What We Can Know (5*)

Leave it to Ian McEwan to coin the era that follows climate change which Tom Metcalfe, an academic who narrates the first part of What We Can Know, refers to as the "Degradation." Though rising seas and nuclear war have mostly reduced merry olde England to an archipelago replete with marauding tribes, very little about fundamental human nature has changed other than the finger-pointing anger that characterizes a future generation who can't forgive the perpetrators of contemporary environmental inertia: us. 

Imagining the future a century hence enables McEwan to flash his sardonic wit--Nigeria, for example, controls the internet--while at the same time nailing mankind's current headlong rush to paradise lost through Tom's historical consciousness.  

I prefer teaching the post-2015 period, when social media were beginning to be drawn into the currency of private lives, when waves of fantastical or malevolent or silly rumours began to shape the nature not only of politics but of human understanding. Fascinating! It was as if credulous medieval masses had burst through into modernity, rushing into the wrong theatre and onto the wrong stage set. In the stampede, grisly government secrets were spilled, childhoods despoiled, honourable reputations trampled down and loud-mouthed fools elevated.

Rose, Tom's "just the facts, please" colleague in the barely afloat humanities department of a much diminished university, accuses him of romanticizing the past and falling in love with Vivian, the wife of a poet, Francis Blundy, whose supposed masterwork, dedicated to her as a 54th birthday present, has been lost to time after an initial, private reading.  Tom has immersed himself in the lives of the couple using a feast of electronic bread crumbs, including e-mail and text messages and  journals left behind by Vivian who earlier lost her soulmate, a luthier, to Alzheimer's and entitled arrogance.

My journals are on a shelf above a writing desk in our cottage sitting room, but I’m happier to be free of them and exercising my memory. Working hard at it, as in a mental gym, making the effort and prising open a scene, opens others along the way. It gets easier the more I try. In addition, guilt and remorse are useful aids to memory. I use the journals mostly to remind myself of the sequence of events, on which memory is notoriously weak. The past, jumbled in the mind, survives in its own special tense, a form of ahistorical present. A journal, whatever its quality, fixes events like beads on a string.

(Does it ever, as I can affirm after having kept one since the early 80s!)

McEwan links Tom's fascination with the night Francis reads his "Corona to Vivian" to another event a hundred years earlier, the "immortal dinner of 1817" attended by William Wordsworth, Charles Lamb and John Keats; thus, the 2014 dinner Tom imagines is at the mid-point between a still pastoral England and the ravaged present.  Fortunately, what initially seems like a sci-fi inflected exercise in literary erudition soon evolves into an absorbing, almost Hitchcockian mystery powered by buried treasure, the elusiveness of truth--particularly in an emotional context--and the essential selfishness of human existence.  To say much more would give way to spoilers.  But as Vivian, very much an underestimated woman of our time, notes:

I delighted in the afternoon sun on my bare arms and felt capable, given life’s brevity, of ruthless insistence on my small share of the world’s pleasures.

What They Said: January 2026

 

“At the end of the song, I like to change the lyric,” Broadway veteran Mandy Patinkin said about "Over The Rainbow.“ 'If happy little bluebirds fly beyond the rainbow, why, oh, why can’t — we?'  As opposed to ‘I.’  That’s what I feel about [Zohran Mamdani]. That’s my prayer and my wish for him and our city of all religions, all colors, all sexes, sizes and shapes.” (NY Times 01.01.26)

“How remarkable is it that on these steps today, we have three swearings-in,” said Mark Levine, New York City's new comptroller, at City Hall. “One by a leader using a Quran [Mayor Zohran Mamdani], one by a leader using a Christian Bible [Public Advocate Jumaane Williams] and one by a leader using a Chumash, or Hebrew Bible. I am proud, proud to live in a city where this is possible.” (NY Times 01.02.26)

“The chair they sat on, the books they had, the candlestick they lit — that’s where we pass down the history that they [the Nazis] tried to erase during the Holocaust,” said Agnes Peresztegi, an international lawyer who specializes in restitution cases. (NY Times 01.04.26)

“I know that [ping pong] is a great sport for anxious people,” observed Josh Safdie, who co-wrote and directed Marty Supreme. (NY Times 01.04.26)

