Adventures in publishing, Washington edition

August 11, 2016

It is a truth universally acknowledged that an author of good fortune – or, let’s face it, no fortune at all – must be in want of an audience. And so I repaired once again, dear readers, to The DC Center for the LGBT Community’s OutWrite Book Festival in Washington, this time to read from my novel “The Penalty for Holding” – about a gay, biracial quarterback’s quest for love in the NFL. It is slated to be published next year by Less Than Three Press.

But this was also a busman’s holiday as well, as I had in mind visiting two exhibits I longed to see – “The Greeks: Agamemnon to Alexander the Great,” at the National Geographic Museum through Oct. 10, and “Will & Jane: Shakespeare, Austen and the Cult of Celebrity,” at the Folger Shakespeare Library through Nov. 6. What is it that the late Nora Ephron said: “Everything is copy”? Everywhere I went reminded me of what it means to be a writer. ...

The Athena principle: Ivanka and Donald Trump

July 24, 2016

A patron at a restaurant I frequent finds Donald Trump’s relationship with his older daughter, Ivanka, peculiar. He seems to be closer to her than to his wife, Melania, she has said.

Jill Filipovic – a lawyer and journalist who’s the author of the forthcoming “The H-Spot: The Feminist Pursuit of Happiness,” offers an explanation: A man wants a nurturer in a wife, who will care for his needs, and an independent-minded, strong woman in a daughter, who, after all, reflects him. I myself saw this with my own father and I’ve seen this with every man I’ve known who had daughters. Whether or not he was a feminist, married or divorced, gay or straight, he always wanted his daughter or daughters to succeed and thus women to have opportunities and pay equal to that of men. ...

‘A world elsewhere,” continued: Ted Cruz and ‘Coriolanus’

July 24, 2016

Much has been made recently about Ted Cruz going Marc Antony – the Roman general, not the singer – on The Donald at the Republican National Convention in a speech in which he congratulated the Trumpster but declined to endorse him. This sent some political and literary experts alike scurrying to Shakespeare’s “Julius Caesar,” in which Antony – a Caesar ally who is waylaid by the conspirators on the day of Caesar’s assassination – turns the tables on the assassins in his famous “Friends, Romans, Countrymen” eulogy.

“I come to bury Caesar, not to praise him,” he says, but praise him he does, however subtly, sealing the murderers’ fates.

The analogy here is to Cruz’s call to “vote your conscience,” thereby undermining Trump’s bid for party unity. ...

Alex and Athena take Manhattan

July 20, 2016

In WAG’s June “Celebrating the Globe” issue, I wrote about my passion – OK, some would say my obsession – with all things ancient Greek, particularly Alexander the Great, the Greco-Macedonian king whose conquest of the Persian Empire in 331 B.C. when he was in his mid-20s would lead to the dissemination of Greek culture in the East, underscoring a cultural cross-pollination and political tension that are still with us today.

Recently, The Metropolitan Museum of Art in Manhattan explored these themes in its blockbuster exhibit “Pergamon and the Hellenistic Kingdoms of the Ancient World,” which I also wrote about in our June issue and which featured a kind of greatest hits of the Hellenistic (post-classical Greek) world. ...

‘SHE’ and ‘the woman’s card’

May 2, 2016

With apologies to Dickens, this seems to be the best of times and the worst of times to be a woman.

At a moment when women dominate higher education and professional schools, they stand on the threshold of one of their own achieving for the first time the highest office in the United States and becoming the most powerful person on the face of the earth.

On the other hand, Hillary Clinton’s opponents seek either to demonize her and her sex, ridiculing her for playing “the woman’s card” (Donald Trump), or to throw chivalry into sharply false relief by confining women to the gilded cage of the pedestal (Ted Cruz) and the nostalgia of the kitchen (John Kasich).

And that’s the good news. Murder; rape; genital mutilation; sex slavery; child marriage; forced conscription into terrorists squads; a lack of access to education, employment, health care and reproductive rights; cyber death threats to and bullying of female sportswriters (a subtheme of my forthcoming novel, “The Penalty for Holding”) and, that old standby, unequal pay for more-than-equal work: The challenges and atrocities that women face are staggering.

All of which makes the incandescent “SHE: Deconstructing Female Identity” – at ArtsWestchester in White Plains, N.Y. through June 25 – a most timely exhibit indeed.

Organized by Kathleen Reckling, the brilliant gallery curator and an avowed feminist, “SHE” considers that identity and the woman’s card through what have traditionally been three power centers for women – their bodies/nature, the home/domesticity and fashion. ...

The figure in Persian and Indian art: Different perspectives from two new books

April 28, 2016

Two richly layered new books from Thames & Hudson capture the contrast between the human figure in Persian art and the figure in Indian art.

“Persian Painting: The Arts of the Book and Portraiture” by Adel T. Adamova and Manijeh Bayani (552 pages, $50) reproduces in paperback for the first time shimmering illuminated manuscripts, miniature paintings and decorated book bindings from the 11th through early 20th centuries. Illustrations from such works as Firdawsi’s “Shah-nameh” (“The Persian Book of Kings”) and Nizami’s “Khamsah” draw on The al-Sabah Collection, Kuwait.

“The Spirit of Indian Painting: Close Encounters with 101 Great Works, 1100-1900” by B.N. Goswamy (570 pages, $50) covers roughly the same period. How these books cover these periods, however, is vastly different. ...

American Pharoah rides again

April 20, 2016

With all the talk about this year’s crop of 3-year-olds for the Kentucky Derby – Will it be the presumptive favorite Nyquist or his gray rival, Mohaymen, or Exaggerator? – I’ve been feeling a little nostalgic for American Pharoah and his glory Triple Crown run last year.

Well, we Pharoah phanatics are about to get a phix: AP is the subject of a new book by Joe Drape that was excerpted in The New York Times.

“American Pharoah,” published by Hachette Books, will be available April 26. ...