Culture

While Writing a Future Best Seller, Give It Room to Breathe

Published

3 years ago

March 10, 2022

While Writing a Future Best Seller, Give It Room to Breathe

DAME GAME Nina de Gramont is the writer of eight books — 4 for younger grownup readers and 4 for grown-ups — however her newest novel, “The Christie Affair,” is her first New York Instances finest vendor. “If this had occurred after I was 25, I’d assume that it meant I used to be actually good,” she mentioned in a cellphone interview. “Occurring at 55, I do know it means I’m actually fortunate. So I’m appreciating it, for certain.”

In “The Christie Affair,” de Gramont explores the occasions surrounding Agatha Christie’s puzzling 11-day disappearance in 1926. The case made worldwide headlines, together with a handful on this newspaper: “Mrs. Agatha Christie, Novelist, Disappears From Her House in England,” “500 Police and Planes Seek for Mrs. Christie” and “Mrs. Christie Present in a Yorkshire Spa.”

In 2015, earlier than she’d learn a single one in every of Christie’s novels, de Gramont discovered about her vanishing from an article on a true-crime web site. She mentioned, “The element that made me wish to write a novel about it — that form of made a narrative begin to come into form — was that she had used the final identify of her husband’s mistress to register on the resort.”

In actual life, Col. Archibald Christie’s girlfriend was Nancy Neele, whom he later married; in “The Christie Affair,” she is Nan O’Dea, an Irishwoman with a tragic again story. De Gramont labored on the ebook on and off for 5 years whereas educating writing on the College of North Carolina Wilmington. There was a time frame when she felt overwhelmed by the mission, so she put it apart to put in writing a special novel, one which by no means bought. “I’ve a behavior of doing that,” de Gramont mentioned. “I’ve began a ebook, I’ve written about 100, 150 pages, after which I simply turn into overwhelmed. On this case, it simply felt like, I’m American, I’m residing within the twenty first century, I don’t know sufficient, I can’t do that.” When de Gramont discovered her method again to Christie’s story, her perspective was, “I’m going to provide this writing factor another shot, and if this ebook doesn’t promote, I stop.”

Culture

Patriots fire Jerod Mayo, expected to pursue Mike Vrabel as next head coach

Published

4 hours ago

January 6, 2025

Press Room

Patriots fire Jerod Mayo, expected to pursue Mike Vrabel as next head coach

FOXBORO, Mass. — The New England Patriots are making a change at head coach, splitting with Jerod Mayo just one year after he replaced Bill Belichick. Now, a franchise that once exuded stability and success like no other in the NFL is about to have its third coach in just three seasons.

New England fired Mayo less than 90 minutes after the season ended Sunday, a disastrous 4-13 campaign (and a Week 18 win that cost the team the No. 1 pick in the draft) in which Mayo routinely seemed to be in over his head in everything from game planning to his remarks to the media. While Mayo was given one of the worst rosters in the NFL, one overseen by executive vice president of player personnel Eliot Wolf, the early indications are that Wolf will remain with the Patriots, according to a team source.

Patriots owner Robert Kraft called the decision to fire Mayo “one of the hardest decisions I have ever made.”

“Unfortunately, the trajectory of our team’s performances throughout the season did not ascend as I had hoped,” he said in a statement.

Statement from Patriots Chairman and CEO Robert Kraft: https://t.co/2YgHtzzBHK pic.twitter.com/GMXGgd768x
— New England Patriots (@Patriots) January 5, 2025
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It’s a shocking fall from 12 months ago when it was revealed that Mayo, then 37, was Kraft’s hand-picked replacement for Belichick after 24 years at the helm. Kraft had quietly put the succession plan in writing, meaning the Patriots didn’t have to interview a single candidate before handing Mayo the reins.

This time, that won’t be the case. The Patriots are expected to begin their search for a new head coach immediately, and, according to league sources, the early signs point to one person. Kraft and company are expected to pursue Mike Vrabel, the 49-year-old former Patriots linebacker who shined for Belichick from 2001 to 2008 during the team’s first dynasty, though the franchise must conduct additional interviews for the job in compliance with the league’s Rooney Rule.

Vrabel was the head coach of the Tennessee Titans for six years, leading them to two division titles and an AFC Championship Game appearance while amassing a 54-45 record. But last year, the trust in Vrabel began to erode when team brass watched Vrabel spend his bye weekend in Foxboro being inducted into the Patriots Hall of Fame while soaking up all things New England. During his on-field speech at halftime, Vrabel, still the Titans head coach, even said, “We’ve got a game to win,” in reference to the Patriots. Less than three months later, Vrabel was fired and didn’t land another head-coaching job.

