To the Editors: Fintan O’Toole is a brilliant writer, and usually a sharp-eyed observer of things cultural and political, here and abroad. In his latest piece, “Bump and Grind” [NYR, May 11], he again excels as a writer. Regrettably, however, he falls short as a legal observer, and in a way that is unhelpful to […]
Original source: https://www.nybooks.com/articles/2023/06/08/best-guesses/
Back in the early 2010s, when I was writing my first dispatches from the US–Mexico border and volunteering as a humanitarian worker, I would stand on a hill in Nogales, Mexico, and watch as migrants, mostly young men, ducked alone through a hole in the old border fence. They would then dart from bush to […]
Original source: https://www.nybooks.com/articles/2023/06/08/journey-to-the-north-solito-javier-zamora/
Historians can and do change their minds about interpretations of events and the uses of evidence. We may be dead certain, or even mildly sure, about facts and the stories we tell about them, but our craft requires us to remain open to new persuasions, new truths. James Oakes used to believe that the United […]
Original source: https://www.nybooks.com/articles/2023/06/08/the-two-constitutions-abraham-lincoln-james-oakes/
In the mid-twentieth century the early Renaissance painter Piero della Francesca was reappraised by Anglophone artists and art historians who considered him a Modernist avant la lettre. In their eyes he had flouted convention at Western art’s pivotal moment, breaking with the naive rendering and garish coloring of medieval painting and using his knowledge of […]
Original source: https://www.nybooks.com/online/2023/05/20/a-sea-of-forms-bob-thompson/
Last weekend the NYR Online published “Wages for Housewives,” an essay by the scholar and critic Anna Shechtman on the reality TV series The Real Housewives. The title alludes to the work of the Marxist feminist theorist Silvia Federici, who in 1974 argued that women’s housework under capitalism was always “destined to be unwaged.” What […]
Original source: https://www.nybooks.com/online/2023/05/20/the-art-of-feminine-injury-and-excess-anna-shechtman/
Naked Truth shares your story, without holding back, about dealing with racism and discrimination in the workforce and what you did to fight against it. Why was this an important book for you to write?
Naked Truth was an important book for me to write because racism and discrimination continue to persist in many organizations, despite efforts to address them. Racism and discrimination not only harm individuals who are targeted, but they also create a toxic work environment that can negatively impact productivity, employee morale and wellbeing, and the success of the organization. Moreover, Naked Truth has allowed me to speak truth to power in a meaningful way.
In my view, addressing racism and discrimination in the workplace requires a multifaceted approach that includes education, training, policy development, and cultural change. Furthermore, my book can help with providing a platform for individuals to share their experiences and perspectives on these issues, amplifying voices that are often marginalized or silenced. By sharing stories of discrimination, racism, and the strategies used to overcome them, my book can inspire and empower others to act and create positive change in their own workplaces. Ultimately, Naked Truth may play a critical role in building awareness, promoting understanding, and driving progress towards a more just and equitable society.
I appreciated the candid nature with which you told your story. What was the hardest thing for you to write about?
The hardest thing for me to write about was recounting the firsthand experiences, the pain, trauma, grief, and the uncomfortable conversations about privilege, power, and inequality encountered at the Department of Labor (DOL). It was difficult to articulate the depth of these experiences in a way that is both sensitive and impactful. Never in my wildest imagination did I ever foresee myself engaging in such an undertaking.
What were some ideas that were important for you to share in this book?
Some of the ideas that were important for me to share in Naked Truth is first to connect with readers by showing I am personable and retable. Second, to bring awareness to discrimination and racism that exist in the workplace and to advocate for change. Finally, I wanted to motivate, inspire, and empower others to take actions and speak up when experiencing these despicable acts.
What is one thing you hope readers take away from your story?
One thing I hope readers take away from my story is, never be afraid to speak truth to power to affect change. There are others waiting to hear your story!
Author Links: GoodReads | Twitter | Facebook | Website
Original source: https://literarytitan.com/2023/05/20/speak-truth-to-power/
This book helps readers understand the workings of the human body as a series of interdependent physiological relationships. What was the idea, or spark, that first set off the need to write The Embodied Mind?
