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Mother of myself

April 17, 2015

You knew it had to hit a nerve, didn’t you? The title alone – “Selfish, Shallow and Self-Absorbed: Sixteen Writers on the Decision Not To Have Kids,” edited by Meghan Daum (Picador, $26, 282 pages) – is bound to be a scab that many will have to pick.

Apparently, childlessness is a growing trend, with many of those feeling they are childless by circumstance rather than by choice. For women in particular, it’s a case of going entirely against the grain. Despite some horrific stories of child abuse and murder by mothers – and examples in the animal kingdom that give lie to the idea of “maternal instinct” – we as members of the human race expect women to become mothers. (Men, always granted more freedom, are given a pass on fatherhood, but then their role in reproduction is over quickly. Indeed any gynecologist will tell you we could continue the human race without men at all. Figures that men would invent the technology that has made them obsolete. Talk about shooting yourself in, well, not the foot.)

For myself, I can only say that it was a no-brainer. I wanted to be free to be a writer, and I realized early on that I would never be the writer I wanted to be if I had children (or, for that matter, a husband). ...

Rivals spark sports

April 16, 2015

Jordan Spieth at the A T & T Championship in February. Is the Masters’ champ and new golf phenom on his way to a rivalry with Rory McIlroy? Photograph by Erik Charlton.

On a recent installment of the “PBS NewsHour,” John Feinstein, author and sports columnist for The Washington Post, was asked to comment on the ascent of Jordan Spieth, golf’s latest phenom. He said he thought that Speith and Rory McIlroy had the opportunity to develop a great rivalry now and that for him, rivalries rather than dynasties make sports interesting.

Tell that to the fans of the New York Yankees, Pittsburgh Steelers, San Francisco 49ers, New England Patriots and Green Bay Packers in various eras. They’ll tell you there’s nothing sweeter than the monotony of winning year after year.

But I know what he means: Fed and Rafa, Rafa and Nole, Nole and Andy, Andy and Fed, Fed and Nole, Andy and Rafa – tennis has always thrived on great rivalries and has a round robin of them going on now. Even when you have a dynasty like the Yanks have been, they were made better by their clashes with the Bosox (even if it sometimes tore your heart out as a Bombers’ fan). ...

The ‘I’ in all things

April 15, 2015

San Francisco 49ers’ wide receiver Anquan Boldin stirred the drink recently when he said embattled Niners’ running quarterback Colin Kaepernick – who trained during the offseason to become more of a classic pocket passer – just needs to be himself.

“…I think he just has to block out everything else around him, stop listening to what people want, what people have to say about you, stop listening to what people want to see you do and just be yourself," Boldin told SiriusXM NFL Radio, via CSN Bay Area, on April 9.

"I think sometimes when you try to go off the suggestions of other people and try to please other people, you forget who you are and what got you there,” Boldin added. “I think if he just goes out and (is) himself, he'll be just fine. And that's the thing I try to tell him. 'Go out and be Kap. Don't try to go out and be anybody else, because that isn't what got you to this point.”

Wise words about identity, a much misunderstood subject that’s a crucial theme in “The Penalty for Holding,” the upcoming second novel in my series “The Games Men Play.” Like Colin, my hero, Quinn Novak, is a quarterback at the crossroads trying to balance pleasing others and remaining true to himself. It isn’t easy in our selfie world, which often spurs a 180-degree reaction. In his April 12th column “The Moral Bucket List,” The New York Times’ David Brooks wrote:

“Commencement speakers are always telling young people to follow their passions. Be true to yourself. This is a vision of life that begins with self and ends with self. But people on the road to inner light do not find their vocations by asking, what do I want from life? They ask, what is life asking of me? How can I match my intrinsic talent with one of the world’s deep needs?” ...

John Wilkes Booth and the literature of rejection

April 15, 2015

A few posts ago, I talked about “The Literature of Rejection,” a course troubled quarterback Quinn Novak takes at Stanford in the upcoming “The Penalty for Holding,” the second novel in my series “The Games Men Play.”

The fictional course looks at the men – literary and historical – who had a disproportionate rage at rejection and so took terrible revenge as assassins, mass murderers and tyrants. Among them is John Wilkes Booth, who shot President Abraham Lincoln in Ford’s Theatre in Washington D.C. 150 years ago April 14 – Good Friday that year. (Lincoln died on April 15 – the same day the RMS Titanic would sink in 1912. April 15 is now also the deadline for income taxes, so death and taxes.)

