particularly journalists – has paid more attention to the terrorist acts in Paris than it has to the double suicide bombing in Beirut a day earlier.

There are any number of reasons for this: Bombings in the Middle East, sadly, seem commonplace; the Paris attack is more of an anomaly; more people were killed in Paris (129 to Beirut’s 43), although you can’t really quantify death, of course, each death being a tragedy to someone; the West and particularly the United States have close ties to France, etc. ...

The NFL and the prison of violence

November 16, 2015

Lost amid preoccupations with Super Bowl 50 and various teams’ quarterback problems – Whither Colin Kaepernick? How’s Andrew Luck’s lacerated kidney and torn abdominal muscle? – is the domestic violence scandal that rocked the NFL last season.

Things were pretty quiet on that front until a recent article in Deadspin revealed photographs of bruises on the former girlfriend of Dallas Cowboys’ defensive end Greg Hardy.

When he was with the Carolina Panthers last season, Hardy was arrested for assaulting her. But the charges were dropped and the record later expunged as she settled a civil suit with him. ...