Long ago, when a girlfriend fired me without notice, I started each day by writing “She doesn’t love” me 50 times because until I burned the fact into my head, I didn’t believe it. I feel that way about Frank Delaney’s death. I can grasp, with difficulty, that he had a stroke and died. What I can’t grasp is that his mind died as well, because Frank’s mind was about the greatest piece of living architecture I’ve ever encountered.

He got the Great Man obit in the Times — deservedly. As a broadcaster for the BBC, he interviewed 3,500 writers over three decades so knowledgeably and crisply that he was described as “the most eloquent man in the world.” As a writer, he published 16 novels and 6 non-fiction books. And as a champion of Joyce, he was devoted — each week, he did a podcast that dissected a line or two of “Ulysses.” That was, he estimated, a 30-year project. Readers were happy to take the ride: The 300 episodes of “Re:Joyce” have been downloaded more than 2 million times.

Re:Joyce is a good demonstration of Frank Delaney as a reader’s reader — a popularizer. Here’s a bit from Episode 1, in which he tackles the famous opening sentence (“Stately, plump Buck Mulligan came from the stairhead, bearing a bowl of lather on which a mirror and a razor lay crossed”):

“Stately” means dignified, especially in ceremonial. In important processions, people adopt a stately way of walking, but here, the word ‘stately’ is followed by the three words, “plump Buck Mulligan.” Nothing stately about the word “plump,” is there? In fact, it’s a term you poke fun with.
So here’s a man with a stately walk and he’s called “Buck,” which indicates some capacity to roister, and he’s plump. So what’s going on? If you ever want to understand multitasking in prose, James Joyce is your man.
Every sentence in “Ulysses” has more than one meaning, and sometimes many meanings. Here, he’s poking fun at this character Buck Mulligan, who is something of a fun-poker himself, which is why his walk is stately. So the man doing the mocking is also being mocked.

But what made Frank Delaney a treasure was the force and vitality of his personality. Here he briefly profiles James Joyce — in rap:

And he compares beating writer’s block to an affair that strengthens a marriage:

Imagine this personality at dinner. For a great talker, he was a great listener. Once I went on a bit in praise of John le Carré. Frank heard me out and then told some personal stories about the legendary writer which, if repeated, would get me sued in England. He didn’t present this information as a corrective or a rebuke; he just thought I might like to know.

To wear erudition lightly, to not intimidate, to reject intellectual snobbery — in my world, these are rare gifts. Liberating gifts, at that. When I was writing my play, I didn’t hesitate to send Frank the first act, and he didn’t hesitate to point out its flaws and urge me to keep going — he took me seriously as a playwright, which was just what I wanted and needed. And he was immensely funny. When a writer who downplayed her stunning good looks served up precious sentiments about Art on the Web, Frank and I traded retro male comments with a glee that often inspired Diane Meier, his adoring wife and partner, to step in with a schoolmarmish “Boys…. boys…”

It was glorious to be his friend.

When I met Erick Yi, he was an investment adviser at Merrill Lynch in Los Angeles. (I can personally attest: honest, creative, successful). And then he was gone — to launch a hot sauce. I thought he was having a pre-midlife crisis. In fact, he was having a genius insight: He invented Nam Prik, an Asian chili sauce that was both spicy and sweet. Erick launched Nam Prik at farmer’s markets in LA, and was soon as popular as Adele. Again, deservedly: Nam Prik (pronounced: nam-preek, literally “fluid chili”) isn’t like all the other smartly-labeled sauces you see on grocery shelves. It delivers fire and flavor, adding personality to eggs, Mexican food, Asian dishes, meat and chicken entrees. Now Erick’s in the big leagues —you can buy Nam Prik on Amazon as well as on his web site. And in the full-service spirit of the banker he used to be, Erick offers some recipes. Try the crispy Nam Prik chicken wings — you’ll forget all about Buffalo.

At 36, Dr. Paul Kalanithi was finishing his residency as a neurosurgeon. At 37, he died of cancer. In the final year of his life, he wrote a book, “When Air Becomes Breath.” It’s dazzling and important, less about death than you’d expect and more about love — love of his work, his wife, their child, of life. As Janet Maslin wrote in the Times: “Finishing this book and then forgetting about it is simply not an option.” Read Paul Kalanithi on his last day as a surgeon. Read Lucy Kalanithi’s op-ed about a marriage that didn’t end when her husband died. And then… [To buy the paperback from Amazon, click here. For the Kindle edition, click here. For the Audible audio book, click here.]

Sheku Kanneh-Mason, 17, is the BBC Young Musician of 2016. He has a record contract. And he made Leonard Cohen’s “Hallelujah” new.

