Ouch. If you own stocks, how did you feel when Wall Street suffered its worst week in two years? The S&P dropped six percent. Donald Trump had been pestering the media to report more on the stock market, up since his election. Now at least one TV financial pundit was joking about Trump’s crazy trade […]
Read MoreNewspapers as factories: Video of 1970 film
The presses still roll at thousands of newspapers throughout the world, but for how long? And meanwhile this video from the Internet Archive, via the Atlantic site, reminds us of the days when news stories were “locked up” in the most physical way—in lead columns. The Solomon Scandals takes place around 1980, and back then, […]
Read MoreHigh-profile $1B Quarter Pentagon is potential terrorist-bait and one of many reasons why Washington might screw over the young, the old, and the sick
Update: Jim Moran has since told me there was no quid pro quo, that the Indiana real estate developer's contributions were part of an arrangement by which the developer contributed to many people at once, apparently with an unrelated issue in mind. I appreciated the Moran response and will let readers judge for themselves. […]
Read MorePhilip Roth’s new novel: A do-it-yourself ‘Nemesis,’ plus a few thoughts on Roth vs. e-books
Philip Roth was an evil literary influence on me. I don’t write like him, but love his sarcasm, irony and well-crafted dispatches from the battles of the sexes, the very stuff that unsettles Leah Hager Cohen, author of a favorable New York Times review of Nemesis, Roth’s latest novel. Ms. Cohen until recently despised Roth’s […]
Read More‘6 great novels that were hated in their time’: Hope for overlooked novelists and brave readers
What do The Lord of the Rings Trilogy (one book shown), Moby-Dick, The Catcher in the Rye, Lord of the Flies, The Grapes of Wrath and Brave New World have in common? Literary critics hated them. So, at least, says Jacopo della Querci’s Cracked piece—must reading for brave readers and overlooked novelists alike. Here’s the […]
Read MoreThe Jonathan Stone-David Rothman Q. & A.
Jonathan Stone, the reporter in The Solomon Scandals, grilled me for this Q. & A.—uncut. STONE: Why’s Scandals copyrighted in your name? It’s my newspaper memoir. ROTHMAN: Er, faux memoir. Without me, you wouldn’t even have been born…or have worked for the Washington Telegram…or have struggled to avert an IRS-CIA building collapse…or lived through those […]
Read More‘Indignation,’ by Philip Roth: A belated review
Although verbose in places, Indignation is witty and engrossing with wonderful caricatures. I spent time in Northern Ohio eons ago, not that far from some of Sherwood Anderson‘s old haunts, and I enjoyed Philip Roth‘s depictions of the mythical Winesburg College. Roth lives up to his reputation with hilarious attacks on both Jewish moralists and […]
Read More‘Solomon Scandals’ goes on sale now as e-book; January delivery in trade paperback
Psst! Advance promo copies of The Solomon Scandals are on sale now in e-book format (retail $5.95 USD). Twilight Times Books is also taking advance orders for First Editions in trade paperback (retail $16.95 USD). The paperbacks will ship in January 2009. These are “pre-release promotional copies.” Twilight’s phone number is 423-323-0183, and other ordering […]
Read MoreScandals’ origins
Blame The Solomon Scandals on my lack of ESP. Oh, to have read the minds of the people whose lives and deeds helped inspire the novel! Just why did the late Sen. Abraham Ribicoff end up in the 1960s with a $20,000 investment in a building that the CIA moved into? What were Ribicoff and […]
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