My novel “The Penalty for Holding” will be reissued by JMS Books Sept. 25.

A new chapter in 'The Games Men Play' series

September 11, 2019

They say when one door shuts another opens. Over the summer, I was saddened to hear that Less Than Three Press, the publisher of my football novel “The Penalty for Holding,” had folded and, for a while, I thought that was the end of the book’s publishing life. So you can imagine my joy that the work – about a gay, biracial quarterback’s search for identity in the NFL – will be reissued by JMS Books Sept. 25. And you can imagine my further delight in hearing that JMS has agreed to publish my new psychological thriller “Burying the Dead” – about a rising Russian tennis star whose career masks his real “day job,” political assassin – Oct. 30.

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Nick Kyrgios at Wimbledon in 2017. The new Citi Open champ — who moves on to the Western and Souther Open, which begins tomorrow — continues to confound.

The 'Coriolanus' conundrum -- tennis, temperament and Nick Kyrgios

August 9, 2019

In his review of the Public Theater production of Shakespeare’s “Coriolanus,” at the Delacorte Theater in Central Park, The New York Times chief drama critic Ben Brantley describes the title antihero — a brilliant Roman general with no people skills — thusly:

“He’s all unedited impulse, and watching him try to control his peacetime temper evokes the irresistibly awful spectacle of a tantrum-prone tennis star losing it on the court. (Ian McKellen has said that his 1984 performance as Coriolanus at the National Theater was partly inspired by John McEnroe.)”

You wonder what Shakespeare might’ve done with Nick Kyrgios, tennis’ reigning bad boy.

Where it all started for him: Novak Djokovic defeats Jo-Wilfried Tsonga in the semifinals at Wimbledon in 2011 to capture the number one ranking for the first time en route to winning his first Wimbledon championship.

Olé, Nole

July 15, 2019

The Wimbledon fortnight ended in bizarrely glorious fashion as Novak Djokovic defeated Roger Federer 7-6(5), 1-6, 7-6(4), 4-6, 13-12(3) for the men’s singles championship. Federer, the far-and-away fan favorite, ostensibly took the match on paper, winning more points and games. https://deadspin.com/novak-djokovic-is-a-fortress-1836369554 But, as anyone will tell you, matches aren’t won on paper. They’re won by coming up big in the big moments, which is what Djokovic – the number one-ranked player but always an underdog in these situations – did to conquer both Federer and the pro-Fed crowd.

Maximum insecurity

May 17, 2019

April is the cruelest month,” T.S. Eliot began his poem “The Waste Land.” But T.S. — we hesitate to be overly familiar and call him Tom — what about May?

Threats to and from Iran, the continuing abortion divide, tariff wars, the stock market bouncing around like a knuckleball again: The only thing that is certain these days is, of course, uncertainty, making us all uneasy.

In the past, culture — specifically, arts and entertainment and sports — has provided stability in a destabilized world. But the real world keeps intruding on these parallel worlds that are framed differently by time and space.

Philippe I, duke of Orleans, in the robes he wore to his brother Louis XIV’s coronation in 1654, oil on canvas. Palace of Versailles. The Met’s “Camp” show would define the bisexual cross-dressing Monsieur as camp, but would he?

Whose identity is it anyway?

May 12, 2019

The Metropolitan Museum of Art Costume Institute’s exhibit, “Camp: Notes on Fashion” (through Sept. 9) was inspired by Susan Sontag’s seminal 1964 essay “Notes on ‘Camp’,” which she defined broadly as style over substance characterized by theatricality, irony, playfulness, masquerade and unselfconsciousness. It’s a definition and a show that cuts a wide swath, but in the end it turns out to be less about camp and more about identity — its mutability and its ownership.

Betting on Beto

March 21, 2019

So Beto O’Rourke, the former Texas congressman who almost defeated Ted Cruz for his U.S. Senate seat, is running for the Democratic nomination for president and has everyone in a tizzy.

Is Beto — no one calls him O’Rourke — the great Democratic hope or is he just another jejune (that was the word one New York Times poster used to describe him) pipe dream?

Lestat, the rapturous protagonist of Anne Rice’s “The Vampire Chronicles,” has the right attitude toward (unending) life.

Fear itself

March 17, 2019

Three friends, the same reaction: They’re all in a tizzy — bewitched, bothered and bewildered — by Trump world.

One is appalled at the Trump Administration’s restrictive treatment of pregnant undocumented immigrants. Another is angry about President Donald J. Trumpet’s policies and tone in general. And speaking of which, the third is severely stressed by his threats to the American resistance, which preceded the massacre of 50 Muslims — and the injury of just as many — at a mosque in Christchurch, New Zealand by yet another young man with a disproportionate rage at life’s rejections, one who counted El Presidente as a white power inspiration.