In 1981, in my book The Secret Life of the Unborn Child, I hypothesized that there were two memory systems. The first was the cortical system in the brain that we are all familiar with. The other functioned on a cellular level and began to operate at conception. At the time of writing The Secret Life of the Unborn Child, the research did not exist to support what was then a binary theory of memory.
In The Embodied Mind I provide an overview of current evidence-based research in many areas of science that, collectively, validates a unified theory of memory.
What sparked my determination to write this book was that I read about a 44-year-old French man who in July 2007 visited a hospital complaining of a mild weakness in his left leg. The resulting scans of his head led scientists to question our long held biological perspective on the nature of consciousness – because, despite living a relatively normal life, this patient was missing 90% of his brain.So, I asked myself – how is this possible?
What were some ideas that were important for you to share in this book?
Scientific emphasis on the brain has been baked into our culture for millennia. The Western world even before the Greek civilization, has been patriarchal, giving rise to a hierarchical social structure. The same vertical system has been unconsciously adopted in medicine. Doctors and scientists think of this system as strictly one way, mostly top-down, rarely bottom up. The latter is usually perceived as negative, as when you have a duodenal ulcer or a heart attack. Add to this the Church’s jaundiced view of the genitalia and you hesitate to spend too much time contemplating your lower chakras.
My book is a journey into the fully embodied nature of mental life, reviewing the cutting-edge science showing how the body responds to and encodes experience into its structure and function; how our feelings, thoughts, and memories are shaped by physiological functions beyond those of our head-encased brain.
It is the existence in our bodies of an interconnected, unified, multilevel, homeostatic, cellular memory system that allows us to be fully functional human beings with an Embodied Mind and not just an enskulled mind.
Materialism and reductionism are science’s Tweedledum and Tweedledee. The Embodied Mind challenges the prevailing concept of reductionism and emphasizes the need for a more holistic and spiritual approach to understanding the humanity of humans.
How much research did you undertake for this book and how much time did it take to put it all together?
I spent 7 years reading and making notes of 5,000 plus bookstand scientific papers.
What were some goals you set for yourself as a writer in this book?
Replacing the enskulled mind with the Embodied Mind and Everything is Connected
We understand the workings of the human body as a series of interdependent physiological relationships: muscle interacts with bone as the heart responds to hormones secreted by the brain, all the way down to the inner workings of every cell. To make an organism function, no one component can work alone. In light of this, why is it that the accepted understanding that the physical phenomenon of the mind is attributed only to the brain?
In The Embodied Mind, internationally renowned psychiatrist Dr. Thomas R. Verny sets out to redefine our concept of the mind and consciousness. He brilliantly compiles new research that points to the mind’s ties to every part of the body.
The Embodied Mind collects disparate findings in physiology, genetics, and quantum physics in order to illustrate the mounting evidence that somatic cells, not just neural cells, store memory, inform genetic coding, and adapt to environmental changes—all behaviors that contribute to the mind and consciousness. Cellular memory, Verny shows, is not just an abstraction, but a well-documented scientific fact that will shift our understanding of memory.
Verny describes single-celled organisms with no brains demonstrating memory, and points to the remarkable case of a French man who, despite having a brain just a fraction of the typical size, leads a normal life with a family and a job. The Embodied Mind shows how intelligence and consciousness—traits traditionally attributed to the brain alone—also permate our entire being. Bodily cells and tissues use the same molecular mechanisms for memory as our brain, making our mind more fluid and adaptable than we could have ever imaged.
Original source: https://literarytitan.com/2023/05/20/understanding-the-humanity-of-humans/
Spin follows an underachieving marketing employee who sees the opportunity to change his life around if only he can let go of his morals. What was the inspiration for the original idea at the center of the book?
The original idea probably came to me a decade ago, circa 2012. I was working in marketing at a big multinational and for a long time really loved it. Then headquarters announced a ‘roadmap’ to get to an earnings per share target. All well and good if revenue was growing, but it wasn’t. The end result was diabolical and thousands of people were made redundant. I think the situation is completely relatable to anyone that’s worked in a corporate environment. And for me, the small team of exceptional people that I managed – each were made redundant, one per quarter, until I no longer had a team. And then a month later, I was tapped on the shoulder – my work was done, it was my turn. I’d been there for almost twenty years, so the way it ended was soul-destroying. I guess the book was cheaper than therapy.
