Month: February 2026

Were Fictional Characters in Epstein’s Orbit, Too?

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Jeffrey Epstein with Donald Trump. (Davidoff Studios Photography/Getty Images.)

After the welcome February 19 arrest of the former Prince Andrew over his tawdry and traitorous ties to the late Jeffrey Epstein, much can be said before I somehow turn this into a literature post:

— The monstrous Epstein was an abusive pedophile, sex trafficker of girls and young women, blackmailer, possible Russian and/or Israeli intelligence agent, etc.

— Major consequences for the elite (mainly rich white men) who were in Epstein’s orbit have mostly been meted out to those outside the United States.

— Nearly all the prominent Americans who were in that orbit have faced little more than some public scorn. A small number lost jobs or other positions, but none have faced Epstein-related criminal charges.

— Americans who were in Epstein’s orbit include President Trump (who has VERY suspiciously fought like hell to keep The Epstein Files secret); Trump cabinet members Howard Lutnick and Robert F. Kennedy Jr.; Trump strategist Steve Bannon; former President Bill Clinton; former Clinton cabinet member Lawrence Summers; tech billionaires Elon Musk, Peter Thiel, and Bill Gates; former Victoria’s Secret CEO Leslie Wexner; attorney Alan Dershowitz; filmmaker Woody Allen; intellectual Noam Chomsky; Giants football team co-owner Steve Tisch; and others.

All the debauchery and lack of accountability have not gone unnoticed by famous characters in literature, even if their thoughts on Epstein never quite made it into the novels they inhabit. For instance, fictional pedophile Humbert Humbert is perverted enough to hypothetically admire Epstein, even if Epstein was only two years old when Vladimir Nabokov’s Lolita got published in 1955. Perhaps HH was prescient in addition to deviant.

A Game of Thrones, the first novel in George R.R. Martin’s “A Song of Ice and Fire” series, includes 13-year-old Daenerys being forced to marry the adult warlord Drogo. Maybe she found some of her courage by anticipating the perseverance of Epstein survivors who continue to seek justice despite their attempts at that being blocked or ignored for decades — most recently by the Trump regime’s ghoulishly sycophantic attorney general Pam Bondi.

While thirsting for revenge against her sexual abuser, the resourceful Lisbeth Salander of Stieg Larsson’s The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo and its sequels might have theoretically considered also unleashing retribution on the depraved Epstein. At minimum, the computer-savvy Salander was capable of hacking into Epstein’s grotesque email conversations with various wealthy sickos.

While looking down from heaven in Alice Sebold’s The Lovely Bones, raped-then-murdered teen Susie Salmon could have also kept a disgusted eye on Epstein before he started looking up from hell after his 2019 death. (It has been said that Epstein committed suicide in prison, but many feel he was killed to prevent him from possibly spilling the beans on his fellow guilty elites.)

The female collaborators to the grossly misogynist men in Margaret Atwood’s The Handmaid’s Tale might wish they could contact Epstein collaborator Ghislaine Maxwell for extra collaboration advice, or even ask to join Maxwell in the cushy Texas jail the Trump regime transferred her to as a way to increase the chances of her not implicating former close Epstein pal Trump.

Finally, a reader could wonder if Jane Eyre, after becoming aware of Edward Rochester’s marital history, suspected Rochester of having Epstein ties despite the two men existing two centuries apart and one of them being fictional. Thankfully, British author Charlotte Bronte lived during Queen Victoria’s time rather than the former Prince Andrew’s time.

Comments on, or additions to, this rather fraught topic?

Misty the cat says: “Trying to outrun the big predicted snowstorm is a new Winter Olympics sport.”

My comedic 2024 book — the part-factual/part-fictional/not-a-children’s-work Misty the Cat…Unleashed — is described and can be purchased on Amazon in paperback or on Kindle. It’s feline-narrated! (And Amazon reviews are welcome. 🙂 )

This 90-second promo video for the book features a talking cat: 🙂

I’m also the author of a 2017 literary-trivia book…

…and a 2012 memoir that focuses on cartooning and more, including many encounters with celebrities.

In addition to this weekly blog, I write the 2003-started/award-winning “Montclairvoyant” topical-humor column every Thursday for Montclair Local. The latest piece — about a bad tax deal and a controversial upcoming school vote — is here.

Moving from Incompetent to Competent Characters

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Sue Grafton

Last week, I wrote about incompetent characters in literature. So, naturally I’ll write this week about…Valentine’s Day yesterday. Oops, just kidding; I’m going to discuss competent characters in literature.

That can mean smart people, handy people, socially adept people, etc. They might be skilled in many areas, or skilled in some ways and not in others.