“There’s got to be clear communication with ownership so that we understand as coaches what the expectations are,” Vrabel told The Athletic’s Zack Rosenblatt about what he’s looking for in his next job. “And I would like to be able to say that there’s a quarterback that you feel like you can win with — or that there’s a path to find the one that you can win with.”

For Vrabel, the Patriots likely check both of those boxes. Sources close to the situation believe Vrabel has shown interest in the Patriots’ potential vacancy in recent weeks. He also was interested in the Patriots gig a year ago after their split with Belichick before learning that Mayo had already been earmarked for the job.

At that point, the Patriots thought Mayo would be their coach for the next decade. Kraft and his fellow decision-makers saw Mayo as the right person to follow Belichick because he was a bridge to the franchise’s past success while offering a new path forward.

In the news conference announcing Mayo’s hiring last January, Kraft said he knew in 2019 that Mayo would be the next coach of the Patriots.

“I trust that Jerod is the right person to lead the Patriots back to championship-level contention and long-term success,” Kraft said at the time.

Instead, Mayo oversaw one of the Patriots’ worst seasons since Kraft purchased the team in 1994.

Mayo’s tenure started on a winning note with a surprise upset of the Cincinnati Bengals. Following four straight losses, Mayo turned to Drake Maye, the No. 3 pick in the 2024 NFL Draft, as his starting quarterback, and benched veteran Jacoby Brissett. In the middle weeks of the season, the Patriots pulled out a last-second win over their archrival, the New York Jets, and a victory over the Chicago Bears. Things were looking up.

Kraft and the Patriots knew this season wouldn’t bring a lot of wins. It was the first year of a post-Belichick rebuild. The roster was bad. But they hoped Mayo would establish a culture that led to excitement and improvement by the end of the season.

Instead, the Patriots became a punching bag. After a Week 14 bye, they were blown out by the Arizona Cardinals, blew a 14-point lead to the Buffalo Bills and lost 40-7 at home to the Los Angeles Chargers. A loss on Sunday to the Bills would have clinched the No. 1 pick in the 2025 draft, but rookie backup quarterback Joe Milton led the Pats to a surprising 23-16 win.

GO DEEPER

Jerod Mayo firing was as much about his command off the field as the Patriots’ play on it

In fairness to Mayo, many of the Patriots’ problems preceded him. The franchise is 10-31 in its last 41 games. The Pats haven’t scored 30 or more points in 45 straight games. They are 11-22 at home in the last four seasons. (Tom Brady lost fewer games at Gillette Stadium in his entire Patriots career, going 115-19 at home.) They’ve finished with a sub-.300 winning percentage in back-to-back years, something they hadn’t done since they were the AFL’s Boston Patriots in 1969 and 1970.

But there was no sense by the end of the season that Mayo had the team on track to fix its problems. No position on the roster besides quarterback improved under his tutelage. And while that is a notable exception, Maye’s success as a rookie also ups the importance of ensuring Year 2 is in the right hands.

“We have tremendous fans who expect and deserve a better product than we have delivered in recent years,” Kraft said Sunday. “I apologize for that. I have given much thought and consideration as to what actions I can take to expedite our return to championship contention and determined this move was the best option at this time.”

Mayo becomes the sixth one-and-done NFL coach in the last four seasons and the first one-and-done Patriots coach since Rod Rust went 1-15 with the team in 1990.

All of it proved to be too much too soon for Mayo. The original plan, as dreamt up by Kraft, would’ve been for Belichick to remain the Patriots head coach in 2024, break Don Shula’s all-time wins record and mentor Mayo. But after the succession plan was put into writing, the relationship between Belichick and Mayo deteriorated and Belichick, who was already insular in his approach, withdrew even further. The idea of having Belichick mentor Mayo quickly went by the wayside.

At that point, Kraft decided to split with Belichick and hand the reins to Mayo — even though it was a year earlier than planned and he hadn’t received the mentorship he originally planned on. Sure, Mayo would struggle early on. But the hope was he’d learn on the job and grow throughout the course of the year.

That didn’t happen. In a lot of ways, Mayo tried to be what Belichick wasn’t. As a former player, he tried to be a player-friendly coach, then blasted the whole team as “soft” after a Week 7 loss. He tried to be more affable than his mentor while speaking to the media, then had to walk back several remarks. He said the team would “burn some cash” in free agency, then reversed course a couple of days later and the Patriots didn’t sign any marquee free agents.