Was there anything from your own life that you put into the characters in your novel?
Short answer is a lot of it. The characters aren’t based on any one person in particular, but an amalgam of various people I’ve met, worked with or been managed by. I’d like to point out that 99.9% of my colleagues at work both past and present are fantastic. And I’ve had some truly exceptional managers (a big shout out to Steve and Connie particularly). But the 0.1% provided great material for the book so I thank them also.
What were some themes that were important for you to explore in this book?
The best thing about satirical comedy is that you can make points without being preachy. Or if you miss the theme, that’s fine too as long as the book makes you smile. The key theme revolved around corporate ethics and at what point you’d sell your soul to get to the top. The protagonist in the book sells his soul for an annual salary of half a million dollars. I reckon I’d price mine at a million but I’m prepared to negotiate.
What is the next book that you are working on and when can your fans expect it to be out?
The next book is percolating as we speak. I’ll stick with comedy because I write what I love, and I love a good laugh more than anything. So picture ‘Ruthless People’, the 1986 movie starring Danny DeVito, mixed with ‘Reservoir Dogs’, the 1992 debut of Quentin Tarantino. I guess you get a ‘Ruthless Dogs’. The title needs work, me thinks.
Author Links: GoodReads | Website
Geoff Stradling likes to think he’s one of the good guys. And it’s important to stay stoic in the face of a few challenges. So what if the company he’s working for shows dubious business ethics? Or that his boss is a back-stabbing narcissist? Or that his girlfriend is happily rid of him? Let’s not mention getting overlooked for that promotion. The less said about that, the better.
But his dream job is just around the corner. Maybe a couple of tweaks to his CV are required, but who cares? Money. Power. It might just go to his head.
He can have it all… for the price of his soul.
Original source: https://literarytitan.com/2023/05/20/the-book-was-cheaper-than-therapy/
Boy Wander: A Coming of Age Memoir is your story about growing up in a difficult childhood home and struggling with your own identity through your teen years and into adulthood. Why was it important to share your story?
Confronting tumultuous and sometimes shameful aspects of my adolescence has been cathartic if not therapeutic. And to do so through writing enabled me to delve deeper into my thoughts and feelings at specific moments which in turn have shed light on how I turned out to be the person I am today. I also wanted to memorialize a blessed upbringing thanks to loving parents who gave their children the gift of growing up in different cultures. To this day, stories abound of young people’s struggles to come to grips with their true selves. Perhaps my path could help someone and their loved ones navigate such terrain.
I appreciated the candid nature with which you told your story. What was the hardest thing for you to write about?
Keeping secrets is a part of how we operate as humans even at an early age. I had been carrying so many of them for such a long time. Reliving my anguish of desiring what seemed taboo whilst not wanting to disappoint those around me proved to be some of the more challenging aspects of this narrative. My goal with Boy Wander was to be completely honest with readers.
What is one piece of advice someone gave you that changed your life?
My father said to keep a journal throughout college and even later as I embarked on my global marketing career. I was not disciplined about making entries though there was an undeniable energy whenever I scribed how my day went and what I felt. It undoubtedly fueled wanting to tell my story when I was ready to do so. I dedicated Boy Wander to my father (and mother). It’s sort of the journal he was hoping I would have, at least the first of three I believe I have in me.
What is one thing you hope readers take away from your story?
We’ve all wandered within our own imperfect journeys. Every one of them unique. Each of them matters.
Author Links: GoodReads | Twitter | Facebook | Website
Boy Wander is an intimate coming-of-age portrait of the author’s sexuality as seen through the eyes of a child of the 1960s and 70s and a teenager before the advent of AIDS and finally as a young man arriving in America. From Manila, Kathmandu, Bangkok, and Tokyo to New York, Chicago, and San Francisco, the author navigates denial and acceptance, erotic and unconditional love, transience, and transnationalism. Even as the world has become more accepting over the decades, this book’s present-day relevance provides inspiration to those struggling to reconcile family values and societal expectations with being true to themselves.
