When I think of O.J. Simpson, who died Wednesday, April 10 of prostate cancer at age 76 in Las Vegas, I think of the short story '“Appointment in Samarra,” often retold in novels. The protagonist encounters the figure of Death, and to elude the dreaded specter, runs off to Samarra, only to find Death waiting there at the place where they were destined to meet. You cannot escape fate — or the consequences of your actions, no matter what else you do in life. Such is the Hindu and Buddhist principle of karma.
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The witch hunting of Taylor Swift, 'secret agent'
When my publisher asked me to write about what has made Taylor Swift a billionaire, I noted that she seemed, as a singer-songwriter who began her career in country and branched out to pop, to bridge the American cultural divide.
Silly me. I should’ve known that everything and everyone in this society at this time can be politicized and thus divisive.
Read MoreTribalism -- 'The Crown,' Claudine Gay and 'The Age of Innocence'
In “The Age of Innocence,” novelist Edith Wharton’s 1920 Pulitzer Prize-winning “backward glance” at the Gilded Age New York of her childhood, lawyer Newland Archer is set to marry May Welland in a match of illustrious families. The couple’s prospective marital bliss is soon clouded, however, by the New York return of May’s cousin, the beautiful, independent-minded Countess Ellen Olenska, seeking to escape her unhappy union with a Polish count.
Newland is asked to dissuade Ellen from the scandal of divorce — in Martin Scorsese’s 1993 film adaptation, he’s asked to facilitate the divorce on her behalf — but instead falls in love with her and particularly her unconventionally view of society, both of which threaten its norms. What transpires are the efforts of everyone — the honorable Ellen; Mrs. Manson Mingott, the family’s redoutable matriarch; but especially May, who turns out to be less demure and more devious than expected — to ensure that Newland remains in the marriage’s, and society’s, folds.
I thought a lot about “The Age of Innocence” as I binge-watched the fifth season of “The Crown” — even as the sixth and final season concluded on Netflix — and read about the ouster of Claudine Gay as president of Harvard University after her disastrously naive performance before a Congressional committee on anti-Semitism on college campuses in the wake of the Israel-Hamas war.
Read MoreThe Taylor Swifting of the world
When Peggy Noonan, who was one of President Ronald Reagan’s speechwriters, writes in The Wall Street Journal, that Taylor Swift should be Time magazine’s Person of the Year, you know that Swift has captured the zeitgeist.
Read MoreMoving forward: the endurance of Jacqueline Kennedy Onassis
What would Jacqueline Lee Bouvier Kennedy Onassis make of J. Randy Taraborrelli’s “Jackie: Public, Private, Secret” (St. Martin’s Press, $35, 439 pages) — out Tuesday, July 18, 10 days before what would’ve been her 94th birthday?
Read MoreAdventures in publishing, continued: Westfair’s first literary luncheon
There are few things in life more satisfying than living the life you see in your head. Such moments are rare, but when they happen, you have to savor them. Such was the case Thursday, Feb. 23, as Westfair Communications Inc. presented its first literary luncheon in White Plains, New York.
“History: Fiction and Nonfiction” was the theme of “Literary Westfair,” featuring Mary Calvi’s new “If a Poem Could Live and Breathe: A Novel of Teddy Roosevelt’s First Love” (St. Martin’s Press) – about his first wife, the former Alice Hathaway Lee – and John A. Lipman’s biography “Alfred B. DelBello: His Life and Times” (Atmosphere Press). As Westfair’s chief cultural writer and luxury editor, I had a lot of skin in this game, serving as moderator and one of the authors who would be reading.
Read MoreHeckling diminishes us all
Heckling is as old as performing, but our digital cult and culture of narcissism, which has made everyone an instant celebrity, has given it a trending obnoxiousness. President Joe Biden was heckled by Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene and the other MAGA Republicans at the State of the Union address. Harry Styles was heckled by Beyoncé fans at “The Grammy Awards.” Novak Djokovic was heckled by a drunken “Where’s Waldo?” quartet at the Australian Open. And Sydney Warner, wife of San Francisco 49ers linebacker Fred Warner, was among the Niners contingent heckled at the Eagles-49ers National Football Conference championship game.
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