STREET THEATER
Henri Bendel’s on Fifth Avenue, Monday, June 16th, arund 9:30 AM.
CARA SINGS!
I had the happy Father’s Day treat of seeing a performance of the Croton Teen Chorus, featuring my brilliant daughter Cara Malanowski. I had heard Cara sing at any length in more than a year, and it was lovely to hear her high, clear voice in ensemble, and in a solo rendition of I Got …
FLATTERY AT ITS FINEST
I received a nice letter from Lewis Burke Frumkes, the Director of the Writing Center at Marymount Manhattan College: “I thought your talk was terrific and highly informative. . . .Mr. Stupid may have gone to Washington, but in my book, Mr. Smart came to our conference in New York.” Lewis, I’m blushing!
A CRAZY HAMLET
One of the best highlights of summer these last few years has been seeing Shakespeare in Central Park with my daughter Molly. We’ve seen Twelfth Night, Two Gentlemen of Verona: The Musical, Mother Courage, Romeo and Juliet, A Midsummer Night’s Dream, Hair, and, last week, Hamlet. The productions aren’t always great, but it’s always fun …
OBAMA, CLINTON, IMITATE THE COUP?
Last night, “under the cover of drakness” as NBC’s David Gregory hyperdramatically set the scene, Barack Obama met with his defeated rival Hillary Clinton–much like Jack Mahone met with his defeated rival Godwin Pope in the opening pages of The Coup! Okay, okay, so they met a Diane Feinstein‘s house, and not in a parking …
LUNCH WITH NEAL RECHTMAN
Had lunch last week with Neal Rechtman, nearly a neighbor from Ossining, and the author of an interesting first novel called The 28th Amendment, which I was happy to blurb. A good guy, and talented, and like me, a onetime student of J.R. Humphreys at Columbia. I hope he sticks with it.
KEYNOTE!
Thanks to an invitation from the inimitable Lewis Burke Frumkes, I delivered the keynote address at the Marymount Manhattan Writers Conference this morning. Lewis asked me to talk about being an editor, so I got to gas on about some of my favorite editorial thoughts, mainly, about how the job of an editor is to …
START SEVERING!
I had the pleasure of helping my friend Duane Swierczynski launch his new novel Severance Package last Thursday, at a party held for him at The Mysterious Bookshop on Warren Street. Duane (pictured above, sighting land) was in good form, holding forth on the genesis of this, his third novel (following The Blonde and The …
TALKING ESPIONAGE WITH ALAN FURST
Alan Furst is one of the best spy novelists of this or any era, and anyone skeptical of that assertion should immediately read his brand new novel, The Spies of Warsaw. All of Furst’s novels take place in the days just before or just after the start of World War II; this one is the …
LUNCH WITH KAT
Had a happy lunch today with HBO’s endlessly delightful Kat Pongracz at Un Deux Trois. She swore that their new series Generation: Kill will be the greatest thing in military-themed TV since Sgt. Bilko. Plus she paid. (From right to left, above: Kat, me, waiter’s finger.)