Now that my newest book, Mending: New and Selected Short Stories is reaching its readers, I find myself in a rather delightful quandary.
The Uses of Scandal
Next week, as I begin to unravel the many strands of Doris Duke’s life, I must work hard to clear away my prejudices.
Doris Duke’s Death
I’m sometimes surprised that the death of the woman whose vivid, exciting and controversial life I’m recreating in her first serious biography should seem more interesting to more people than her life.
The Self-Realization Fellowship and Doris Duke
If there is a chance, and I think there is one, that Doris was touched and perhaps even changed by her connection, whatever it may prove to have been, with the Self-Realization Fellowship, her miseries would have been if not reduced, placed in a realistic context, uniting her with her fellows.
Doris Duke: First White Woman Surfer In Hawaii
Nothing could prevent Doris from seizing that moment in the surf at Hawaii when she reared high in the air, arms thrown back and chin lifted, exulting in her power to do what she wanted.
Doris Duke, Pop Music, and Me
Doris, high-diving, surfing in Hawaii, battling the waves on a stormy day off Newport as she had ever since childhood, might have resisted pop music’s anthem of female submission.
Doris Duke: Getting Dirty
Getting dirty as a child allowed Doris Duke to develop into the daring woman she became. I wonder how many eight year old girls today would be allowed to wander on the beach in a dirty shift, with mud up to their knees?
Doris Duke In Love
Was Doris Duke in love with, or—more cogently—did she love any of these men, or the six or seven others who took up portions of her life? Hard to say.
Loving Dogs
Today I find myself in complete sympathy with Doris Duke’s passion, even with the uncomfortable assumption that dogs are sometimes better companions than complicated, changeable humans.
Glamour-Puss
I sometimes think that love never touched her, although she knew many lovers. Always she seemed to be asking as she did of one of them, “Are you doing what you’re doing to please ME?”