Original source: https://literarytitan.com/2023/05/20/our-own-imperfect-journeys/
Just a Stalemate follows a woman traveling to visit her godson, who winds up helping out in a murder investigation. What was the inspiration for the setup of your story?
The first book in this series Just A STILL LIFE, (really the last, as the rest are all prequels) was first drafted by my grandmother more than 75 years ago. So P.J., the elderly godmother in 2023’s Maxy-Award Runner-Up for Mystery/Crime Just A STALE MATE is loosely based on that grandmother who loved to travel, but was equally as happy as a homebody typing her manuscripts. And the place she’d called ‘home’ her entire life was either in the village of Straffordville, Ontario (Sandytown in the book), or on a country estate just 2 miles outside the village. Grandma really understood the often close-minded vision and gossip-mongering of villages like this, and as I grew up with her, experiencing the same village, I decided I wanted to set the second whodunnit novel right there. There are lots of interesting things about that area as well: it was famous as tobacco country but on the shores of Lake Erie, which is practically like growing up near an ocean; it has a lot of railway history and I grew up overlooking the train trestle bridge which features greatly; it isn’t far from many Canadian early innovations and inventors, also mentioned in the book, and which many might assume to be wholly American.
With so many interesting characters in this novel, who was your favorite character to write for and why?
While I write many diverse characters into my plays and novels and thus delve into research and have sensitivity editors from most marginalized communities, the development of the Cowan family sprang from a childhood pal, my ‘twin’ (we were born together, our parents already great friends) and seemed to take on a life of its own. Without giving too much away, my ‘twin’ had asked to be a central character and since I like anagrams and wordplay as clues and red-herrings, her name and the fictionalized background of the Cowan family came to mean a lot to me, and to the plot. And as I’m (dis)Abled, I wanted to make one of the family members representative of that particular group, too.
However, I love creating who D.I. Philip Steele’s partner will be in each book. In ‘Still Life’, it was a former Black journalist turned cop, who likes spouting literary quotes, but usually gets them humorously wrong. In ‘Stale Mate’, it’s Trevor, a member of the LGBTQ community who is afraid to come out as, in 1969 Ontario, he’d surely have been fired from his position. In the third in the series, which is set in the Yukon in 1967, Phil’s partner is a female Inuit based on a fine superwoman I met when I lived there in the 1980s.
When you first sat down to write this story, did you know where you were going, or did the twists come as you were writing?
I really have to laugh when I get asked this. Because Just A STILL LIFE took 75 years to see the light of day, with many versions and drafts having crossed the ocean and the continent several times with me in the form of hard-copy manuscripts and copious notes, it’s unbelievable that its award-winning sequel/prequel took only a matter of weeks to write and revise to what Literary Titan has called “a polished and sharply-written novel”, and to be published hot on the heels of the first novel, (again by Black Rose Writing of Castroville, Texas). I’ve always struggled and labored a great deal over all my works, whether short or long; many have been decades in development. We’ve all heard authors and playwrights say ‘it just wrote itself’, and I’ve always thought that was ridiculous. But quite honestly, Just A STALE MATE had some mysterious ‘Muse’ writing through me. Perhaps it was my grandmother, dead 30 years now. She likes to keep her hand in, I guess.
What is the next book that you are working on and when will it be available?
One of my book groups was organized through International Thriller Writers, and the very experienced best-selling authors in that group are encouraging me to work on another Yukon-based manuscript which I’ve had in my writing trunk for decades. It’s called ‘No Fair Game’ — I’ve had to add prefixes to all my original two-word/double-meaning titles now; as I’ve waited so long on them, there are countless others out there with the same name — and it’s more a suspense/adventure yarn than a mystery. Then I’ve got a full-length two-act historical musical called Rough Notes in development that’s had a professional workshopping of it last autumn and needs to keep going forward. So these two projects (as well as promotions/tours, etc. for everything else!) are taking up a lot of my time. While the general plot and characters for the third book in the JUST (e)STATE mysteries are in my head, I don’t know when I’ll be able to actually start bringing them ‘to life’. Or, since it’s a murder mystery – ‘to death’ !
Author Links: GoodReads | Twitter | Facebook | linktr.ee/J.Ivanel
Original source: https://literarytitan.com/2023/05/20/some-mysterious-muse/