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Whose life is it anyway? ‘The Death of Klinghoffer’ and appropriation art

October 26, 2014

A lovely recent lunch with my pal, novelist Barbara Nachman, yielded a provocative conversation about the controversy surrounding John Adams’ opera “The Death of Klinghoffer” and the use – some would say, the exploitation – of other people’s lives in art.

For the uninitiated – and it’s hard to imagine any cultivated human being who is – “Klinghoffer” is the story of the 1985 hijacking of the Italian cruise ship Achille Lauro off the coast of Egypt by four Palestinians demanding the release of 50 compatriots from Israeli prisons in exchange for the ship’s safety. Leon Klinghoffer – a wheelchair-bound Jewish-American passenger celebrating his 36th wedding anniversary with terminally ill wife, Marilyn – was cruelly shot by the hijackers, his body callously thrown overboard. Ultimately, the ship was released and the hijackers were captured by the American military and tried for murder. (The ship, which had an ill-fated history to say the least, sank in 1994.)

Adams’ 1991 opera has been accused of sympathetically portraying the terrorists and thus being anti-Semitic, most recently when it was scheduled to be performed at The Metropolitan Opera and simulcast to theaters worldwide. General manager Peter Gelb’s Solomon-like decision cancelled the HD broadcast while allowing the production to go forward – a decision that has pleased neither critics nor civil libertarians and led to protests at The Met.

My friend Barbara’s objection to the work did not lie chiefly in its potential anti-Semitism or its presentation. Rather she wondered how Adams could create an opera about someone who but for his murder would never have been famous and therefore should not have had his privacy violated. (Klinghoffer’s daughters Ilsa and Lisa have denounced the work for its anti-Semitism and exploitation of their parents.)

Their objections and my friend’s concern raise a fascinating question: “Who’s in a name?,” as Barbara said to me. Why didn’t Adams change the names?

Serbian sun: The rise of Novak Djokovic

October 15, 2014

“The Sporting Statesman: Novak Djokovic and the Rise of Serbia” – Chris Bowers’ flawed though still admirable new biography – attempts what few sports bios do, to place its subject in a geopolitical context. But then, few athletes require that context the way Nole does.

Djokovic (pronounced “JOCK oh vic,” not “JOKE oh vic”) is first, last and always a son – and sun – of Serbia, which took a huge public relations hit during the Balkan Wars of the 1990s that resulted in and from the dismantling of Yugoslavia, even though we now know there was enough blame to go around. The oldest of three boys born to a modest, traditionally patriarchal family of Belgrade restaurateurs, Nole (No lay) was also a child of those wars – an experience that has, according to Bowers’ book (John Blake Publishing Ltd.), turned him into something of an oxymoron, a tough pacifist, fighting for embattled children through his work with UNICEF, clothing sponsor Uniqlo and his own Novak Djokovic Foundation, administered by his bride, Jelena Ristic.

“We were always told that once we go out of the country, there will be a lot of stereotypes attached to us because we come from Serbia,” Nole says in this “independent biography.” (Translation: Djokovic, who plans on writing a memoir some day, limited Bowers’ access to his circle.) “We are the ambassadors of our families and our country, and we need to always show the best in us. So I carry this responsibility with big respect and honour, and I hope that I am managing to portray my country in the best possible light.”

Though Bowers – who is described as having contributed the first English-language biography of Roger Federer – does a thorough job of tracing the history that led to the Balkan Wars, you get the sense that even a history buff such as myself will skim those alternating chapters to concentrate on the more personal story of the Djokovic family, which reads like a cross between Dickens and Dostoevsky. ...

Lost in translation: Novak Djokovic and geopolitical incorrectness

September 4, 2014

There’s a new book about Novak Djokovic. Not that you’d know it by Barnes & Noble.

I ordered Chris Bowers’ “The Sporting Statesman: Novak Djokovic and the Rise of Serbia” back in July when I blogged about it only to find out when I came to pick it up at the store Sept. 2 that BN would not be carrying it. Meanwhile, several Barnes & Nobles are carrying “Seventy-Seven: My Road to Wimbledon Glory,” Andy Murray’s account of winning Wimby – last year. (BN has carried Bowers’ books on Roger Federer).

