New York, Paris, outback Australia; Manhattan, Mississippi, New Zealand, Germany. The treasure goes on gleaming in the dark (Maeterlinck).

My work begins with an exploration of interpersonal relationships and the family. From this, I expand to greater systems in society. Violence, inequality, scapegoating, war — and our concurrent quest for survival and grace — these are my foci in novels, essays and poems

1.

Loneliness – it takes us away from people. There’s no going on with our lives. We take the ax to them; we call the inspector to nail in the red X of the condemned. We become drifters, loiterers – filling up the world’s empty spaces, setting down phones in guest rooms, shared houses, cabins in the hinterlands. Plus: churches – we are in back pews, or discomfited in the ashram, lurking in the monastery.

2.

I would like to bring up to you now how I turned from the pursuit of wealth -- its feasts and hunting games, its furs and gleam, its white and imperious cover up with its cool silencing marble.

It was the silence my school friends lived inside – in high ceilinged rooms with unthinkable white carpets, on evenings with absent parents who had work and socializing to do, boards to sit on and maids napping on tiny beds in corners of their spacious apartments. I used to see the maids, who were often Hispanic, and never said a word.

And later, while the classmates of my youth took their positions in real estate and banking and philanthropy, in law and hedge funds, others fell away as leaves from the great trees.

3.

The easy life – it came to seem more and more bland and deadly to me. No matter where I traveled for my work, the destinations had a stultifying sameness – the rich designers, boat builders and owners I wrote about, traveled in a circuit of entirely their own kind; they ate a certain kind of international food; their white and capacious resorts were isolated and protected; conversations revolved around no topics requiring strong opinions. Even the fashions of the super-rich, seemed of a kind: the fine heavy fabrics, the tailored cuts -- but they also betrayed the rich person’s fear of appearing off the mark or ridiculous. ….

From The German Crowd

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