As an executive of the Huntsman Cancer Foundation, my friend (and illustrator of A Christmas Carol) Paige Peterson often travels to the Mideast. And as a board member of the National Council on U.S.-Arab Relations, she recenty went to Oman. Her article and her photos describe lovely architecture, great landscape, friendly people, a smart leader. And her final paragraph — “The United Nations economic and social council, during an annual review published in November, 2016, announced that that the Sultan of Oman was the best leader in the world. It’s not a sentence that you expect to read in a piece about the Arabian Peninsula, but Oman is one happy place”— will make you think this is a Destination. [To buy the paperback of “The Rough Guide to Oman,” click here. For the Kindle edition, click here.]

In the new movie “The Founder,” Ray Kroc (Michael Keaton) comes off as first cousin to a certain hard-charging, win-at-all-costs businessman who’s found a second career.

There’s much more to the Kroc story than that, and Lisa Napoli unearths it in “Ray & Joan: The Man Who Made the McDonald’s Fortune and the Woman Who Gave It All Away.” It turns out that when Ray met Joan, they were both married. That he was an alcoholic, prejudiced against pretty much everybody, and on the far side of the “obsessed” spectrum. And then he died, and something great happened — his wife started giving money away, often anonymously, to causes that Ray despised. The Salvation Army. NPR. Hospices. AIDS research. Alcoholism treatment. No wonder McDonalds expressed “absolutely zero willingness” in helping Napoli with his book — it’s got considerably more protein than a Big Mac. I gobbled the pages. [To buy the book from Amazon, click here. For the Kindle edition, click here.]

I haven’t seen most of my college friends in 47 years. When I think of them, I see them as they were — as we were — in 1968. Elise Rosenhaupt and her boyfriend Tom: off they go, bright and shining, headed for New Mexico. So when Elise sent me her book, “Climbing Back: A Family’s Journey through Brain Injury,” the title was like a blow to my brain. It begins like this: “The last time I saw our son before his injury, my husband and I were walking toward Harvard Square.” And you sink with her: getting the news that Martin, a Harvard sophomore, had been struck by a car that launched him 100 feet in the air. He’d landed on his head. He was in Neurological Intensive Care at Massachusetts General Hospital.

There are many books that chronicle disaster and recovery. This one’s not like them. There are doctors and nurses, of course, and friends in the waiting room, and Harvard faculty showing up unexpectedly, but Elise Rosenhaupt has worked as a poetry editor, and she knows when to weave in the story of her marriage, her family, her parents and their brain disorders. The prose is taut: “There is nothing in my world but wanting Martin to live.” And you think, this is how recovery is done when it’s done right, when you marvel at the frailty of our bodies and the resilience of our spirits. [To buy the paperback from Amazon, click here. For the Kindle edition, click here. For the audio book, click here.]

When two friends whose opinions you respect praise a movie, book or service, it’s actionable. That’s how I found myself in Joan Pancoe’s apartment for a Soul Reading. Joan has been a karmic astrologer, psychic therapist and spiritual teacher since 1976, and has written several books. (The most recent is “Cosmic Sugar, The Amorous Adventures of a Modern Mystic,” published with a pen name for good reason; it’s explicit in the extreme. I mean, it made me blush. To buy the Kindle edition, click here.) Joan’s seen everyone from believers in past lives to skeptics. I’m somewhere in the middle. So I only felt moderately silly showing up at her Lower East Side lair with my list of Big Questions and Important Names. Then Joan went into trance and rolled out the kind of Spiritual Truths that are generally applicable… and Specific Insights that make you wonder if she’d hacked your email. Was I glad I saw her? Yes. Will you? I’m no seer. More information here.

Sherry Amatenstein is a New York City-based licensed clinical social worker. She’s written 3 three books on relationships. Now she’s edited “How Does That Make You Feel? True Confessions from Both Sides of the Therapy Couch,” with essays by 13 therapists and 21 patients. “I wanted to humanize shrinks to the shrunks,” she says. “I wanted patients to see that therapists are neurotic as hell, too.”

Her contributors — they include a noted screenwriter and a writer for “Seinfeld” — are just as honest. “Has my drive been solely about proving to my narcissistic [Jewish] mother that I am indeed worth her sagging labia?” one writes. A woman whose parents sent her to a pedophile therapist, writes about her mother: “She never met a boundary she couldn’t or wouldn’t cross.”

Most of these essays are more heartfelt than shocking; they not only provide a valuable window into therapy, they give us an appreciation for the process. This includes Amatenstein’s reason for becoming a therapist: “My father was at Auschwitz and had to watch his parents and little sister walk away, knowing they were going to the ovens. My mother was sent to a work camp. I never knew my grandparents.” So she grew up hearing other people’s pain and wanted to ease their suffering. This book helps. [To buy the paperback from Amazon, click here. For the Kindle edition, click here.]

