The Lost Blog of Don Juan

Don Juan’s Tour of Europe #1: Where is the Passion in Paris?

I have been meaning to write for several days now but who can sit in a hotel room to go online while the cultural treasures of Paris beckon with red-painted fingernails. The city just exudes culture. Its iconic landscape looms so large in our imagination that I was worried that it might seem like a Disney miniature in reality. I was not disappointed; its monumental geography remains staggeringly impressive in reality.

An Anniversary & the Possibility of True Passionate Love

One week from today  my wife, Rachel, and I, had our 15^th wedding anniversary. According to the U.S. Census Bureau only 52% of couples make it to their 15^th year of marriage (just over half!). I feel like we are survivors in the Disillusionment Wars. As I have been going around the country promoting The Lost Diary, I have encountered a real skepticism about marriage and the possibility of happiness. One person asked me at a talk, have we forgotten how to love? As a society, we certainly have lost faith in the possibility of love and that our marriages will be much more than convenient arrangements to house our families and manage our finances. And yet I also heard an enormous hunger and yearning for lifelong love and for a passion that is more than just ephemeral.

Was Don Juan a Rapist?

No doubt the most famous portrayal of Don Juan is Mozart’s and Da Ponte’s opera, Don Giovanni.  It is a brilliant and gorgeous opera that I first saw in New York at Lincoln Center.  Kirkegaard, the famous philosopher tried to make the case that Don Giovanni was the most sublime piece of art ever created.  His reasoning is somewhat hard to follow (at least for me); I was never much of a philosopher. Nonetheless, the opera is definitely a work of great genius.  But one thing is for sure: the Don Juan portrayed is a villain to the end, as he was in Tirso’s portrayal.  Before the curtain practically rises, Don Juan has raped a woman and murdered her father.  Male desire can certainly be villainous, but it can be heroic and certainly multi-dimensional.  I was interested in exploring a much more complex Don Juan and understanding of passion in the Lost Diary.  Literary talk show host Michael Krasny asked if it was a “vindication of Don Juan.” I’m not sure I would call it a vindication, but I certainly would call it a redemption and transformation of Don Juan.  So it was particularly gratifying when I received an email from the acclaimed opera singer, Franco Pomponi, saying that he was preparing to sing the title role in Don Giovanni in France this summer.  I will include his email here in its entirety because I think it is a marvelous example of how the arts can influence each other—and also because he says some very nice things about The Lost Diary.

Gangsta Rap & Writing Sex Scenes

I just finished an interview with Bill Marx of TheArtsFuse.  His questions were very interesting, especially one about whether gangsta rappers—and their debasing sex and violence—were the new Don Juans of today.  The stereotype of Don Juan is as a user and abuser of women very much like the gangsta rappers.  In Mozart’s opera, Don Juan has raped a woman and killed her father practically before the curtain has risen.  What I said in reply is that sexuality has always been fused with power for men and that most pornography and the lyrics of most gangsta rap (that I’ve heard) is more about power (and the fear of weakness and disrespect) than it is about sex.  Many of the portrayals and fantasies around Don Juan (not to mention the men who fashion themselves as real life Don Juans) are about power fantasies.  What I was interested in portraying and exploring in the Lost Diary is real passion and ultimately real love.  The plays and movies of Don Juan have only allowed us to see the man from a distance; a diary lets us go into the body, mind, and heart of the man.  What we find is someone who really did see passion as an art and for whom sexuality was art.  As I have said in a number of interviews, it is a 16th century Don Juan that is worth recovering in the 21st century.

How Young is Too Young

I was recently in  Portland —what an amazing book city.  There were tons of bookstores, Powell’s of course being the most famous, but it seemed like stores were everywhere and the booksellers smart and engaged.  One bookseller bought a book while I was telling her about it for her grandson who is on his way to college.  I inscribed it for her right there.  What a perfect time to read The Lost Diary.  So many of us learn about passion groping in the dark in our culture.  How much better to have the world of passion and pleasure opened up by a master who understands the holiness of pleasure.  Another bookseller who worked in Young Adult was interested and said you’d be amazed what teens are reading these days.  Honestly, I wrote the book for adults, but it is not so explicit that it is not appropriate for teens, who no doubt are being exposed to a far more debasing sexuality through the Internet.  Newsflash: I just received an e-mail from one reader who said that her 12 year old son read it from cover to cover in two days only begrudgingly stopping for school.  Now that is a real complement.  My son is twelve as well, and while that might be a little young for most kids, having written other books about sexuality and love, I am a firm believer that kids will only be drawn to what they are ready to know.  (Unless of course, it’s flashed into their memories on the TV screen or Internet.)   We ask our children what they want to know about sexuality, and they are very clear when they are not interested. 

