Fiction, Writing, Articles, Essays, Reviews.
André the Giant was born André René Roussimoff, a French professional wrestler who was over seven feet tall and afflicted with acromegaly, a disorder in which the pituitary gland produces too much growth hormone. He died at age forty-six. Visiting a statue of Robert Wadlow when the kids were young. Robert Wadlow, also known as the Giant of Illinois, at eight feet eleven inches, was the tallest...
Maybe you do too, but I have days firmly in a dark place. I wake up that way. The writing goes poorly, or I say something I regret, or the news of the world has me down. Maybe Prince Happy keeps telling me how life is good, but I’m still feeling like the man in black. With all the light I have, still the shadow looms. I know the playbook. Get mindful and meditative. Savor, savor, savor...
One of the things that drew me to literary fiction as both a writer and a reader is the deep dives this form of art takes into human psychology, desires, identity, and motivation. Through novels and short stories I was able to cultivate my sense of empathy and at times “see myself” in other characters and through fictional worlds. One of those worlds is suburbia, where I have lived for more than...
People used to place personal ads in newspapers in hopes of finding potential mates. There’s a steamy Al Pacino and Ellen Barkin thriller, Sea of Love, in which Pacino plays a cop who goes on date after date trying to identify a serial killer that’s using the personal classifieds to lure his victims. Ellen Barkin is either the femme fatale or the love interest, or both. The days of personal...
Harriet’s in Florida for a few days visiting her mom so this was an ideal time for me to finish painting her closet doors. I’d been careful about moving her clothes out of the way of my brush while sliding the overlapping doors back and forth to gain access to the edges and the sides. I was on my third coat of paint, since I was covering dark wood with white paint. And then I noticed it: a...
I’m not a good meditator, when it comes to closing eyes and focusing on the breath and clearing the busyness of my mind. I get restless, I get bored, and even if I have what I might call a “good meditative session” I don’t notice any positive aftereffects. But put me in front of my fire, close to the heat, and I’ll watch the flames perform. Where will the tongues will flicker next and which piece...
Close to 7:30, Valentine’s Day, the restaurant full. “Remember, when Vic and Simone get here, act like you don’t know anything,” Kyle said. “I will,” Anna said. “I told you I will.” Anna wasn’t good at hiding her excitement. Her emotions played on her face like a movie on the big screen. She often looked like someone on the verge of bursting into song, although she never fully did. “When they...
I’m very much in the minority on this one: I didn’t love the film The Power of the Dog, by acclaimed filmmaker Jane Campion (The Piano). Me, who likes the understated, who appreciates the quiet story, found myself restless, even bored at times while watching the movie. The drawling narrative focuses on two brothers, wealthy ranchers in Montana in 1925. Benedict Cumberbatch plays the classic macho...
I got a Facebook message from a woman who said her granddaughter has “her heart set on being a writer.” Said granddaughter is always writing in her journal and writing poems and stories. Grandmother wants to know if I have any advice or tips she can pass on to her granddaughter. Sometimes I think there’s more advice out there about writing than there is actual writing. Do a Google...
What book are you reading? It’s called “Maus.” What? Where did you get that? The school board made it very clear that book was being removed from the library. Noelle lent it to me. She owns a copy. You’re not supposed to have that book. It shows people hanging. It shows the Nazis killing kids and there are naked people in the book. Schools should not be promoting that kind of thing. They’re not...
Why is French toast such an effective storytelling device? A generation ago, in two consecutive years (1979 and 1980), the Academy Award for Best Picture went to a film in which French toast serves a pivotal role in developing character in two early scenes. In Kramer vs. Kramer, Joanna (Meryl Streep) suddenly leaves her husband, Ted, (Dustin Hoffman), a workaholic advertising executive, on the...
Do you believe behavior can be guided by intimate, private, and unseen forces, and that the face people present to the world doesn’t always align with what resides in the deepest regions of their hearts? If that kind of philosophical speculation appeals to you, please see Drive My Car. I did, on Tuesday night at the Spectrum Theater, when tickets are only seven dollars, and I sat masked with two...
I must have been ten or twelve years old when my father took my brother and me to the old Rockpile—War Memorial Stadium—on Buffalo’s east side to watch the Buffalo Bills take on the Washington Redskins. It was forever ago. The Bills quarterback was Jack Kemp, who went on to become a U.S. Congressman. The Redskins quarterback was Sonny Jurgenson. I think I fell in love with the Bills on that warm...
Have you seen the new commercial for Apple Watch? It’s both appalling and brilliant. The first thing Harriet said was, “I want that watch.” In the first 911 call, we hear the audio of a woman after she flipped her car and it’s starting to fill with water. The second call features a paddleboarder who has drifted out to sea. The final emergency features a farmer who has fallen from a ladder and...
A few years ago, pre-pandemic, I went to a New York State Writer’s Institute event featuring Jonathan Franzen, a writer who once appeared on the cover of Time Magazine (2010) with the headline “Great American Novelist.” Such attention for a writer is extremely rare. The most memorable part of the event for me was when Franzen was asked by an audience member what struggles he faced as a writer. He...
“And so we shall have to do more than register and more than vote; we shall have to create leaders who embody virtues we can respect, who have moral and ethical principles we can applaud with enthusiasm.”Martin Luther King Photo by Steve Schapiro Sadly for Martin Luther King, Jr., even the first part of his desire—to register and vote—is beyond reach. The second part about creating leaders who...
Even though the temperature befitted an Ice Age day, I needed my daily dose of fresh air and exercise, and so into a nature preserve I ventured and began walking along a snowy and icy trail. My mind began to wander, daydreaming like I tend to do, and then I realized I’d gotten turned around and wasn’t sure which trail I was on or direction headed. I experienced this weird sensation of a time...
I got a cool pickleball paddle from Julia as a birthday present. Today she took me to where she works at the Y so I could play on the courts they set up in the gym. A few guys are my age. A couple are younger. A bunch of them look older, although I’m good at fooling myself that way. There are just as many women players and in the same age range. I walk up to a guy wearing a tie-dye shirt and say...
Some people I know are calling Don’t Look Up brilliant and must-see filmmaking. Others are more critical, pointing out the movie is smug and heavy-handed. Such divergence of opinion generally gets me interested and I sat down recently to watch Don’t Look Up. The premise: scientists discover a comet hurtling toward the earth, with impact expected in six months, and the result to be human...
The world is coated with ice outside my window and it makes me think of an ice storm that served as a literary device in my novel, CLEAN BREAK (thank you, Harriet). I call it a literary device because it’s one of those writer’s tools I’m using to move my characters around into the right locations for the critical subsequent scenes. Plus it casts a chilly, foreboding atmosphere...
