November 21, 2024

“When the power of love overcomes the love of power, the world will know peace.” – Jimi Hendrix This quote from Jimi Hendrix , which I read after listening to bombs dropping and planes crashing in Jimi’s rendition of “The Star-Spangled Banner” is appropriate as the U.S. inches close to triggering a global nuclear apocalypse….

October 27, 2024

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…

July 22, 2024

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…

March 21, 2024

[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…

December 29, 2022

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…

October 26, 2022

[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…