Obviously, detectives are among the protagonists who come to mind, although many of them are more competent in their work than in their personal lives. For instance, Sherlock Holmes is a brilliant sleuth with loner and eccentric traits in Arthur Conan Doyle’s novels and stories. Val McDermid’s Karen Pirie is also highly intelligent and driven in her cold-case work while not being as successful in off-duty life. Sue Grafton’s self-deprecating Kinsey Millhone is a brainy, brave, dogged, and witty private investigator who had two failed marriages, eats too much junk food, etc.

I’m currently working my way through — and loving — the Millhone-starring “alphabet mysteries” (now reading M is for Malice).

Other memorably competent characters? Hermione Granger is as book-smart as they come, and also has plenty of common sense in J.K. Rowling’s Harry Potter series. Those books’ wizards — including Albus Dumbledore and Minerva McGonagall — are obviously quite capable, too, as is another wizard: Gandalf in J.R.R. Tolkien’s The Hobbit and The Lord of the Rings trilogy.

In Stieg Larsson’s trilogy that starts with The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo, abuse survivor Lisbeth Salander is a determined genius with computers.

Preteen-then-teen Francie Nolan is wise beyond her years — both academically and as a navigator of difficult family dynamics — in Betty Smith’s A Tree Grows in Brooklyn.

When one thinks of Charlotte Bronte’s Jane Eyre character, competent is one of the first adjectives that comes to mind. Whatever she does — whether being a governess, a teacher, or generally maneuvering through the difficulties of her oft-challenging life — she does well.

Also quite skilled — and with a strong sense of morality — is attorney Atticus Finch of Harper Lee’s To Kill a Mockingbird.

Another classic, Willa Cather’s My Antonia, features a title character (Antonia Shimerda) who’s a very competent farm spouse and parent.

In the sci-fi area, we have protagonists like Mark Watney, who has to be unusually clever and innovative to survive when stranded on Mars in Andy Weir’s The Martian. Twentieth-century Black woman Dana Franklin also has to be really skilled to deal with and survive involuntary time travel to and from the slave-holding American South in Octavia E. Butler’s Kindred.

Your thoughts about, and examples of, competent characters in fiction?

Misty the cat says: “This must be one of Norman Rockwell’s larger paintings.”

My comedic 2024 book — the part-factual/part-fictional/not-a-children’s-work Misty the Cat…Unleashed — is described and can be purchased on Amazon in paperback or on Kindle. It’s feline-narrated! (And Amazon reviews are welcome. 🙂 )

This 90-second promo video for the book features a talking cat: 🙂

I’m also the author of a 2017 literary-trivia book…

…and a 2012 memoir that focuses on cartooning and more, including many encounters with celebrities.

In addition to this weekly blog, I write the 2003-started/award-winning “Montclairvoyant” topical-humor column every Thursday for Montclair Local. The latest piece — about a congressional candidate’s welcome win and various weird maps — is here.

Incompetent R Them

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Don Quixote leads the way in this image and the blog post below.

I started sorting through my family’s 2025 tax paperwork yesterday, which reminded me that a tax-preparation company we used for the first time last year was rather incompetent. (Needless to say, we’ll be trying a different company this month.) I was also reminded of characters in novels who are incompetent or bumbling — with some of them sympathetic and some of them less so.

Before I continue with today’s theme, I wanted to mention that a far-from-inept podcaster/blogger — the mega-talented Rebecca Budd, who many of you know via WordPress — interviewed me about how reading books can be helpful and comforting in these very difficult times. Thank you, Rebecca, for the great questions and wonderful conversation! Which can be listened to here:

S8 E2: Dave Astor on Books Keep Us Centered

Anyway, the first inept character who came to mind was the clueless and deluded but kind of charming Don Quixote in Miguel de Cervantes’ early-1600s classic. Quixote IS quite skilled at attacking windmills he mistakes for enemies. 🙂

Not as sympathetic is the buffoonish Professor Gilderoy Lockhart in J.K. Rowling’s Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets. Also inept, at the start of the seven-book Potter series, is Hogwarts student Neville Longbottom, but his character arc eventually has him become more self-assured and even heroic.

An inept/adept mix can also be simultaneous — as with the bounty hunter Stephanie Plum who is both bumbling and skilled in Janet Evanovich’s series of novels.

Then there’s Ignatius J. Reilly, who could be categorized as a fool in John Kennedy Toole’s A Confederacy of Dunces. But he has some smarts, too, and is funny as hell.

The combination of ineptness and proficiency manifests itself in a different way in Daniel Keyes’ Flowers for Algernon, in which Charlie Gordon goes from being a low-IQ to high-IQ individual via an experimental surgical procedure.

A poignant character with almost no life skills is “The Poor Fool,” a child of Wang Lung and O-Lan in Pearl S. Buck’s The Good Earth. The girl, who isn’t named in the novel, has a mental handicap probably caused by being a baby the year her family was starving. Yes, some characters sadly have no control over how they turn out.

