As fabulous as the Times Journeys’ “The Legacy of Alexander the Great” was thus far, I still wasn’t feeling Alexander. Athens had never been a home to him, even after he sent the city 300 Persian shields – a brutal souvenir of the victorious opening gambit in his quest to conquer the Persian Empire, the Battle of the Granicus. Plutarch – and tour leader David Ratzan – tell us that Alexander signed the tribute “Alexander, son of Philip and all the Greeks except the Spartans,” the Spartans rarely taking part in anything the other city-states, especially archrival Athens, did.
You get the sense that perhaps Alexander was doing a bit of kissing up to the Athenians, who saw him, Philip and the rest of the Macedonians as rough-hewn arrivistes. (It’s the reason that Oliver Stone cleverly had the Greeks speak with British accents in his movie “Alexander” and the Macedonians speak with Irish ones, the idea being that the Greeks looked down at the Macedonians just as the British have looked down on the Irish.) ...
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Read MoreSome years ago when I was senior cultural writer for Gannett Inc., I interviewed Donald Trump via email for a story on – wait for it – leadership. Among the questions I asked was why he named the most expensive suite in the Trump Taj Mahal Casino and Resort in Atlantic City, N.J. after Alexander the Great – a passion and study of mine since childhood. His answer was typically Trumpian: “Because he’s the best, and it’s the best.”
I thought of that as I read Richard Conniff’s piece, “Donald Trump and Other Animals,” in the Week in Review section of the Sunday New York Times. In it, Conniff quotes a passage from his “The Natural History of the Rich: A Field Guide” that Trump used in the introduction to his book “Trump: Think Like A Billionaire" ...
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Read MoreOur Times Journey group of Alexandrians no sooner got acclimated to Athens than it was time to bid the city – and its mesmerizing views of the Acropolis – a brief farewell and head north to Thessaloniki, about an hour’s flight, or the distance between New York and Washington D.C.
Named for a younger half-sister of Alexander the Great – his father, the crafty, lusty Philip II, having loved much but apparently none too well – Thessaloniki is the second largest city in Greece but the main one in the misty, highland Macedonian region that was once Philip’s kingdom.
At Athens International Airport, I scored a small, hefty, well-molded head of the Acropolis Museum Alexander in a gift shop, plus a free copy of the “Greece is….Thessaloniki” magazine, with an Andy Warhol Alexander on the cover, so I was pumped. ...
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Read MoreCulture vulture that I am, I somehow missed the cultural appropriation wars that have erupted. That’s what you get for going on vacation and unplugging.
First, novelist Lionel Shriver apparently set off a firestorm at the Brisbane Writer’s Festival with a defense of artists using other people’s races, ethnicities, sexualities, etc. in their creations. Then Claudio Gatti outed the comfortable Roman translator Anita Raja as the author of the pseudonymous Elena Ferrante novels about the friendship between two poor Neapolitan girls.
Meanwhile, Bristol University cancelled a production of Giuseppe Verdi’s “Aida,” because students protested white people playing Egyptians and Ethiopians. ...
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Read MoreEven casual readers of this blog will have surmised my passion for the Greeks in general and Alexander the Great in particular. So when I saw an ad for Times Journeys’ “The Legacy of Alexander the Great” tour on the back page of The New York Times one late winter day and learned that there was one single room left for the late summer voyage, I jumped at the chance.
Not. Even though it was Alexander, I kept finding excuses. Work, home, fear of flying, money, did I mention work? Besides, I needed the money to self-publish the second book in my series, “The Games Men Play.” I needed a sign. Then I got one in the form of a contract for the book. ...
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Read MoreIt is a truth universally acknowledged that an author of good fortune – or, let’s face it, no fortune at all – must be in want of an audience. And so I repaired once again, dear readers, to The DC Center for the LGBT Community’s OutWrite Book Festival in Washington, this time to read from my novel “The Penalty for Holding” – about a gay, biracial quarterback’s quest for love in the NFL. It is slated to be published next year by Less Than Three Press.
But this was also a busman’s holiday as well, as I had in mind visiting two exhibits I longed to see – “The Greeks: Agamemnon to Alexander the Great,” at the National Geographic Museum through Oct. 10, and “Will & Jane: Shakespeare, Austen and the Cult of Celebrity,” at the Folger Shakespeare Library through Nov. 6. What is it that the late Nora Ephron said: “Everything is copy”? Everywhere I went reminded me of what it means to be a writer. ...
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Read MoreMichael Phelps won his 21st gold medal and the U.S. men’s swimming team took its fourth consecutive gold in the 4-x-200 meter relay Tuesday in Rio de Janeiro. In all four relays, the common denominator was Phelps and longtime teammate and rival Ryan Lochte. He and Phelps swam the third and anchor legs respectively. They are now the grand old men of swimming at 32 and 31. Seems like only yesterday they were teenagers crowned in laurel and giggling on the podium in Athens.
Phelps, who’s had his share of problems with alcohol, has a newfound maturity with fiancée Nicole Johnson and baby Boomer (so adorable). Some things, however, never change. Lochte, noted for his, shall we say, striking sartorial choices, dyed his hair ice-blue for the Rio Games. Instead it looks platinum.
Why do thoroughly gorgeous people tamper with Greco-Roman beauty?
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