“I really love the idea of writing about something that is very well known, the opposite of writing about discovery,” said French novelist Lola Lafon, who wrote an essay after spending a night in the Anne Frank House. “I feel the novel where you discover something is very male. I don’t discover lands. I know the lands I’m writing about.” (NY Times 01.07.26)

“U.S. foreign policy now is imperial, and consistently imperial,” said Nathalie Tocci, director of an Italy-based think tank, the Institute of International Affairs. “It’s not simply pursuing an American empire in the Western Hemisphere, but Trump accepts the very notion of empire, which is why other empires can exist.” (NY Times 01.08.26)

“A lot of kids playfully adopt the ‘theater kid’ moniker, even with its tinge of attention-seeking excess, because theater offers a space for performing a wider range of emotions and identities than much of our society allows,” said Daniel Pollack-Pelzner, the author of a recent biography of Lin-Manuel Miranda. “Since right-wingers want to crack down on exploring gender, race and sexuality in schools, it’s sadly not surprising that they’d try to wield ‘theater kid’ as an insult to discredit progressive politics.”  (NY Times 01.08.26)

“The Brazilian passport is the most wanted passport on the black market because everyone can be Brazilian,” actor Wagner Moura, star of The Secret Agent, said. “You don’t look at the passport and go, ‘I don’t think so.’ Everyone can be Brazilian — you, me, everybody.” (NY Times 01.11.26)

“I think the Venn diagram of Heated Rivalry fans consists of gay men who want much-needed representation of queer joy and women who want well-produced romances about yearning,” said Chantal Strasburger, founder of an embroidery business that specializes in turning memes and cultural moments into merchandise. “These two circles overlap in the enjoyment of hot people having hot sex.”  (NY Times 01.15.26)

“Throughout Western history, the idea of commemorating and adulating yourself has been considered gauche,” said Jeffrey Engel, a historian at Southern Methodist University.  (NY Times 01.16.26)

“It all ends the same for every addict, in isolation,” film director Abel Ferrara writes in Scene, his memoir. “They call sobriety finding the self of your former ghost.”  (NY Times 01.18.26)

“This is the death of Davos,” said Mark Blyth, a political economist at Brown University. “It has no relevance, none whatsoever. And the bigger question is, did it ever have relevance outside the chattering classes that were embedded in the status quo to start with?”  (NY Times 01.19.26)

“These animal ambassadors become beloved neighbors,” said Scott Sampson, executive director of the California Academy of Sciences, where Claude the albino alligator delighted visitors for three decades. “They serve a really important role to connect people with nature, and I would argue that we need people to be connected with nature more now than ever before.” (NY Times 01.20.26)

“European nations won’t break up NATO because of Greenland,” said Carsten Jensen, a prominent Danish novelist and the author of We, The Drowned, a work of historical fiction about a century of Danish seafaring. “It’s too insignificant.”  (NY Times 01.20.26)

“New York City is always a cauldron where something can explode, and it’s often something you don’t even anticipate,” said Ester Fuchs, professor of public policy at Columbia University.  (NY Times 01.22.26)

“Every day we’re reminded that we live in an era of great-power rivalry,” Mark Carney, Canada's prime minister, told the audience at the Davos World Economic Forum. “That the rules-based order is fading. That the strong can do what they can, and the weak must suffer what they must.”  (NY Times 01.24.26)

“For every two Americans who paid the ultimate price” in Afghanistan, Mark Rutte, the secretary general of NATO, reminded Mr. Trump as the two men sat onstage at Davos, “there was one soldier from another NATO country who did not come back to his family.” (NY Times 01.24.26)

“Officers interact with armed community members all the time,” said Seth Stoughton, who has worked as a police officer and a state investigator, after reviewing video footage of the killing of Alex Pretti by federal agents in Minneapolis.  “It’s just utterly ridiculous to suggest that just because someone has a weapon on them, that that justifies the use of deadly force.” (NY Times 01.28.26)

“We’re looking at the scene after the fact, in a vacuum, not necessarily with all the other factors going on,” said Kenneth Quick, a former precinct commander at the New York Police Department and a criminal justice professor at DeSales University. “That’s where I think a lot of things get cloudy because once people are not obeying what the law enforcement on scene is telling them, that’s increasing the officers’ threat perspective.”  (NY Times 01.28.26)