After a Week 15 loss, he was asked if offensive coordinator Alex Van Pelt should’ve called a quarterback sneak on an important short-yardage play and replied, “You said it, I didn’t.” The next day, he walked back those comments as “a defensive response.” Before a Week 17 loss, he told the radio and TV broadcast crews that Rhamondre Stevenson wouldn’t start the game to send him a message about his recent fumbles. Then Stevenson started the game.

GO DEEPER

Mike Vrabel, Brian Flores and the top candidates to be the Patriots’ next head coach

More importantly, the on-field product regressed in embarrassing fashion. As a former linebacker who learned under Belichick, defense was supposed to be Mayo’s area of expertise. But a Patriots defense that ranked seventh in yards allowed per game (301.6) in 2023 dropped to 23rd (348.7 yards per game) in 2024. The team’s rushing defense, which ranked fourth in 2023, fell to 25th in 2024. The pass rush struggled to get pressure as the unit ranked last in the league with 28 sacks. The defense also surrendered 30 points or more six times this season.

Offensively, the Patriots didn’t score more than 25 points in a game all season long. While Maye’s ascension was a bright spot, the team lacked playmakers in the passing game and the offensive line allowed the fifth-most sacks in the league. Only the Bears and Carolina Panthers averaged fewer yards per game this season, and only the Cleveland Browns and New York Giants scored fewer points.

Part of the problem was Mayo’s inexperience and lack of familiarity with the rest of the NFL. He was drafted 10th by the Patriots in 2008. The University of Tennessee product spent eight seasons with the Patriots, reaching two Pro Bowls, winning Associated Press Defensive Rookie of the Year honors in 2008 and being named a first-team All-Pro in 2010. He played the entirety of his career for Belichick. He spent five years as a position coach with the Patriots and only ever worked for one coach: Belichick. So when it came time to fill out his staff, Mayo didn’t have the Rolodex of league-wide contacts most head coaches do.

He interviewed more than a dozen offensive coordinator candidates because several declined his offer. In the end, Mayo began his tenure surrounded by a first-time front office leader (Wolf), a first-time offensive play caller (Van Pelt), a first-time defensive coordinator (DeMarcus Covington), a first-time special teams coordinator (Jeremy Springer), a first-time linebackers coach (Dont’a Hightower), a first-time offensive line coach (Scott Peters) and a first-time wide receivers coach (Tyler Hughes).

The inexperience showed.

Sources from within the Patriots’ previous regime expressed skepticism that Mayo was ready to be a head coach. Several leaders thought he needed more experience with game planning, play calling and handling big situational decisions. How’d this season play out? “About how we thought,” one said.

Whether it’s Vrabel or someone else, the incoming coach will inherit a rising talent in Maye at quarterback, Stevenson at running back, cornerback Christian Gonzalez and a stout defensive line led by Keion White and Christian Barmore. New England will pick fourth in the 2025 draft. The team will also have a plethora of cap space to address multiple needs on the roster — most notably wide receiver, offensive line, defensive back and pass rusher.

— The Athletic‘s Jeff Howe contributed to this report.

Required reading

• Is coach Jerod Mayo’s job in question after another frustrating Patriots loss?
• How does Drake Maye compare to Mac Jones? They’re closer than you might think
• Patriots’ offseason priorities: A look at the team’s shopping list in free agency

(Photo: Richard Heathcote / Getty Images)

Culture

Book Review: ‘The Granddaughter,’ by Bernhard Schlink

Published

11 hours ago

January 5, 2025

Press Room

Book Review: ‘The Granddaughter,’ by Bernhard Schlink

THE GRANDDAUGHTER, by Bernhard Schlink. Translated by Charlotte Collins.

When it comes to women revealing what they really think about their families after they die, it’s hard to top Faulkner’s Addie Bundren, reflecting from beyond the grave on the grudges and loathing she lived with as the unwilling matriarch of a dysfunctional Mississippi brood. A century later in Germany, the dead woman at the center of Bernhard Schlink’s new novel, “The Granddaughter,” gives Addie a run for her money.

Birgit grows up in East Germany after the war and dies in her 70s in unified Berlin. Her husband, a bookseller named Kaspar, finds her body drowned in the bathtub of their well-appointed apartment and can’t tell if her overdose was accidental or intentional. Bereft, he receives a postmortem query from a publisher about the manuscript Birgit was writing, which she never showed him. He finds and reads what seems to be an autobiography of Birgit’s thoroughly embittered life, much of which she kept secret from him: from her young love affair with an older Communist Party officer that left her pregnant and alone, to her passionless marriage to Kaspar in Berlin, where she endured years of triumphalist condescension from West Germans. She writes regretfully and searingly about her hopes to someday meet the daughter she abandoned at birth. All that Kaspar knows for certain is that Birgit turned to alcohol and pills to numb her many pains. “I am not a monster,” Birgit reflects, defensively, regarding the freedom she felt in the moments after letting her newborn go.

