When I went into my Muriel Spark phase a few months back, I soon learned that she had had a relationship with The New Yorker. But none of the books that promote the New Yorker mythology even mentions her. You…
Women like baths and men like showers. Why? One theory is that a man feels vulnerable in the bathtub, sitting down, weighed down with water. Someone could come in and shoot him. Whereas in a shower, it’s fast and a…
I’m in a state of grief, gratitude and excitement over Muriel Spark’s death. This reflects the fact that I only really discovered her for myself six months back. Yes, I had read The Prime of Miss Jean Brodie some time…
Watching the latest episode of the Sopranos (Wow, great!), I was reminded of the art lesson I quote from Muriel Spark in a recent entry— Fiction is lies. And in order to do this you have got to have a…
This morning on Meet the Press, Tim Russert had a table of religious experts and at the end said they just had enough time for each of them to give a twenty second message for people on Easter. Well, then…
This morning I was working when I thought, I wonder if Muriel Spark has died, and I went online and put in her name, and yes, she had died in Italy, the news was announced a few hours ago. It’s…
I fell for Lindsey Graham during the Impeachment hearings back in ’98 when he was still a Congressman. I used to talk to him after the hearings. The things I love about him are: he’s independent-minded, incredibly gifted politically, and…
I’m fascinated by the fact that I’m not getting any money to blog. Still, I’m at it. Last year I went to a congressional hearing as a reporter for a fancy magazine that was paying me several thousand dollars for…
I just caught Joe Torre’s locker room press conference minutes after the Yankees’ sudden-death 6-5 loss to the Twins, and it was amazing. It’s only the beginning of the season and it was like someone had died. Torre was stricken,…