Back in 2019, I wrote a post about bad bosses in novels, and some of them were pretty incompetent — including Captain Queeg in Herman Wouk’s The Caine Mutiny.

Most of us know some incompetent people in real life, so that type is certainly familiar when encountered in literature. Even welcome in a way, because we’re relieved that these people are fictional rather than real. 🙂

Thoughts about, and examples of, today’s topic?

Misty the cat says: “That car either disappeared into the garage or into the space-time continuum.”

My comedic 2024 book — the part-factual/part-fictional/not-a-children’s-work Misty the Cat…Unleashed — is described and can be purchased on Amazon in paperback or on Kindle. It’s feline-narrated! (And Amazon reviews are welcome. 🙂 )

This 90-second promo video for the book features a talking cat: 🙂

I’m also the author of a literary-trivia book…

…and a memoir that focuses on cartooning and more, including many encounters with celebrities.

In addition to this weekly blog, I write the 2003-started/award-winning “Montclairvoyant” topical-humor column every Thursday for Montclair Local. The latest piece — about Black History Month and a closed fire station — is here.

When Winter Hinders Jogging, There’s Always Feline Blogging

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There must be a computer out here somewhere, says I, Misty the cat. (Photo by Laurel Cummins.)

Misty the cat here, back for my every-two-month guest post that I’ll continue writing as soon as I grab the hyphens from this sentence and sell them on eBay.

I’m still annoyed at my humans Dave, Laurel, and Maria for leaving me to take a January 5-12 trip to Guatemala, where teen peep Maria was born. I was alone for seven nights: One Hundred Years of Solitude, minus 99 years and 51 weeks. Fortunately, a nice sitter visited three times a day to feed me and administer my asthma inhaler — which I’ll have another dose of this afternoon after I click on the Merriam-Webster website to see what the word “administer” means.

Dave is not a Kindle user, so he visited the library January 2 to take out six paperbacks to bring to Central America along with a wallet full of quetzals — the Guatemala currency that rhymes with pretzels but is baked with less salt. Those small-sized paperbacks helped keep Dave’s luggage light enough to avoid the plane being overloaded to the point of having to make an emergency landing in Narnia, the magical world authors C.S. Lewis and Mary Higgins Clark visited during their famous early-19th-century Lewis and Clark Expedition.

The six novels for plane and non-plane travel reading included Pearl S. Buck’s classic The Good Earth — which Dave discussed last week — as well as Michael Crichton’s Jurassic Park and four of Sue Grafton’s 25 “alphabet mysteries” starring the very relatable private investigator Kinsey Millhone. None of that series of Grafton novels included C is for Cat, F is for Feline, K is for Kitty, or S is for Servemefoodnowornomoreunpaidguestblogging, but that’s (l is for) life.

Anyway, Dave thought Jurassic Park was good but not great. Fantastic premise in terms of the hubris to use prehistoric dinosaur DNA to bring those creatures back to life in the 20th century, and some very suspenseful moments, but the characters were mostly two-dimensional and the writing not much more than adequate. Plus, where was Barney the Purple Dinosaur? Maybe in the Jurassic Park movie.

Dave tells me the four Grafton novels (E is for Evidence, G is for Gumshoe, H is for Homicide, and I is for Innocent) were all absorbing, even though absorption wasn’t necessary due to it being the dry season in Guatemala. I’m also told that Dave read the first four “alphabet mysteries” years ago, and plans to get to the post-“I” ones before the aforementioned Lewis and Clark Expedition ends.

Soon after returning to New Jersey the night of January 12, Dave read Lee Child and Andrew Child’s latest Jack Reacher novel: Exit Strategy, which would have come in handy when he, Laurel, and Maria were trying to get out of the airport terminal in Newark, New Jersey. The book was okay. Dave is a big fan of the Reacher series, but things have gone downhill somewhat now that Lee Child doesn’t write the novels solo and now that 30 books have been published since 1997. There are only so many plots, as any cemetery director would tell you.

I, Misty the cat, have a favorite Reacher novel: 61 Hours, which is the amount of time I sleep every day.

Dave will reply to comments as I look out the window at dinosaurs. They’re big.

I, Misty the cat say: “Still too much snow outside to take a walk, but this bed seems to be shoveled.”

Dave’s comedic 2024 book — the part-factual/part-fictional/not-a-children’s-work Misty the Cat…Unleashed — is described and can be purchased on Amazon in paperback or on Kindle. It’s feline-narrated! (And Amazon reviews are welcome. 🙂 )

This 90-second promo video for the book features a talking cat: 🙂

Dave is also the author of a 2017 literary-trivia book…

…and a 2012 memoir that focuses on cartooning and more, including many encounters with celebrities.

In addition to this weekly blog, Dave writee the 2003-started/award-winning “Montclairvoyant” topical-humor column every Thursday for Montclair Local. The latest piece — about snow and more — is here.