Last night I had the pleasure of acting as the emcee of a panel held at The Writing Center of Hunter College featuring The Kings and Queens of Suspense, where I tossed questions to the best-selling authors Carol Higgins Clark, Mary Higgins Clark, Lawrence Block and one of my particular favorites, Alan Furst (above). Some …
According to an article in The Telegraph, Tony Blair‘s memoir, A Journey, is under consideration for “the least coveted prize in literature”– The Bad Sex Prize, which is presented annually to the author who has done the worst job writing about sex. Previous winners include Sebastian Faulks and Philip Kerr. Blair has been catapulted into …
Reading in The Washington Post the excerpt from Obama’s Wars, Bob Woodward‘s new book, I was reminded of nothing so much as –me! In The Coup, I described the people Vice President Godwin Pope saw gathered on the floor of the House of Representatives as he sat on the dais awaiting the president’s State of …
My friend Michael Gross (left) had to know this would happen. In the September issue of Vanity Fair, a writer named Michael Joseph Gross (right) published a profile a profile of Sarah Palin which one can fairly describe as unflattering (“Anywhere you peel back the skin of Sarah Palin’s life, a sad and moldering strangeness …
Until I get a chance to read Tony Blair‘s memoir A Journey, reviews will have to suffice. Writing in The New Yorker, John Lanchester is not such a fan, although he offers a quote from Blair that is worth its weight in gold. “That Blair was a formidable politician,” writes Lanchester, “can be seen in …
Thanks to Eugene Robinson of The Washington Post and Rachel Maddow of MSNBC, some truly ridiculous blather by Haley Barbour, the governor of Mississippi and a man whose name is bruited about as a potential Republican nomination for president, has been exposed for the noxious nonsense that it is. Barbour. who is 62, recently gave …
I had the pleasure Thursday of meeting Gary Lippman, a talented writer who has written an interesting novel called Freak Hots for Sharon. We talked about his family, his home in Paris, his visits to Burning Man, the Museum of Jurassic Technology in Culver City, our mutual friend Melik Kaylin, and of course, writing. Fiction …
In The New York Times this morning, Janet Maslin had very positive things to say about True Prep, the new book from my friend Lisa Birnbach and Chip Kidd, which is a sequel to her huge hit of a couple of decades ago, The Official Preppie Handbook. Says Maslin: “Ms. Birnbach has returned to the …
Currently on Slate, a photo album from Magnum Photos of the Mad Men era, including this shot of a 1963 literary cocktail party at George Plimpton‘s Upper East Side apartment. Plimpton is seated at left with literary agent Maggie Abbott next to him. At top, left to right: Jonathan Miller, Gore Vidal, Ricky Leacock, Robert …
The oddest entertainment story of the week reports that Aaron Sorkin has agreed to write the screenplay and direct the film of The Politician, Andrew Young‘s account of his disappointing time as an aide to the vain, dishonest and dishonorable Senator John Edwards, and Young’s complicity is hiding the extra-marital affair and pregnancy that Edwards …