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The  2024 Presidential election is the most interesting and engrossing election I have ever been through in my life, and part of the reason, for me, is that I would like to at least be alive for four more years–which is at least how long it would take to complete and publish my remaining  books,…

Picture this: The Vice President of the most powerful nation in the world asked a group of White House invitees, “Do you think you just fell off a coconut tree?” And then she laughed a joyous, triumphant laugh, an infectious laugh that was almost insistent that you laugh along with her, a laugh that celebrated…

I feel great compassion for anyone suffering from a mental disease, or a mental breakdown or deterioration, because it’s usually not their fault. My father suffered PTSD as a result of his nearly three years of being a Prisoner of War of the Japanese during World War II–his memoir is titled Eaten by the Japanese–and…

[Post-dated addition: This blog post was written before thousands of brave and conscientious students of the United States (including students from Columbia, where I did my MFA (I have written about that experience in my book The Killing of an Author), community leaders and activists around the world, and many conscientious Jews including the astonishingly…

Six weeks ago [nearly 10 weeks now], I was in a potentially deadly accident, and had a miraculous escape with only six stitches to my scalp and a few joints and my back in deep pain, bruises in around six different places. After 2–4 weeks of rest, physical therapy, and x-rays, I am grateful to…

My name is … my name is … not Slim Shady, but Richard Crasta or Benny Profane or Vijay Prabhu. Paperbacks Currently Available From Amazon and from the admirable Barnes & Noble, and more on the way. (By the way, don’t give up when Amazon tries to distract you by giving you alternative choices or…

[The story of what happened before my novel “The Revised Kama Sutra” was published by Viking Penguin India. [from “The Killing of an Author””} One of the two editors who had been holding out (the other being Morgan Entrekin of Atlantic Monthly Press), and one who according to Harriet had almost offered and then changed…

Are You a Madrasi? [An Excerpt from the memoir by John Baptist Crasta, Eaten by the Japanese. This scene takes place in Rabaul, New Britain, in a Japanese POW camp.] I had an attack of malaria in the first week of July 1943. I could not get even a drop of hot water. There on…