This is not to dump on Andy or even BN, although the store should’ve informed me immediately by email that it would not have the book I ordered. But what does a guy have to do to get some attention? Nole is, after all, the No. 1 male player in the world. He did win Wimbledon this year. Meanwhile, Andy has not exactly been lighting up the tour. What gives? ...

Michael Sam’s out (of the NFL) – for now

September 1, 2014

So in the end after all the hoopla, Michael Sam – the first openly gay player in the NFL (almost) – didn’t make the cut with the St. Louis Rams.

There are just so many ways to look at this. How convenient for the those who can sigh with relief and say, “Hey, we tried but he just wasn’t good enough.” How vindicating for the skeptics, who will say, “He was such a lightweight to begin with. The only reason he got a shot was because he’s gay.”

But how sad for those of us who’d like to see the Sams and the Tim Tebows of the world find their places in the NFL sun regardless of the imperfections of their (still considerable) skills and their sexual or religious persuasions.

Some day, we won’t have to judge people by anything but those skills and what the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. called “the content of their character” – which in Sam’s case seems to be class all the way, and which is more than you can say for the Ray Rices of the game. ...

'Hercules,' part deux

August 11, 2014

Following a train of thought, I thought I’d expand on the previous post concerning the new movie “Hercules.”

I suppose there is a segment of society that won’t see it – or admit to seeing it. But to me pop culture is culture, too, and thus a starting point for intellectual discussion. Indeed, the film sent me scurrying to my bookshelves for a childhood favorite, Philip E. Slater’s psychoanalytic “The Glory of Hera” (Beacon Press), a book so old that it cost $3.95. (Actually, it’s not that old. It was published in 1968.)

Slater paints a portrait of a complex character – a man who is at once gay and straight, masculine and feminine, a lover of family and its destroyer, mother-identified and mother-loathing, victim and victimizer, monster and martyr, all-too-human being and transcendent god. Hercules – Heracles in Greek – is all this, because his myth changed as Greece evolved. He is a metaphor then for the birth of a nation. And more...

The Rock rolls in “Hercules”

August 10, 2014

"I like the gods,” my friend novelist and movie blogger Barbara Nachman says as we exit the new “Hercules,” starring Dwayne Johnson, aka The Rock, in the title role.

I do, too. The Greek gods were among my childhood companions, offering thrilling stories and transcendence without the guilt trip of modern religion. (A well-known classicist, who shall remain nameless here, once told me she would take the Greek gods over the Abrahamic one any day of the week and twice on Sundays, so to speak.)

This being the age of post-modernism, the gods are nowhere to be found in the new “Hercules,” and that’s too bad, because they’re such an entertaining lot and because the ancient Greeks believed in them – or at least the stories they could spin off of them – so passionately. (Certainly, the Greco-Macedonian conqueror Alexander the Great did. He saw Hercules – Heracles in Greek, Hercules in Latin – as one of his paternal ancestors.)

Making a movie about an ancient Greek legend when you imply that the legend is really part PR campaign, part empowerment exercise, well, it doesn’t quite cut it, does it?

Otherwise, the new “Herc” is a not-bad movie that fits...

Your life, my book… or Here’s to you, Ms. Robinson... or Throwing Anna under the train (again)

July 1, 2014

From a provocative piece by Roxana Robinson in The New York Times’ Sunday Review (June 29) on a subject that has haunted me since I became a self-published novelist:

“Fiction writers aren’t in this for the money, since most of us don’t make any,” she writes. “So what are we doing, messing about in other people’s lives?”

What indeed? Robinson’s novel “Sparta” is about a young male Marine – and while most of the vets she’s heard from have been supportive, one reminded her that she’s never been in combat and knows nothing about it. Just as a few readers have asked me, Whatever would possess you to write from a gay man’s viewpoint in “Water Music”?

Robinson has my stock comeback, Leo Tolstoy’s “Anna Karenina"...