“Whatever the AfD or Rassemblement National believe about civilizational erasure and migration, they’re not for the American annexation of a big chunk of Europe,” said Justin Logan, a foreign-policy analyst at the libertarian Cato Institute in Washington, referring to far-right parties in Germany and France.  (NY Times 01.29.26)

“[Melania] has to be the most expensive documentary ever made that didn’t involve music licensing,” said Ted Hope, who worked at Amazon from 2015 to 2020 and was instrumental in starting the company’s film division. “How can it not be equated with currying favor or an outright bribe? How can that not be the case?” (NY Times 01.29.26)

“Don’t get sucked into the game,” wrote Patrick J. Schiltz, the conservative chief judge of the District of Minnesota in a 1999 law review article. “Don’t let money become the most important thing in your life. Don’t fall into the trap of measuring your worth as an attorney — or as a human being — by how much money you make.” (NY Times 01.31.26)

Catherine O'Hara (1954 - 2026)

 “I think there’s a bit of the sameness in a lot of the characters I do.  I think there’s a lot of … insecure delusional.”  (2019)

More People I Loved:

Henry R. Slavitt

Sly Stone

David H. Souter

Pope Francis

Marianne Faithfull

David Lynch

Earl Holliman

Gena Rowlands

Shelley Duvall

Roger Corman

Faith Ringgold

Richard Serra

Alexei Navalny

Pee Wee Herman

Glenda Jackson

George Maharis

Tina Turner

Burt Bacharach

Angela Lansbury

Queen Elizabeth II

Sidney Poitier

Joan Didion

Stephen Sondheim

Edward Albee

Muhammad Ali

David Bowie

South Beach Redux

Chris and I spent a delightful afternoon exploring South Beach, a once-trendy place that has been supplanted by Wynwood in my cultural affections since moving to the Folly.  

The density of well-preserved Art Deco architecture remains unparalleled.

Chris was about to embark on a month-long trip to South America, including a cruise to Antarctica.  Ocean Drive has been closed off to vehicles and dozens of bars and restaurants have expanded their seating into the streets.  Spring break must be an absolute nightmare.

We took in "Jack Pierson:  The Miami Years" at the Bass Museum.  Most of the works were on loan from a California gallery.  IMHO, museums shouldn't be places where you can buy the art except in reproduction.  But I'm also a sucker for a guy as photogenic as British model John Todd.  Pierson shot him on Captiva Island in 2015 for the Spring/Summer 2015 issue of Vogues Hommes, which seems a more appropriate place for his work.

Inquiring minds want to know: would the Bass exhibit a straight guy's collages if pretty women were their dominant motif? 

"Array (Miami)" 2025

Not that there's anything wrong with photographing eye candy, but what exactly makes it art?  

Some photos weren't even identified.

Pierson's other work, while diverting, was more half-baked than persuasive although it does suggest that self-confidence can sometimes be even more important than talent.

2023

"The Boat That I Row" (1995)

"Bedsprings" (partial, 2023)

"24 Hours (1-7)" (partial, 2025)

Museum slippers were required to enter "XI," an installation by assume vivid astro focus that took Art Basel Miami by storm in 2004 and landed at the Bass two decades later.

If Peter Max had been a Brazilian drag queen, his work might have looked a little like avaf's (lower case required!) whose mantra is "COLOR IS DEPTH, COLOR IS ENERGY."

The work, anchored by 93 short videos, views queerness as much as a destabilizing force as a sexual orientation.

The Kaleidoscope:  Writing Histories Through The Collection offers a pretentious curatorial meditation on other artworks in the permanent collection

"2-C-19" by Robert Thiele (2007)

. . . including "The Nudist Museum" (2010-12) which consolidates all the naked people depicted by various artists. Ellen Harvey painted the images in oil, added thrift shop frames and then placed them against a backdrop of human flesh drawn from contemporary sources such as porn, fitness and fashion magazines.

Lucy, sculpted by Nam June Paik in 1992, shares a name with one of our earliest human ancestors, Australopithecus afarensis.  She's a lot more charming than artificial intelligence.