The kind of men – and they are almost always men – who make up the literature of rejection are much in the news these days. Andreas Lubitz said he was going to do something others would notice and then took 149 people with him to his death aboard the Germanwings plane that he crashed in the French Alps. Dzhokhar Tsarnaev, just convicted in the Boston Marathon bombings that eerily enough also took place on April 15 (2013), is the subject, along with his brother and co-conspirator Tamerlan, of the new book “The Brothers: The Road to an American Tragedy” by Masha Gessen (Riverhead Books, $27.95, 273 pages).

And there’s a new book on Booth, “Fortune’s Fool” by Terry Alford (Oxford University Press, $29.95, 464 pages).

Alford’s book, praised by Lincoln scholar Harold Holzer in The Wall Street Journal as “so deeply researched and persuasively argued that it should stand as the standard portrait for years,” is inclined to repetition. If we read that Booth was handsome and well-liked once, we must read it 10 times. But Alford does offer insight into the mind of this assassin, a man who yearned to do something great on the world stage but lacked the mind, character and discipline to achieve it. ...

Tennis has got your G.O.A.T.

April 14, 2015

Ah, spring: Time for the Monte Carlo Open, the clay-court season and the game within the game:

Mirror, mirror on the wall, who’s the greatest of them all?

Nothing men’s tennis loves better than a discussion of who’s the Greatest of All Time (G.O.A.T.). This usually involves the Federinas squaring off against the Nadalistas. You know, Roger Federer has the most slam titles with 17, but Rafael Nadal is right behind him with 14. Although lately, Rafa, the king of clay, has been in a bit of a slump, while Novak Djokovic has passed him to move up to No. 6 on the list of most weeks as No. 1. (Nole now has 142.)

So what is the measure of greatness – the most slams and weeks at No. 1 (that would be Feddy) or the person who owns the person with the most slams and weeks at No. 1 (that would be Rafa) or the person who beat them both, often back-to-back, to become No. 1 (that would be Nole)? ...

Local hero in love: Andy takes a bride

April 13, 2015

Andy Murray, the No. 3-ranked tennis player, wed longtime love, animal artist Kim Sears, April 11 in a ceremony that apparently had the feel of a small-town royal wedding.

Scores of Dunblane residents and reporters braved the Scottish weather (“oh, the wind and rain,” as the folk song goes) to catch a glimpse of the bride and groom – she resplendent in a Jenny Peckham gown with a sweetheart neckline and crystal-beaded bodice and half-sleeves (is there anything more flattering than half-sleeves?) that showed off her figure; he equally dandy in a blue and green kilt. (Male tennis players: To paraphrase another song, ZZ Top’s “Legs,” “They’ve got legs. They know how to use them.”)

The wedding – which took place in Dunblane Cathedral with a reception following at Cromlix House Hotel, which Andy owns – was in marked contrast to last summer’s seaside nuptials for Novak Djokovic and his longtime love, Jelena Ristic. That was a private affair in Montenegro with coverage appearing afterward exclusively in HELLO! magazine, which paid a pretty shilling for the rights. (The money went to the Novak Djokovic Foundation.)

Whereas Andy and Kim just let it rip, and so the day had the feel of a hometown party in which everyone could participate. ...

To ‘Sir,’ with love

April 12, 2015

A big shout-out to opera star Renée Fleming, a woman after my heart.

In The New York Times’ T magazine column “Take Two,” which juxtaposes comments from unlikely duos on unusual products, she has this to say about “Sir” (Taschen, 700 smackeroos), photographer Mario Testino’s ode to men:

“I had a lot of fun looking at this. It has more six-packs than a 7-Eleven. I like that men are now being scrutinized in the way that women have been for so long.”

Her mighty opposite here – Arnold Schwarzenegger, who knows a thing or two about sculpted male bodies – added: “What I discovered in here was an extraordinary celebration of men. It’s the ideal Christmas present. If I’d spend $700 on a pair of shoes, why not on a book?”

Why indeed? Certainly, Mr. Darcy himself, Colin Firth – one of the subjects, along with George Clooney, Jude Law, Mick Jagger, Keith Richard and others – would alone be worth the price of the book. ...