JULY, 2005

I awake each morning to the sight of the majestic snow-capped Grand Teton as the sunrise splashes its orange colors from peak to base and never fail to reflect upon the transitory nature of our lives. Against such a backdrop, man seems puny and insignificant, and the great immortal mountain appears to shrug and smile at our futile effort to play out the tiny swath of time we are allotted in some meaningful and fulfilling role.

Silly fools, the great mountain declares, as it presides forever over mankind and all its follies and foibles.

This season a tragic event prompts even deeper reflection.

One of my neighbors, John Walton, was killed in an airplane crash just a few miles from where we live. He was reputed to have a net worth in the neighborhood of eighteen billion dollars. By all accounts he was a good and decent man. Yet all those billions could not buy him one more millisecond of life.…

Read more: Back in Wyoming

So I am sitting here in my comfortable little writing study high above the bustle of Manhattan’s East Side contemplating, of all things, the legacy of President George W. Bush. In a brief few months he will be gone from the public stage and with his absence the vitriol, the adrenaline charged criticism, the often rabid animosity of most of the people in my social world will slowly diminish, and the memory of “W” will slowly dissolve like a lump of sugar in the liquidity of history.

I have channeled my reflections to be sober and neutral, free of bias and contemporary judgments, forcing a kind of emotional absence as I travel forward in time to say fifty or more years from now when all the smoke has cleared and George Bush’s exploits as our President have been exposed to the surgical ministrations of historians. It will not be enough time for a complete closure, for historians are a cunning lot and will continue to dig and dig to unearth the yet unfound discovery, the unknown kernel of a lost moment that will shed some new light on the strange, explosive and challenging eight years of the Bush Presidency.…

Read more: The Legacy of George W. Bush

The dictionary defines the novel as a fictional prose narrative of considerable length, typically having a plot that is unfolded by the actions, speech and thoughts of the characters. It seems a rather restrictive and dry definition.

I would embellish the definition by calling the novel a long work of the imagination, whereby the mind (or minds) of the author conveys a story, a narrative in written words, however structured, directly to a reader (another mind). It is an intimate communication process, a one-on-one exchange between people.

People who read novels on a regular basis understand that the written word, arguably, charges the imagination with a more vivid imagery, intensity and involvement than any other medium. I mean no disparagement of the audible and visual media, but remember I am thumping the drum for the survival of the novel.

I say the novel will not die. It is indestructible. It is immortal.…

Read more: The Novel is Indestructible

Was it always thus, or am I being a self-righteous, moralistic, fuddy duddy old fart locked in some long abandoned warehouse crammed full of cast off virtues no longer viable or useful in today’s world?

What set me off on this rant was roaming the boob tube on a single Sunday morning, watching the chubby talking head of Scott McClellan flacking his book based on the absurd premise that he was moved to tell the “truth” after telling “lies” for three years as the spokesman for the Bush Presidency. What struck me as bizarre was that he was on every talk show that came up on my browsing flicker. By any measure it was a publicity home run for the author and the publisher. The lucky bastard. Then nausea set in.

As a former PR flack myself, I could imagine the Cheshire Cat smile on the editor who persuaded, bribed and cajoled McClellan to take the bait and juice up his book with a so-called damning exposé of the “manipulation” of the Bush White House in “propagandizing” our justification for going to war in Iraq.…

Read more: When it Pays to Betray

When I was a kid growing up in Brooklyn, I would go to the movies twice a week. In the middle of the week when they changed the features I would go with my mother, who loved the movies as much as I did. Besides, in those days they would give away free dishes to lure people in the middle of the week and her kitchen cupboard was filled with “movie” dishes.

Parenthetically speaking, my mother was an inveterate novel reader and moviegoer, which, of course, explains a lot about the bent of her progeny. So much for genetics. For my father, the movies were a soporific and he was usually asleep before the opening credits ended. His movie going presence was respectfully declined.

On Saturday afternoons, I went to the movies with my friends. It was a Saturday ritual and the theatres were filled exclusively with rambunctious, screaming kids letting off energy.…

Read more: My Life in the Movies