Lestat, the rapturous protagonist of Anne Rice’s “The Vampire Chronicles,” has the right attitude toward (unending) life.

Fear itself

March 17, 2019

Three friends, the same reaction: They’re all in a tizzy — bewitched, bothered and bewildered — by Trump world.

One is appalled at the Trump Administration’s restrictive treatment of pregnant undocumented immigrants. Another is angry about President Donald J. Trumpet’s policies and tone in general. And speaking of which, the third is severely stressed by his threats to the American resistance, which preceded the massacre of 50 Muslims — and the injury of just as many — at a mosque in Christchurch, New Zealand by yet another young man with a disproportionate rage at life’s rejections, one who counted El Presidente as a white power inspiration.

No country for young women

March 6, 2019

In Edward Everett Hale’s 1863 short story “The Man Without A Country,” treasonous Lt. Philip Nolan renounces the United States, getting his wish — never to hear about his native land again. But sailing the seven seas in a military ship as a kind of Flying Dutchman or Ancient Mariner, Nolan finds the country he relinquished is everywhere, because it is lodged in his mind and, ultimately, his heart. He dies, having composed this epitaph for himself: "In memory of PHILIP NOLAN, Lieutenant in the Army of the United States. He loved his country as no other man has loved her; but no man deserved less at her hands."

I thought of this when I read the story of two American women who married — and were abused by — ISIS fighters and now want to come back to the United States

No escape from the past

February 5, 2019

When I was in college, I was invited by some female classmates to join them in posing nude for some Polaroids. Horrified but not wanting to appear uncool, I instead posed a question: “You want to be an architect, a lawyer, a doctor, a biochemist?,” I asked. “Yes, of course," they said. This was the 1970s when sexual liberation and experimentation was in the air along with lofty ambitions for women and the women’s movement. But I saw that those ambitions and that liberation were on collision course and told my classmates that those photos would one day come back to bite them in their bare butts.

Art history 101 in the #MeToo era

October 2, 2018

History cannot be read backward. People of earlier times did not have our standards.

It is, however, equally disingenuous to disregard the contemporary lens through which we see and evaluate those earlier times….

The literature of rejection

June 9, 2018

I tend to use this headline to write about young men who have a disproportionate rage at the world and take it out on others as mass murderers, assassins, terrorists and serial killers. I’ve also written about a number of literary works that deal with such young men – Homer’s “The Iliad,” John Milton’s “Paradise Lost” and Emily Brontë’s “Wuthering Heights,” among them.

But I think it is also an appropriate title for a post about the Lambda Literary Awards, which I attended Monday night at New York University’s Skirball Center for the Performing Arts as a nominee. My book “The Penalty for Holding,” published by Less Than Three Press, the second novel in the series “The Games Men Play” was a finalist in the Best Bisexual Fiction category. (When I got the news, I had two thoughts: This must be an email for somebody else. And, were any of the characters in my book bisexual? It goes to show that the readers sometimes know more than the authors do.)

As I sat there, I had a feeling of disassociation. I didn’t know anyone …

Trump’s ‘he said, he said’ moment

May 7, 2018

Let me make one thing perfectly clear: Trump did not have sex with that women, Miss Lewinsky, er, Daniels.

Until he did.

But he didn’t pay her. No, sirree, his lawyer Michael Cohen did. But Trump reimbursed him.

Then again, maybe not.

Folks, you might as well go to your local ballpark and buy a scorecard, because you’re going to need it to sort out this one. …

Farewell (for now) to PyeongChang

February 26, 2018

Experts will tell you that the high-pressured setting of the Olympics’ global stage is like no other. It can make the favorites fall and rise again and the dark horses surge to the front of the finish line.

That was certainly the case of the magical two weeks in PyeongChang, whose motto might’ve been “Expect the unexpected.”

It was a time when America lost its record for most medals in the Winter Games (37, Vancouver) to Norway (brilliant with 39) while setting a new record for medaling in the greatest number of different events (11). So what Team USA sometimes lacked in depth, particularly in the glamour sports of alpine skiing and figure skating, it made up for in breadth ...