On Pity: Thoughts on the Past Week
For the first time in my life, this past week I felt pity. It may sound strange as the word is so commonplace and yet it was profound experience. As a writer, I am fascinated by the near impossible challenge of capturing human experience in words. It is the ultimate paradox: to attempt to capture the subtleties, complexities and vastness of human experience with materials and tools that are inherently inadequate and ill-suited to the job. This means that I am always astounded when I grasp the meaning of a particular word. That is always an exhilarating moment of epiphany, when a commonly used word or phrase takes on new and powerful emotional resonance and understand

Skeletons in the Closet: How Many More? Update
As if this morning's news were not nauseating enough, apparently Nico Sarkozy - yes, him of the model wife and high heeled shoes fame - found Mitterrand's tell all "autobiographical novel" with lurid details of paying Thai boys for sex and orgasmic descriptions of being turned on by the "slave market" (Mitterrand's terms) not only acceptable but also: "courageous and talented."Amongst the genius literary gems spouting from Mr. Mitterand's overheated, exploitative, twisted pen is this

Skeletons in the Closet: How Many More?
When the Roman Polanski story broke, I pretty much ignored it: A paedophile, albeit a very successful and famous one, was finally brought to book and about time. Then the media circus started, led by Polanski's equally or more successful and famous friends who insisted that "genius" was beyond mortal reaches of the law; that he had "suffered" already by losing his wife to a grisly murder and his mother to the Holocaust; that sex with a child was consensual because she hadn't fought; that he had paid for his mistakes; that too much time had passed (why didn't that apply to Nazi war criminals?). There are many aspects to this ca