Instead of disagreeing, Kaspar finds a new purpose in his dead wife’s failures and frustrations: He decides to find Birgit’s daughter. This premise will feel familiar to readers of Schlink’s previous novels — including his best-selling “The Reader” (1995), which was adapted into an Oscar-winning film — many of which use individual relationships as proxies for examining the ongoing legacies of World War II and the Cold War in his native country. Schlink is not as elusive or cerebral a writer about modern Germany as W.G. Sebald, nor as intense or unflinching a storyteller as Jenny Erpenbeck; but he writes instructive tales that adeptly raise difficult questions and propose appealing answers.

In “The Granddaughter,” translated into clear and accessible English by Charlotte Collins, these answers are found along Kaspar’s journey into the former East Germany, where he eventually tracks down Birgit’s daughter, Svenja, who was raised by her birth father and his wife and never knew about Birgit. In and out of reform school as a teenager, Svenja now leads a quiet rural life with her neo-Nazi husband and 14-year-old daughter, surrounded by fellow proponents of a purist Germany who reject national guilt over the “Holocaust lie” and commit themselves to defending “the glory of the Fatherland” from foreign influence. Meeting them, Kaspar exhibits a measured, even respectful curiosity about their enthusiasm for ideas and attitudes that produced the most destructive period of modern world history. His fair-mindedness throughout the novel is so exemplary it becomes wearisome.

What follows is a rather schematic plot turn in which Kaspar persuades Svenja and her husband to let their daughter, Sigrun — whose “heroes” include Irma Grese, an infamously brutal young guard in the women’s sections of Auschwitz and Bergen-Belsen — visit him in Berlin every few months, in exchange for payments from Birgit’s estate. This they decide after Kaspar has met the couple only twice — a couple who are protective and generally distrusting and knew nothing about Birgit, let alone Kaspar, a week earlier. But the all-too-convenient arrangement allows Schlink do what he really wants to with this novel: stage an intergenerational encounter in contemporary Germany between a responsibly contrite, open-minded, aging postwar German and a rebellious, confidently nationalist post-unification teenager.

And so Sigrun spends more than a year traveling between her home and Kaspar’s, where she has her own bedroom and piano lessons, where the two cook and travel and go to the philharmonic and museums together, and where Kaspar patiently tries to convince her of the authenticity of Anne Frank’s diary. Unsurprisingly, this “Pygmalion”-style denazification project involves giving her books to inform and challenge her worldview, which inevitably leads to conflicts back home.

After disappearing from his life without warning, Sigrun shows up again on Kaspar’s doorstep two years later, needing him to hide her from the police. At 18 she has inherited her mother’s stubbornness, which ironically makes her rebel against Svenja’s “Völkisch” politics and Third Reich nostalgia. She’s eager to fight in the streets for her own vision for Germany — especially against her leftist peers — which Schlink shrewdly conveys as a kind of reactionary idealism to what she perceives as the political mushiness of her parents’ generation.

However disappointed and worried he becomes about Sigrun’s situation, Kaspar remains unconditionally supportive, losing his temper only once, on the perfectly calculated occasion of delivering an impassioned speech in defense of moderation — to a Sigrun who proves, also conveniently, more and more open to her step-grandfather’s perspective.

And so this novel, finally too pleasing and affirming for readers who are rightly worried about political violence and radicalized youth, ends with a dignified old man envisioning a stable, cosmopolitan future for a wayward young girl. Some will read Schlink’s latest as an inspiring fable of intergenerational unity and redemption. Others might find it more like fantasy fiction.

Culture

Jason Kelce’s new late-night show needs more Kelce, less comedy: Takeaways

Published

19 hours ago

January 5, 2025

Press Room

Jason Kelce’s new late-night show needs more Kelce, less comedy: Takeaways

For all the talk of Tom Brady’s TV debut in 2024, few pro athletes have made the transition off the field and into the pop-culture landscape more effectively than Jason Kelce, whose unique professional and personal alchemy includes: notable on-field success, including All-Pro honors, a Super Bowl title in Philadelphia and a role as a lead performer of the Eagles’ “Tush Push”; off-field media stardom as a co-host, with brother Travis, of the wildly popular “New Heights” podcast; and commercial ubiquity (Buffalo Wild Wings and Campbell’s Chunky Soup, among others).

