Bio in Brief
I have written from the East Coast, whence I come; from Israel and Palestine, where I’ve lived, with chasms in the porcelain, for over a decade; Vietnam, attached to the embassy; and Ukraine. These different coigns of vantage have proved powerful currency.
Times of Israel; City Journal; Punch; The Glenn Show; such are some venues to whom I am grateful for featuring some of my opinions and jottings, such as they are.
Sections of a Library
This is to be a collection without order, drawn from many papers, which I have copied here, hoping to arrange them later each in its place, according to the subjects of which they treat.
Leonardo da Vinci
Whatever mankind does, their hope, fear, rage, and pleasure,
Their business and their sport, are the hotch-potch of my book.
And when was there a richer crop of vices?
Juvenal
The Garland is a nicheless publication. As the name relates, it plucks from a wide and diverse garden, gathering its choice flowers into a verdant literary bouquet.
To facilitate browsing I have attempted to subdivide this labyrinth into navigable paths.
The Sanatorium is where you will find essays and literary reviews, from Amis to Zola, from Abrahamic law to Zoroastrianism.
Vino & Victual concerns the evolution of your glass as it develops under the setting sun, from demitasse to demi-sec. Reviews and notes on specialty coffee, craft beer, wine, food. Potables and Comestibles, from Albariño to Zinfandel.
Travel Travel notes. The earth’s various places, catographically quartered.
To travel as to reading, I apply Montaigne’s advice. One ought to read as he travels: eclectically, whimsically, contingently. That is, to paraphrase Zweig paraphrasing Montaigne, not to travel passively, but “to be travelled.” To veer from the guided path, dismount the rented horse, and enter the bistro, the bar, the cafe, gleaming from the grown and bred human products of that local plot of earth more than you might ever from the guidebook, culled and printed—to adopt for oneself the living, as opposed to the laminated excursion.
Notes from Ukraine These first began as a series of personal letters, soon given the old war term “dispatches”, addressed to Glenn Loury (at his and Nikita Petrov’s page you may browse our correspondence). Here I will be giving the story with footnotes, as it were.
A story in imagery will accompany the one in text: The stunningly bleak photography of Oro Whitley, an inadvertent war photographer whom the author met on a tense, humid, 11-hour bus ride through Ukraine, will proudly be displayed on this forum. (One such photograph is glimpsed on the cover page.)
Aphorisms That, precisely.
Full Score Features
Signers-up will be given admission to:
Original musical compositions.
Audio articles (vocalized in the seductive, captivating tones of the author) for the itinerant, the multitasking, or the simply myopic.
Video discussions between myself and a world of strangers, on topics worldly and strange. As unbounded as the apeiron.
A Monthly Mingle. Here I engage in personal discourse with readers, demonstrating that I can, sufficiently incentivized (i.e., under financial extortion) break the Naipaulian divide and be one with the populace.
There is too much to read, too much to consume, in a vicarious world experienced through media, ever bourgeoning, exponentially evolving, and demanding of us with an obdurate, stamping foot, to pay it attention. The subscriber, the browser, the patron, the viewer, is soon beset by digital claustrophobia. Life, it seems, now comes with a comment button. In this mapless library we are presented aisles without end…the shelves seem to bear in upon us either side.
The rule of the writer ought, first and always, to be this: Do not waste your reader's time.
Ultimately, this publication is not about gimcrack features or superfluous perquisites. The Garland is about the word, considered and written. The words as I write them I believe to contain something of worth, otherwise I would not affix my name to the byline. You will not be buttonholed with buttons; should you wish to subscribe, you know how to go about it, and needn't be badgered by obdurate reminders. It is hoped that in exchange for a monetary stipend patrons will be recompensed in other, invaluable ways.
