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Creative writing and the voice (and movie) in my head

June 25, 2014

A new German study on brain activity during creative writing has got me thinking about one of the great intellectual mysteries: How do you write? How do I write?

It’s something that’s difficult to teach – one of the many reasons I’m not a teacher – and impossible to portray. Think about it: Movies about writers (“All The President’s Men,” “The End of the Affair”) always depict them in the throws of action or passion – which leaves very little time for writing.

In the study, Martin Lotze and his University of Greifswald team conducted brain scans while reclining subjects wrote on a propped-up writing desk. (The scanner’s magnetic field would’ve sent a computer flying.)

The novice writers showed more activity in the visual centers of the brain, while the experienced writers – who were also asked to copy some text and then riff on a short story – demonstrated more action in the speech areas. This led Lotze to conclude that the novice writers were watching their stories play out like movies while the experience writers were narrating them as if hearing an inner voice.

OK, that stopped me cold, because one of the great pleasures I’ve had since childhood is watching my stories on my brain’s big screen, and I’ve been writing fiction since I was 9...

Do sports put women at a disadvantage?

June 24, 2014

A recent story in The New York Times about women missing out at the workplace, because they know less about that ultimate water-cooler subject – sports – comes at a time when Andy Murray has caused a stir at Wimbledon with his new female coach, former French star Amélie Mauresmo.

Reaction has ranged from the supportive (Maria Sharapova) to the cautious (Novak Djokovic) to the sexist (Ernst Gulblis, who said, “I am waiting for a couple of good-looking players to also quit so I can have a new coach.” Ernst, stop splitting your infinitives.

At least Ernst was, well, earnest. At Sarah Lawrence College’s recent “Publish and Promote Your Book Conference,” the reaction to my series “The Games Men Play” included the typical, “So, you’re into sports.” And it’s not said as “So – you’re into sports!” but rather with a quizzical, skeptical tone. I then find myself explaining that as a former senior cultural writer for Gannett Inc. and now editor of WAG, I’ve always had to be interested in culture with a capital “C,” which goes way beyond...

Divine intervention: U.S. and Portugal play to a World Cup draw

June 23, 2014

So God dropped everything else Sunday, and the U.S. actually outplayed Portugal for a while. But in the end, we got sloppy and Portugal tied the game.

Look, the Portuguese may be old but the Americans aren’t very good, at least not Germany or The Netherlands good.

I watched the game on a Spanish channel, which is always fun as the sportscasters are excitable, yelling GOAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAL after every goal. It’s also great to hear a stream of Spanish punctuated by American names like Clint Dempsey – once the basis of a “Saturday Night Live” skit.

Cristiano Rinaldo – the Alex Rodriguez of soccer?

June 18, 2014

These are not the best of times for Cristiano Rinaldo, considered to be the world’s greatest soccer player (along with Leo Messi) and current holder of the Ballon d’Or as the No. 1-ranked player.

Playing for his native Portugal, he flamed out against Germany in early round action at the World Cup while Germany’s Thomas Müller – who isn’t considered to be as talented and certainly not as handsome or glamorous – led his team to a 4-0 victory.

Those who like to see Tall Poppies, as the Aussies call them, cut down to size were in their element. And indeed Rinaldo played right into the hands of his detractors by skipping the post-game press conference.

But the bigger question is why would someone who plays so well for Real Madrid play so poorly in the World Cup? (In the two previous Cups, Rinaldo has two goals in eight games.) Clearly, Portugal is not the team it once was. But that only explains why the Portuguese lost to the Germans. It doesn’t explain why they were shut out.

Is it simply possible that Rinaldo – like another handsome, seemingly self-centered athlete, one Alex Rodriguez – is a better regular season player than special occasion player?

Tony Gwynn, in memoriam (1960-2014)

June 17, 2014

Tony Gwynn dead June 16 at age 54 – what a shame. Think of Gwynn and you think of three things – tremendous hitter; lovely, smiling face; and class act.

I’ll never forget when Gwynn and his San Diego Padres played my beloved New York Yankees back in 1998 for the World Series. The ’98 Yanks were one of the greatest baseball teams ever assembled. Yankee aficionados put them up there with the 1927 Bombers (the so-called Murderers’ Row that included Babe Ruth and Lou Gehrig) and the 1939 team that witnessed the passing of the torch from Gehrig to Joe DiMaggio.

So the poor Padres came up against a juggernaut in the 1998 fall classic and went down in four straight games. But Gwynn was stellar and stayed classy – gracious in victory and gracious in defeat.

The rose and the sword: Laurel Gouveia, an appreciation

June 17, 2014

The arrival in movie theaters of the film “Maleficent” marks the return of the archetype – cliché might be a better word – of the Wicked Stepmother but with a twist.

Post-feminist Hollywood is no dummy. It knows in the 21st-century that its filmmakers cannot afford to reinforce the sexist notion of the older woman out to get the Pretty Young Thing, which is the basis of “Cinderella,” “Snow White” and “Sleeping Beauty.” So there has to be a subplot about how the Pretty Young Thing’s daddy did Maleficent wrong when she was a pretty young thing.

You can revise a fairy tale to make the villain more of an antiheroine. You cannot, however, change history. The classic fairy tales, like much of culture, were created by men, who have feared the power of women, particularly the power of older women.

As they age, women develop a certain wisdom, a sophisticated, fluid sexuality – to say nothing of a disposable income. They’re no longer waiting to be rescued or impregnated by men, if indeed they ever were. They are free, and that’s powerful and frightening, particularly to the sex that has always held all the toys in the sandbox.

Because of their bodily cycles, women remain, though, the more visible reminder that we are all, if we’re lucky, going to get old. And we’re all going to die. Men don’t like that. With the Pretty Young Thing, they can pretend to be virile forever. With the powerful Crone archetype, eh, not so much.

I’ve been thinking a lot about stepmothers and female archetypes this past weekend with the passing of my own stepmother, Laurel Gouveia, after a long illness.

Rape culture and the games men (and women) play

June 13, 2014

OK, so he didn’t do it – which was apparent early on in the story.

But now its official: Colin Kaepernick, fellow San Francisco 49er Quinton Patton and Seattle Seahawk Richard Lockette won’t be charged with sexual assault in an April incident involving a woman who had had a brief affair with Colin.

She visited Lockette in Miami, where he, Patton and Colin were training together, in the hope that her “relationship” with Colin would be rekindled. Then things got “Exorcist”-style crazy in Lockette’s hotel room, Colin split and the woman wound up in the hospital claiming that she may have been sexually assaulted.

May have been, might’ve been – that didn’t stop TMZ from portraying Colin as one knife short of Jack the Ripper.

TMZ’s reporting – I use the term as loosely as possible – is just one problem in a culture that has such a cavalier attitude toward rape and in which men and women leave themselves vulnerable to “he said, she said.”

Why, for instance, would a young woman go to a hotel room where only men were present, men who were said to be drinking and smoking pot? Sounds like a 911 call waiting to happen. But then, she was apparently trying to turn a one-night stand into a meaningful relationship even though Colin had cut off contact with her last year when she claimed she was pregnant as an April Fool’s joke. Some joke. Then she tried to cry rape. It’s an insult to the men, women and children who have suffered such a heinous act and those who have been falsely imprisoned because of it.

Let’s be clear, however: Colin and company may be innocent of a crime but they are hardly blameless here.