That led to a multiyear deal with ESPN, including participating on “Monday Night Countdown” and, as of 1 a.m. ET on Saturday morning, a new role as late-night talk show host — arguably one of the the most challenging jobs in TV.

Taped in front of a live audience at Philadelphia’s Union Transfer, “They Call It Late Night With Jason Kelce” was the first of a four-week “pop-up” experiment in sports TV leading up to the Super Bowl, and the results were a not-unexpected mix of raucous, ragged and relatable.

Here are key takeaways from the show’s debut:

Kelce’s bearded, beer-swilling “everyman” vibe is at the heart of his charm

And the show leaned right into that. Kelce wore a letterman’s jacket and T-shirt, with jeans and work boots.

He set a tone quickly, asking his audience: “How did we get here?” Actually, his very first words were “Holy s—.” The late-night license to curse was used liberally but not particularly gratuitously (the s-word went unbleeped, the f-word was bleeped).

From the show’s name, logo and intro to its retro-fun set to a few of its bits, there was a running homage to the best of NFL Films. “They Call It Pro Football” was one of NFL Films’ earliest projects, and the appreciation Kelce has for NFL history popped, from a warm studio cameo and toast with Hall of Fame Eagles receiver Harold Carmichael to Kelce’s awe for framed photos of the NFL’s most famous “mangled hands” hanging in the studio.

First pics of Jason Kelce’s new show ‘They Call It Late Night’
📸: @ESPNPR pic.twitter.com/PPKD0lZ2qN
— Kelce Brothers (@kelcebrothers) January 4, 2025

Kelce’s opening monologue gets graded on a curve

That’s because the late-night host monologue in front of an audience is among the most challenging work in all of TV — let alone by someone with limited hosting experience. The audience was friendly and forgiving of the occasional faltering riff, if not laughing their heads off. The bits involving actors — like a segment where Kelce met himself as a 14-year-old and as an older person — were more cringe than comedy.

The second segment shined

The show was at its best in the second segment, when Kelce brought out a roundtable of guests: the rapper and actor Dave “Lil Dicky” Burd, the NFL TV analyst Brian Baldinger and — in an impressive flex by Kelce and ESPN — Charles Barkley.

Their roundtable conversation felt like listening to a podcast in all the right ways — casual and conversational. From his experience co-hosting “New Heights,” Kelce seemed so much more comfortable as a moderator than solo star.

They covered some good “newsy” topics — the Eagles sitting Saquon Barkley before he could try to set the NFL single-season rushing record (Charles Barkley: “I’m glad he’s not playing.”), players’ mindset heading into Week 18 and Detroit Lions coach Dan Campbell. Giving four professional talkers a classic sports-talk framework was a great idea.

The show could use a tighter run time

As the show got deeper into its hour-long run-time, the conceits and viewer experience got demonstrably more strained: A segment where the four panelists were tasked with doing their best impressions of legendary NFL Films voice (and Philly native) John Facenda was derailed by the panelists being totally unprepared to read their cue cards and the content of the cards being clunky and corny. (Burd: “I don’t know what I just read.”)

A final segment featuring four super-fans in a beer-chugging contest felt tacked on and featured the fastest chugger being disqualified for not ending by flipping his mug onto his head as instructed. (Watching it was even more raggedy than describing it.)

The show could — and would — benefit from a tighter run-time (30 minutes makes sense), which would allow it to really zero in on Kelce as an expert moderator of an interesting panel of guests.

The show needs more Kylie

One area where the show should not skimp going forward: Air-time for Kelce’s wife, Kylie, who sits at a table in the wings (“Kylie’s Korner”) and acts as lead voiceover, lamentably used only sparingly in the debut.

Kylie — who recently displaced Joe Rogan as the most popular podcast host on Spotify — is way too talented (and way too big of a star in her own right) to have such a minimal, marginal role. The show would benefit from way more Kylie, and it could easily replace the final two blocks with the couple bantering about topics together — or adding Kylie to the roundtable.

Kylie Kelce is an announcer for “They Call it Late Night with Jason Kelce” ❤️ @latenightwithjk | @JasonKelce pic.twitter.com/QnibuiP3eL
— espnW (@espnW) January 4, 2025

I have a lot of empathy and appreciation for a production team trying something new, and debut episodes are the moment all your fun ideas in the writers’ room meet reality.

In this case, they don’t need the canned bits and actors — they have Kelce, in all his authenticity and talent for holding a conversation; they have Kylie; they have ESPN’s convening power to get big names like Barkley; they have a friendly Philly crowd and a welcoming studio set-up — and they should double down on letting Kelce do what he is best at.