I neglected to identify this pearly work.

After waiting out a brief shower, we walked more than two miles along the beach where bathing gulls were more plentiful

. . . than tanning gays.

South Pointe Park Pier reopened in 2014, after being condemned for a decade.

It affords a good view of Miami Beach to the north.  One day in the not-too-distant future, I'll bet those high rises will only be useful as water depth markers.  Polymarket should start taking bets on when and how high.

With traffic backed up to get on the causeway that crosses Biscayne Bay ("where the Cuban gentleman sleep all day"), it took more than an hour to drive to Versailles,  just 12 miles away in Little Havana.

You can't beat the prices at "the world's most famous Cuban restaurant," that's for sure.  A substantial, tasty dinner for two with drinks and dessert, impeccably served, was just under $100.  And there's plenty of parking, always a plus.

We shared a ceviche appetizer.  My classic Mojito with a stalk of sugar cane went down very smoothly.

I liked the outdoor mosaics, too. 

More South Beach

South Beach Redux (2026)

Recreating the Pines Experience in January (2019)
FLASHBACK: Miami White Party (Thanksgiving 2003)
FLASHBACK: Alligator Alley (1996)

FLASHBACK: Bye Bye Kurt (1994)

Playworld (5*)

How could I not gush about a novel about life in Manhattan that loves New York City as much as I do, set in a time when the other boroughs didn't matter?  To be sure, Adam Ross can be guilty of overwriting at times, but he's easily forgiven because of the quality and accuracy of his prose, and the poignance with which he describes an adolescence that literally could not have occurred anywhere else.

Adults, I think now, were the ocean in which I swam, reflects Griffin Hurt, his 14-year-old protagonist, looking back at the loss of his virginity to a much older Long Island housewife who, in retrospect may have been more needy than attractive.  He and Oren, his younger, smarter brother have been traumatized by an event that results in what some might call indentured servitude as a child actor on The Nuclear Family, a situation comedy shot at 30 Rock.  

Griffin's beloved but neglectful parents, distracted by their own careers and studies, give him and Oren a lot of latitude and the whole family is in therapy with the same shrink who seems to deliver only platitudes until the novel's emotionally wrenching end.  If Griffin had his druthers, he would devote himself to sports and girls, like a "normal" kid in flyover country, but he's got way too much to contend with, including both physical and sexual abuse by his wrestling coach.

It sounds like a lot, and it is, but Playland is not about victimization.  Narrated from an adult perspective, it's about resilience and coming to a decision that is, in some respects, as hard as Sophie's Choice.  

Along the way, Ross deeply immerses readers into Griffin's various realms, which include Dungeons and Dragons as well as acting and wrestling.  That none particularly interest me made no difference at all because they matter so much--good and bad--to Griffin, surely one of the most memorable fictional teenagers since Holden Caulfield.

It was, in short, their [wrestlers’] style, fully realized, expressed as control of the moment, of their lives, which I, forced to play parts I did not seek, emulated . . . Upon my arrival at such proficiency, it promised what I wanted most, which was to dictate my own destiny, no matter who the opponent standing before me was, and amid all the tumult, it felt like an assurance from the future, a half whisper that said, Keep going.

At the same time, Griffin is growing up in the real world, where the hostage crisis in Iran, the murder of John Lennon, and the attempted assassination of Ronald Reagan are just background noise as he tries to navigate his insanely overbooked life.  How could they not be?  He's invited to read for an auteurist film director, getting the kind of break that stuns his Jewish father, who barely gets by recording radio commercials that have made him semi-famous while envying his more steadily employed son. 

Talent, I thought. That great leveler. Smasher of gates and all-access pass. Velvet-rope opener and the penthouse view. Follow me please, says the maître d’ to talent, I have our best table waiting. That uniquely and unfairly bestowed gift America had figured out how to tap more efficiently and mercilessly than any other country in history. It should be written on the goddamn Statue of Liberty: Give me your talented, your gifted, your huddled geniuses, yearning to breathe free. That was our country’s exceptionalism—her thrown-wide-open doors she might just as suddenly slam shut.

