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Greenwich Polo Club gallops into another season

May 31, 2014

There’s no Prince Harry to spice up the Greenwich Polo Club this year, but that doesn’t mean fans aren’t in for an exciting season.

Things get off to a rollicking start Sunday, June 1 with the White Birch home team – named after club founder Peter Brant’s White Birch Farm and White Birch Paper – in action against CT Energia. The home team will be led by Argentina’s Mariano Aguerre, considered one of the all-time greats, and his fleet countryman Hilario Ulloa. In April, the two teamed to help Alegria take the U.S. Open title.

The polo club is set in Greenwich’s verdant, undulating backcountry. Recently, I had a chance to chat there about the season with Australia’s Nick Manifold, who’ll be playing No. 2, an offensive position, for CT Energia Sunday. What a treat it was to sit out in the grandstand on a picture-perfect spring day, the cottony cumulus clouds so ripe and low that they seemed ready to touch the Jim Dine sculpture (think a huge, modern “Winged Victory”) that stands guard across the field. As the staff put the finishing touches on the immaculately manicured expanse and added patrons’ nameplates to the box seats, Nick gave this relative newbie a polo primer, something I was extremely grateful for as my one experience with the game had been last May’s Sentebale charity match starring Prince Harry and Nacho Figueras that was an otherworldly media event. (Polo does, however, figure in “Criterion,” the third novel in my “The Games Men Play” series, the story of a star-crossed equestrian family told in part from the viewpoint of a horse trying to win the Triple Crown.)

On ‘Words and Pictures’ – and words and pictures at The Lionheart Gallery

May 21, 2014

We’re all patterns in the universe, swimmer Daniel Reiner-Kahn reasons in my new novel “Water Music.” But sometimes it’s only when we’re at the end of a journey – maybe even life’s journey – that we understand how the strands came together. At other times, we recognize how the strands fit as they’re being woven.

Last week, I had an onstage conversation with film critic Marshall Fine at the Emelin Theatre in Mamaroneck, N.Y. about the relationship between language and images after a screening of “Words and Pictures,” which opens this Friday, May 23. It’s the story of a tempestuous rivalry between a prickly artist (Juliette Binoche) and a showoff writer (Clive Owen). Four days later, the writer (me) and the artist (David Hutchinson) came together more happily at a reading from “Water Music” at The Lionheart Gallery in Pound Ridge. After, I opened up the floor for a discussion about David’s paintings and drawings there, which are based on the perverse writings of Jean Genet.

First, a few words about “Words and Pictures,” a rather contrived but nonetheless absorbing movie about a love-hate relationship that sparks a contest between the artist’s students and the writer’s. It occurred to me after that the only arena in which men and women compete is the intellectual one.

Adventures in the book trade, continued

May 21, 2014

Whew, what a couple of weeks it’s been. I feel like I should be crashing, but instead I’ve come up for air to take stock and marvel at all that’s happened.

It began when I appeared in my guises as WAG editor and author of the new novel “Water Music” at the pre-Mother’s Day “Indulge” event in The Westchester, White Plains. Less than a week later, I sat down with Pat Casey, editor in chief of The White Plains Examiner and host of “Examiner Talk News” on Pleasantville Community TV to discuss WAG and “Water Music.”

That night, I was film critic Marshall Fine’s guest for a discussion of the relationship of words and images at the Emelin Theatre in Mamaroneck after a screening of the new Juliette Binoche-Clive Owen movie, “Words and Pictures.” That discussion would continue a few days later at The Lionheart Gallery in Pound Ridge where I read from “Water Music” and then opened up the floor to consider the way text is used in David Hutchinson’s paintings and drawings, which are on display there. (More on this in the next post.)

In-between the movie and the art gallery appearances, I was at Crunch Fitness’ one-year anniversary party in White Plains. OK, you say, it’s not the Cannes Film Festival. Maybe not, but the same principle applies: You’re putting yourself and your work out there. And along the way, you learn some valuable lessons.

