Frank Bruni

In June, 2011, New York native Frank Bruni, age 46, became the first gay op-ed columnist in the 160-year history of The New York Times. He takes on a wide variety of subjects in his writing.

Andrew M. Rosenthal, editor of the Opinion Pages said, “Frank’s column, a new anchor feature of the section, is a sharp, opinionated look at a big event of the last week, from a different or unexpected angle, or a small event that was really important but everyone seems to have missed, or something entirely different.”

Mr. Bruni has covered presidential campaigns for the paper and served as chief restaurant critic for five years. Frank joined The New York Times as a metropolitan reporter in August, 1995. For three and a half years he worked at the metropolitan desk and also wrote for the Sunday magazine, profiling a diverse group of characters. Mr. Bruni also wrote articles for the Sunday Arts and Leisure section and other feature sections of The Times.

 

 

Frank Bruni is the author of the NYT bestseller about George W. Bush called "Ambling into History" (2002) and co-author of "A Gospel of Shame: Children, Sexual Abuse and the Catholic Church" (1993). He has worked for the New York Post and the Detroit Free Press and has been a movie critic.

Erasmus

The Dutch humanist Erasmus (1466-1536) fell madly in love with a tall young monk named Servatius Roger. Erasmus wrote him scores of passionate, love-sick letters, to which Roger reacted by asking him to tone it down – way down, lest there be a scandal. Roger never gave in to the constant, overwrought advances. Here is a typical exchange:

Erasmus: Don’t be so reserved. I have become yours so completely that nothing of myself is left...I have wooed you both unhappily and relentlessly.

Roger: What is wrong with you?

This portrait of Erasmus by Hans Holbein the Younger (1523) hangs in London's National Gallery.

While later teaching in Paris, Erasmus instructed a 21-year-old English-born student, Thomas Grey, who later became Marquis of Dorset. Erasmus was abruptly dismissed as Grey’s teacher, for making unwanted advances towards him. It seems Erasmus had a thing for straight men.

Erasmus was born Gerrit Gerritszoon (Dutch for Gerard Gerardson) in Rotterdam as the illegitimate son of a physician's daughter and a man who later became a monk. On his parents' death his guardians insisted he enter a monastery, where he adopted the name Desiderius Erasmus. After taking priest's orders, Erasmus went to Paris, where he earned a living as a teacher. His life-long clashes with theologians and clergy took root while in France. Among his pupils was English Lord Mountjoy, who invited Erasmus to visit England in 1498. He lived chiefly at Oxford, and through the influence of John Colet, his contempt for theologians was heightened. He returned to Paris and later made a much longed for trip to Italy, but returned to England from time to time.

While residing at Cambridge Erasmus served as professor of Divinity and Greek. In 1519 the first edition of Colloquia appeared. Usually regarded as his masterpiece, Colloquia critiqued the abuses of the Church with audacity and incisiveness, preparing men's minds for the subsequent work of Martin Luther. In future works Erasmus promoted a more rational conception of Christian doctrine, emancipating men's minds from the frivolous and pedantic methods of contemporary theologians. Members of the clerical establishment became his sworn enemies, driving him to live out the rest of his days in Basel, Switzerland. Fortunately, during his last years Erasmus enjoyed great fame, fortune  and high regard.

Erasmus stands as the supreme example of cultivated common sense being applied to human affairs. He rescued theology from the pedantries of theologians, exposed the abuses of the Church, and did more than any other single person to advance the Revival of Learning.

A popular European student exchange program, established in 1987, is named after him. The Erasmus Programme is a major European Union higher education initiative; there are currently more than 4,000 higher education institutions participating in 33 countries, and more than 2.2 million students have already taken part.

Alex Ross

Author and music critic Alex Ross, who lives in NYC’s Chelsea neighborhood, has been married to actor/director Jonathan Lisecki since 2005. While a student at Harvard, Ross (born 1968) was a DJ for the underground rock department of the university’s radio station WHRB. From 1992-96 he was a classical music critic for the New York Times.

In 2007 he published a critically acclaimed book on 20th-century classical music, The Rest Is Noise: Listening to the Twentieth Century, the culmination of 10 years’ worth of research, and the following year he was named a 2008 MacArthur Foundation Fellow (popularly known as a “genius” grant). The MacArthur Foundation cited Mr. Ross for "offering both highly specialized and casual readers new ways of thinking about the music of the past and its place in our future."

Presently he is a classical music critic for The New Yorker magazine.

Photo below: Ross at home in Chelsea, NYC. 

He characterizes his writing as somewhere between “pure, objective ‘did the soprano sing slightly flat?’ kind of criticism, and something more like music appreciation or writing with a slightly educational aspect to it. The whole point,” he explained, is “not to be too in-your-face or condescending.”

Ross started writing freelance reviews for Fanfare, a classical music magazine, which paid him $2 for each review. He was subsequently published in The New Republic magazine and then hired by the New York Times. His first articles for The New Yorker were annual pieces about rock musicians, until the magazine hired him in 1996 as classical music critic. He writes scathingly against the elitism of classical music audiences and performances.

Check out his excellent blog on music:
www.therestisnoise.com