Playworld is at least partially autobiographical.  Ross, born to show biz parents, dedicates the novel to them and his brother.  He wrestled at an elite high school and played the title character's son in The Seduction of Joe Tynan.  He casts real actors in Take Two, Griffin's feature film debut, and renders them with the same, slightly exaggerated verve he brings to multiple set pieces, including learning how to drive a Ferrari with a stick shift and the arcane dialect Hampton country club juniors use when discussing their golf game. 

Like nearly all film actors I’d ever met, there was something outsized about the features of each woman. [Jill] Clayburgh’s mouth was disproportionately wide. While [Shelley] Duvall, thin as a needlefish, was as tall-necked as Alice after eating the caterpillar’s mushroom.

Ross certainly has an eye, ear and a nose for detail as I knew from the outset.  The Hurts reside in Lincoln Towers, the housing complex that my first apartment faced and Griffin's affair with the very sympathetically drawn Naomi--whose ministrations mostly mitigate her abuse--begins on "Dead Street," where cars parked just beyond my window.  If his baroque descriptions occasionally induce an eye roll they nonetheless capture what it actually sounded and smelled like to reside in New York long before hybrid vehicles, silent swipes and contactless taps.

But here was the bus, finally, which stopped and growled, its engine giving off a hot diesel stink, its doors’ pistons popping and hissing when they opened . . . The tokens, as the driver pressed the plunger, jangled like maracas filled with pirates’ gold.

But capturing what falling in love feels like is where Playworld makes its most indelible mark.  The first cut really is the deepest and while Ross blissfully conveys that truly unique moment for Griffin, he doubles its narrative impact by showing how the experience, when buffed by time and maturity, can become a tragic life lesson, the kind that can indelibly bind a narcissistic father with his confused, impressionistic son.  Each is vividly conveyed in chapters that soar as high as any Manhattan skyscraper, fueled with romance, anti-Semitism, photography and spot-on allusions that range from Shakespeare to film noir.

You could never exhaust the totality of this city any more than you could the knowledge of another person, or yourself.

Ross comes pretty close, though in this magnificently overstuffed novel.

Seen

Last spring, I discovered Lake Lytal Aquatic Center in West Palm Beach.  It provided a great alternative to open water swimming while recovering from a partial knee replacement. For less than $4 with the senior discount I had a lane to myself, with no surf or jellyfish worries.

This year I bought a monthly pass upon arrival at the Folly in early December.  "Use it at least eight times to get the full value of the discount," the young attendant told me.  In yet another sign of aging, I quickly realized I was more relaxed going to the pool than swimming in the ocean, especially after experiencing a mild jellyfish sting on Christmas Day.  Most of the other midday swimmers are my age or older.

During Florian's visit we got into a discussion of the pool's size after he Googled Lake Lytal. "It's Olympic-size, like Columbia," I insisted, "but two or three times as wide.  He disagreed, infuriating me because that had been my understanding ever since I began swimming there regularly, after returning from Australia in 1984.  Someone had told me that 72 lengths equalled a mile which I calculated was 1850 strokes so that I could ensure my ocean swims were consistent, regardless of the current.

"Artificial intelligence says that Lake Lytal IS Olympic-size, 50 meters by 25 yards," Florian read out loud.  When he lived in New Jersey, I'd given him my ID card to swipe himself in at Columbia several times.

"That's ridiculous," I replied, making another mental note regarding the inadequacy of AI.  "Why would a pool's dimensions mix meters and yards?"

Coincidentally, the first time I swam after his departure, the lanes had been reconfigured, reducing their number but increasing their length.  When I asked a lifeguard why, he explained that college swimming season was about to begin.  

"But I count my strokes," I protested.  "How can I make sure that I'm swimming the same distance?"

"Not a problem," he answered.  "The pool is 50 meters by 25 yards, which means you can swim half as many lengths, give or take."

Oops.  I remembered something Lois had said about my father.  "Hon's not always right, but he's always SURE!!!!"  That apple did not fall far from the tree at all.

But I'm nothing if not adaptable, although it took a swim or two to come up with a new stroke pattern--I alternate between breast and side strokes, right and left--that equalled 3/4 of a mile.  After turning 71, I reduced my workout by 25% as a birthday present due to increasing exhaustion afterward.

