The true test of talent for a fiction writer is the ability to imagine pain, angst, despair, discouragement, frustration as well as joy, ecstasy, elation and pleasure. This is the power that runs the machine of character creation that lies at the very heart of storytelling. As we fiction practitioners…
Read more...I have always been somewhat amused by the phrase ‘Based on a True Story’ that I see on book covers and movie screens. The line is of course a marketing strategy to connect potential readers or viewers with what is essentially a fictional interpretation of an authentic, perhaps remembered, contemporary…
Read more...Jon Stewart mocks 'photo-bombing' controversy between Miss Israel and Miss Lebanon, referencing The War of the Roses "In a segment titled, War of the Poses, Stewart mocked the idea that Lebanese media was angry with their contestant for posing with Matalon, because "Lebanon and Israel are enemies." - Watch entire…
Read more...As a longtime practitioner of the art of fiction writing and a committed reader of the works of others, I have been thinking a great deal about the impact of the proliferating film/TV industry on the future of reading. Having lived through the golden age of Hollywood films shown in…
Read more...The recent flap over a romance novel titled For Such a Time whose plot features a concentration camp inmate falling in love with her Nazi captor has aroused the wrath of various critics and readers on grounds that it is too discomfiting and disturbing to have been published. While I…
Read more...I am seriously thinking about lying about my age. Of course it’s impossible. The internet has my age engraved in perpetuity. I notice the difference immediately after my most casual face-to-face social revelation of the “number” – even if it is merely a reminder to my friends and my children.…
Read more...I am greatly saddened by the death of the brilliant novelist Ruth Rendell. Although she was dubbed a “crime” writer she was much more. Her work probed deeply into the psychological aspects of the human condition. She wrote a masterful series, The Inspector Wexford novels, about the inner workings of…
Read more...I have only seen brief snippets of “The View” on television. As an older white male, I’m hardly the demographic they are looking for, but the news that Barbara Walters is eagerly pushing Monica Lewinsky to appear on “The View” as, perhaps, a regular, sounds to me like a brilliant…
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