May 18: Reading Genet at The Lionheart

May 7, 2014

It’s a perfect pairing when you come to think about it: I’ll be reading from my new novel “Water Music” May 18 at The Lionheart Gallery in Pound Ridge while the gallery is hosting “Purging Genet,” an exhibit of David Hutchinson’s paintings, drawings and sculpture that were inspired by the writings of the perverse gay writer Jean Genet.

Perverse doesn’t begin to describe the late French novelist (“Our Lady of the Flowers”), playwright (“The Maids”) and memoirist (“Prisoner of Love”). An abandoned child and reform school student-turned-thief, male prostitute and convict, Genet sought redemption and transcendence through degradation. He was one of the authors I flirted with as a voracious young reader. And while he remains a bit outré for my tastes, I have to wonder if there isn’t a bit of Genet in the games my men play.

Hutchinson, a Pound Ridge resident, considers the play between words and images in color-coded paintings and ink drawings that layer translations over the original French, creating new patterns that “purge” the original.

The run for the roses and the trouble with horseracing

May 3, 2014

Time once again for the Kentucky Derby (6 p.m. tonight). Tara and Johnny will be there, presumably to talk fashion, not horseflesh. And there will be the usual breast-beating about whether the Cinderella winner – it’s always a Cinderella winner, with California Chrome this year’s front-runner and feel-good story, though some like Wicked Strong – will go on to become the first horse since Affirmed in 1978 to win the Triple Crown.

A confession: I’ve always loved horseracing, particularly the Triple Crown, which is at the heart of “Criterion,” the third novel in my series, “The Games Men Play.” As a child, I once memorized all the Triple Crown winners. My favorite is Affirmed, a racehorse so smart that you could call him by name and he’d come to you. Or so Lou Sahadi, his biographer, once told me. There’s just something about that select club of excellence, its distinctive personalities and the way the horses thunder around the track, all that sleek power and speed. Plus, they’re beautiful animals.

But beauty often goes hand-in-hand with brutality – at least in my books, which deal with the world of sports.

Are women who write about gay sex ‘fag hags’?

April 14, 2014

At the end of Sassy Ladies Shopping Night Out last Friday at the DoubleTree by Hilton Hotel in Tarrytown, a vendor approached the table where I was selling my new novel, “Water Music.” She had been by earlier, but our conversation had been cut short by the appearance of customers at her table. Now true to her word, she came back as I was packing up and bought a copy.

She had told me that her son was gay, coming out to her when he was 14, and I could sense all the pain of that reality, not because she rejected him but because no mother likes to see her child rejected by others. She couldn’t quite understand why I – with no such similar narrative – would’ve, could’ve written a novel like "Water Music," whose four gay athletes whose professional rivalries color their personal relationships with one another. I told her that being a man didn’t stop Tolstoy from writing “Anna Karenina.”

“Yes, but at least he knew what it was like to make love to a woman.”

True, but he didn’t know what a woman feels like when she makes love to a man.

More adventures in publishing: "Water Music" at Neiman Marcus

April 11, 2014

What a fun evening at Neiman Marcus, The Westchester in White Plains last Wednesday.

Hannie Sio-Stellakis, the store’s public relations manager, had kindly invited me to do a book signing for my new novel, “Water Music”, as part of Neiman’s InCircle event. As models Ksusha, Kash, Heidi, Paul and Tom strolled the terraced floors in striking daywear and eveningwear, shoppers sampled steak, risotto, shrimp wrapped in snow peas, Champagne, cappuccino, iced cookies and chocolate cheesecake bits – all set to a killer DJ. (Heidi and I even did a mini-duet on Miley Cyrus’ “Wrecking Ball.”)

It was a great opportunity to make new acquaintances and relish old ones like David Hochberg, editorial adviser of WAG magazine, which I edit.

David hung with me all night, helping me lug all my props and books back to the car at the end of the evening.

He reminded me that everything is more enjoyable when you share it with others.