All this by way of background.  In short, I've been a dedicated swimmer for decades, so the switch from ocean to pool swimming in Florida, and the lane reconfiguration were big deals in my life if of little interest to anyone else.

So imagine my reaction when I showed up my first Saturday morning at Lake Lytal and the woman at the admission desk warned me that a lane might not be available until noon due to college practice.  I went inside anyway and noticed a swimmer with Columbia branded across the rear of his Speedo, but it didn't really register because I was too busy scanning the pool for an available lane.

Then, as I was hurriedly stripping down to claim the sole empty one, a bearded man in his mid-40s approached me.

"Hey, don't you swim at Columbia?" he asked.

"Yeah," I said.

"Like, I mean EVERY day?"

"Not everyday, but often, when I'm in New York.  Why do you ask?"

"I'm the assistant swimming coach at Columbia.  When you walked in, I asked the head coach if it was you and he said 'It's got to be!'"

My reaction was euphoric to say the least.  We chatted briefly; he explained that Columbia's swimming team used Lake Lytal or another facility on Singer Island for three weeks every year during winter break.  Who knew?  And what were the chances we'd cross paths?

The coach also disabused me of the notion that Columbia's pool was Olympic-size.  "That's one of the reasons the guys love to train down here.  Besides the weather, of course," he said with a faint accent.  When I asked where he was from originally--probably another sign of my age--he identified himself as Brazilian.  He also told me the team had been improving in Ivy League competitions, which often closed the pool to alumni swimmers on weekends.

As soon as I completed my adrenalin-fueled swim, dripping wet, I called Tom, my first roommate at Columbia, figuring he of all people would appreciated the randomness of the encounter.  But as a former Olympic fencer, he focused more on my dedication to swimming as the thing that led to their recognition than the elation I was feeling as a result.  "Maybe there's an organization for alumni swimmers, like the Rusty Blades for fencers.  They raise a lot of money for the team."

"I'm unaware of any such organization and completely uninterested in joining if there is one," I replied, as intimidated and bored by team sports as I always have been

But Chris got it immediately when I returned to the Folly, more excited than I've been all season and happy enough to have a rare cocktail before dinner that night.

"We're so used to being invisible," he observed, "that it feels great to be seen."

More Swimming

Sting

The South (4*)

Tash Aw has written a beautifully observed coming-of-age novel so desultory that I almost didn't get that he had accomplished something I've always said I longed for until its final, bittersweet pages:  depicting a kid's homosexuality--or ethnicity, for that matter--as something that marks him no more dramatically than his eye color.

That may sound odd for a book, an incisive exploration of family dynamics in a changing world, that opens with a bang: Jay, a teenager, is anally penetrated by Chuan, a working class guy who turns out to be his slightly older "distant" cousin against a type of tree that has a different set of romantic associations for an earlier generation.  The deflowering occurs in semi-rural Malaysia, shortly before the end of the 20th century when urbanization had begun its steady, encroaching crawl.  Sui, Jay's mother, has inherited a mostly unproductive farm from her father-in-law, a man whose impoverished, illegitimate son, Fong, works the land with Chuan.  Sui and Jack, a failing, much older math professor, visit the farm for the summer with their children who also include Jay's two older sisters, confrontational Lina and peacemaker Yin, before deciding what to do with it.

As the novel progresses, each of these characters gets his or her due as a series of flashbacks unfold, some from the perspective of Jay reflecting on his evolving relationship with Chuan, now nothing more than a distant, if pivotal memory proving that the first cut really is the deepest.  Their metaphor-filled journey--Aw's novel was long-listed for the Booker Prize, after all--is way more important than the destination, and it realistically reflects the tensions between the country and city mice,  as well as adolescent angst and adult repression among the haves and have-nots. 

I won't soon forget one of Aw's final images which perfectly captures the quotidian lives of his characters:

In the dazzling, eerie cloud of fireflies, tiny dots of light fade out and Jay wonders whether they are extinguished by death or something less definitive, fatigue or migration. He worries that they will all start to go out, signifying the end of a season – of many tiny lives. As if sensing Jay’s concern, Chuan says, Isn’t it incredible, this lasts all night.

The South proves both characters right as their brief summer of ordinary, unremarkable love continues to animate Jay's adult perspective.