At first, it appeared as if Frank Bruni was pulling our collective leg. And, it turns out, he was.
The New York Times columnist, a critique of the college admissions process, has contributed an offbeat, satirical piece sending up Stanford University’s snooty admissions standards – about only five percent of applicants get in – as well as those schools that might dumb down to meet students “where they live.”
I had to laugh, because in both my debut novel “Water Music” and my forthcoming book “The Penalty for Holding” – part of my series “The Games Men Play” – two of the main characters attended Stanford. I thought it was a bit of a stretch at first since they’re athletes. ...
Read more
Read MoreRecently, Ken Valenti – a colleague from our days at the Gannett newspapers – graciously asked me if I would read at a gathering of his group For the Love of Words at R Patisserie Café & Tea Boutique in New Rochelle, N.Y., a most collegial coffeehouse. Naturally, I said yes. What writer doesn’t love the sound of her own words, her own voice?
As usual, I practiced my go-to selection from “Water Music,” the first novel in my series “The Games Men Play,” in which tennis player Alí Iskandar becomes involved in an international incident that draws him into the circle of his soon-to-be lover, tennis star Alex Vyranos. (Given the R-rated nature of the novel, there are not many easily available go-to sections.)
But something happened as I prepared to leave for the reading: I turned on the TV to learn of the Brussels bombing. ...
Read more
Read MoreWhile American Pharoah is busy making babies, our old friend California Chrome is busy winning races.
CC – who won the 2014 Kentucky Derby and Preakness – earned the richest prize in horse racing, taking the $6-million Dubai World Cup on March 26. The win makes him the all-time moneymaker at $12.4 million. (And he could add to that by entering January’s $12 million Pegasus Championship, which would alternate between the Santa Anita and Gulfstream parks.)
But the real winner here may be Victor Espinoza, who rode the Pharoah, of course, and rides CC as well. ...
Read more
Read MoreThe first thing I thought about was “The Dying Gaul.”
That poignant Roman marble – a copy of a late Hellenistic work that depicts a Celtic warrior wounded on the ground – was precisely what I flashed on when I saw the photo of Steve Young on the front page of The New York Times March 25.
It was as if it were yesterday – if yesterday were 1999. Young, then the quarterback of the San Francisco 49ers, lay crumpled, seemingly lifeless after a concussive hit on the field. The photo accompanied the story headlined “NFL Concussion Studies Found to Have Deep Flaws.” ...
Read more
Read MoreIt’s intriguing – though infuriating might be the better word – that Our Principles PAC should have to release an ad with actresses mocking Donald Trump’s sexist comments on women at precisely the moment that a new study shows women’s presence in male-dominated professions being heralded by a decrease in salaries.
The moral in each case is the same: To be a woman in the 21st century is still to be devalued.
And, by extension, so are so-called feminine qualities and professions, such as compassion and the arts. These are viewed as weak and decorative at best.
But why should this be, given wave after wave of feminism? ...
Read more
Read MoreOn a recent trip to Jacksonville, Fla. via Delta, I had a disquieting thought. The flight attendants were so friendly, so generous with their drinks and snacks that I felt guilty about the scene in my debut novel “Water Music” in which an officious flight attendant denies tennis star Evan Conor Fallon an extra package of nuts, precipitating an international incident known thereafter as “Nut-gate.”
Mulling the gracious treatment I have always received while flying, I wondered how fair and realistic I had been with Nut-gate. Mustn’t fiction reflect life?
Then while at the beach house my sisters had rented on Amelia Island, I read the introduction to Alvaro Enrigue’s intriguing new novel “Sudden Death” (Riverhead Books, $27, 261 pages) – about an imaginary 16th century tennis match between the Italian painter Caravaggio and the Spanish poet Francisco de Quevedo – in which he writes something that buoyed me so much I felt as if I had made a new friend: ...
Read more
Read MoreSo I’m sitting in a sports bar in Tallahassee that has, according to my nephew James, 59,000 TVs, most of them tuned to college basketball, this being March madness. But a few are checking out the NFL Combine and the new prospects like Ohio State defensive star Joey Bosa, all glorious 6 foot, 6 inch, 276 pounds of him.
But there was no time to measure his defensive pulchritude as the networks quickly moved on to the game of musical quarterbacks. With Peyton Manning retired from the Denver Broncos, Brock Osweiler would’ve seemed to have had a lock on the job, but no, he bolted – a favorite verb of sportswriters – to the Texans. The Broncos then traded for Mark Sanchez, formerly of the New York Jets and Philadelphia Eagles, but no one thinks he’s a permanent first-string solution (except probably Mark Sanchez). ...
Read more
Read More