Don Juan Reveals His Secrets of Love and Passion on Morning TV

On Monday I did my first television show; a great program called AM Northwest (the Good Morning America for Portland).  The hosts, Helen and Dave were very nice and the interview was on what I’ve learned from Don Juan about love and relationship. 

They wanted me to add some practical examples for viewers (and readers).  I am definitely not too high and literary to talk about relationship, since the book was inspired by my own question of how I could stay happily and passionately married to my wife for the rest of my life.  This was the question that Don Juan came to answer and so I am happy to share his secrets.  While the book is not a self-help book and can be read simply as an adventure love story and historical thriller, I do hope that reading the book will transform people’s understanding of love and passion. 

Don Juan Appears in the United States

Today the book is publishing in the U.S.—the day has finally arrived—and I’m starting on a three week tour.  I can’t believe that after a few short years—like 29—the day has come.  I’ve been writing fiction and wanting to publish a novel for almost three decades, and it has happened.  I was quite nervous as I prepared to go on Michael Krasny’s show, Forum.  Michael Krasny is the Teri Gross of the Bay Area and has interviewed all of the great authors of our time.

Would Don Juan be sentenced to death?

Recently when I was in Sevilla showing journalists the world of Don Juan’s Golden Age Spain, we visited one of the most beautiful and dangerous rooms I have seen.  When I was researching the novel, I came across a scholar from the 1800s (the legend of Don Juan has been seducing us for 400 years) who said that Don Juan was an actual man who had lived in Seville, Spain and had been murdered to put an end to his scandalous affairs.  As I traveled to the birthplace of the legend—and possibly the man—I felt like a detective exhuming clues that increasingly revealed who Don Juan really might have been and what really may have happened to him.  My investigation led me to the Real Alcazar and eventually to the Salón de Embajadores (Hall of the Ambassadors), where the King received visitors.

Casanova vs. Don Juan

Who was the greatest lover?  Casanova or Don Juan?  Many people may wonder what was the difference between these two, whose names have become synonymous with seduction and passion?  The difference is simply between life and myth.  Casanova was an actual man whose life sprawled across the eighteenth century as he enjoyed life and women throughout Europe. He was not just a lover, but also a diplomat, a courtier, a writer, a prisoner, and much more.  His life is as interesting for his meetings with Catherine the Great and Rousseau, as much as for his seductions.  His massive multi-volume “History of My Life,” which I cannot claim to have done more than taste, recounts all of his adventures, but in the end it is still the chronicle of one man’s life.  A real life is always limited by the confines and mortality of any human life.  In the case of Don Juan, we do not know if he even existed?  Or whether he was born from the head of Tirso de Molina, the playwright monk, who gave us our first extent story about Don Juan Tenorio.  Even at the time the play was written, there were rumors that it was based on an actual man, and indeed it was an age of Don Juans, so Tirso had many real life galanteadores (seducers) to model his character on.  But Don Juan is not just a man or even just a fictional character.

Six hairs per page & the secret of psychology

Running off to an amusement park with my family this morning, I was told that my mug was on street corners throughout Santa Cruz—not wanted posters fortunately—but on the cover of our local weekly, The Good Times [link].  I knew this was in the works, even jumped a fence with the photographer into the old Santa Cruz mission to get the photo, but I was not quite prepared for the experience of seeing myself staring back at me.  "It’s the Doug Times,” my seven-year-old daughter, who already has a wry sense of humor, announced seeing her father staring back at her, brandishing a sword.

The article announced, “We’ve all heard of the Spanish lover—the man no woman could resist.  But how about Doug Abrams? Heard of him? Find him irresistible?  Maybe you will after reading his sizzling new novel about the great Don Juan.”  Oh, God!  What is this, a personal ad?  I don’t think I’ll ever get used to this "sell yourself" stuff—let alone the look at the camera stuff.