Column by David in The Times.

I’VE WRITTEN HERE BEFORE ABOUT erfolgstraurigkeit, or “success-sadness”, a word I made up to mean the flip side of schadenfreude. Where schadenfreude is joy at someone else’s failure, erfolgstraurigkeit would be despair at someone else’s success. One version of erfolgstraurigkeit is the tired old journalistic trope where a hack waxes lyrical about their subject’s beauty/riches/talent/lifestyle, before ending: “Don’t you just hate her/him?” I would never use that trope. But if I did, it would be about Russell Brand.

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Column by David in The Times.

THE NOVEL I’M WRITING AT THE moment was inspired, very loosely, by the death of Saul Bellow. Entitled, provisionally, The Death of Eli Gold, it first came about because I noticed that, when Bellow died, at the age of 89, all the eulogies about him signed off with the notice that present at his deathbed were his wife and daughter; what went unremarked were the ages of his wife — mid-40s — and his daughter — 6.

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Column by David in The Times.

J.K. ROWLING’S RECENT OUTING OF Hogwart’s headmaster, Albus Percival Wulfric Brian Dumbledore — it’s so obvious now, isn’t it? Percival: that’s clearly a gay name; Wulfric: that’s clearly a gay practice; Brian: Brian Dowling — has, unsurprisingly, created polarised reactions. On the one hand, the Christian Coalition of America has described Rowling’s announcement as “very disappointing” and “not a good example for our children”; on the other, Stonewall said that Dumbledore’s sexuality proves that “there’s no limit to what gay and lesbian people can do, even being a wizard headmaster”.

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