I’ve scoured New York in search of exotic and esoteric food suppliers for 60 years, but a woman from France who’s lived here only a decade makes me feel like a first-time tourist. Nathalie Sann and photographer Susan Meisel set out to find 200 of the city’s best food stores, and in “Shop Cook Eat New York” they’ve done just that. Some were obvious: Katz’s Deli, Murray’s Cheese Shop, Magnolia Bakery, the shops on Arthur Avenue in the Bronx. But the majority of their favorites are real finds. Like Arcade Bakery (it’s hidden in the lobby of an office building), which makes the best ham-and-cheese sandwiches in town. And Harlem Shambles, my favorite butcher (the name is from Corinthians: “Whatever is sold in the shambles, eat, asking no question for conscience sake”). And Andrews Honey, which attracts bees on 50 rooftops, including the Waldorf-Astoria. And SOS Chefs, a favorite find of mine. The writing is brisk and stylish (“Lobel’s is the Fabergé of meat”), the photos are crisp, and Sann enriches the book with 27 field-tested recipes. A great resource for New Yorkers, an obvious gift for visiting foodies. [To buy the book from Amazon, click here.]

The Head and the Heart: “Lost in My Mind”

At the height of the real estate bubble, the average American house was 2,268 square feet. After the crash, it shrunk to 2,100. Now the median single family house is getting bigger. But what if you don’t need or want 4 bedrooms, 3 baths and a Great Room? Then you’ll be interested in “The New Small House,” by Katie Hutchison, a New England architect. She takes you inside 24 small houses, ranging in size from 500 square feet to 1640 square feet. She suggests 10 design strategies. She adds 5 delicious small retreats. And there are 75 photos and 30 illustrations. [To buy the book from Amazon, click here. For the Kindle dedition, click here.]

I haven’t proposed a Head Butler Field Trip in years, but an artist as remarkable and generally distant as Boubacar Traore doesn’t come to New York often. He’ll be peforming at the Metropolitan Museum of Art on Friday, December 2, at 7 PM. Tickets are $65, and include museum admission. For information and tickets, click here. If you’re going, let me know.

If you love Hawaii and all things Hawaiian — like the rainforest and the Grateful Dead — we are selling our 550 sq. ft. home on one verdant acre for $125,000. Multiple fruit trees, sugar cane, exotic tropical flowers, palms, fairy trail and art studio. Contact: Grace Iurilli at graceinhawaii@gmail.com.

When I was launching Head Butler Creative Services, I expected to get queries from writers — often first-time writers — with questions about their manuscripts. To my surprise, I’ve often heard from writers who ask, “The book’s done. Now what?” Some want me to introduce them to agents; that’s not what I do. More either have a publisher or are self-publishing and are freaking out at the starting gate — in a noisy, crowded field, how will they get noticed? Fauzia Burke knows. Over two decades, she’s done book PR for Alan Ada, Arianna Huffington, Tom Brokaw, Tana French — and a number of writers I’ve sent her way. Now she’s written a book: “Online Marketing for Busy Authors: A Step-by-Step Guide.” It’s a primer, but that’s what writers who are novices at Internet publicity need. In the spirit of the Internet, it’s interactive; in chapter after chapter, she quizzes you about your goals and the specifics of your book. And then she suggests that you use blogs and social media — the very stuff you may think doesn’t matter — to build your brand and sell your book. Baby steps? If you haven’t taken them, start here. [To buy the book from Amazon, click here. For the Kindle edition, click here.]

When I launched Head Butler/Jesse Kornbluth Creative Services, I didn’t expect to be editing a manuscript by a Times best-selling writer — but that happened. Even more unlikely: I didn’t expect to be editing a collection of short stories by a writer who could be praised in the Times. The disclosure is that Robin Meloy Goldsby sent me ‘Manhattan Road Trip’ and paid me to suggest edits. The more important disclosure is that I made no more than a dozen marks on her manuscript.

Robin Goldsby is an American musician –– a Grammy-nominated lyricist, composer, author of four books and a children’s musical, with half a dozen CDs to her credit ––- who lives in Germany. Her stories are about musicians, some famous, some not, all burdened by the issues that artists (and many of us) face: the hunger for recognition, the challenge of excellence, the unfairness of time and age, the money thing.

What’s terrific about “Manhattan Road Trip” is her empathy for every character. In “Rouge Noir,” my favorite story, we follow Samantha Lockney, a world-class concert pianist. She was once the “It” girl of classical music; now she’s aging and her looks are fading. She has returned to her childhood home to perform the Rachmaninoff Piano Concerto No. 3 with the Pittsburgh Symphony Orchestra. Also in town: a pop celebrity so famous she’s known by one name (“Baby”). Here come envy and competitiveness. Samantha on Baby: “Saw pictures of Baby in Vanity Fair last month. She was wearing a latex mermaid costume. Even with flippers and fishtail, she’s a looker. I remember how that used to feel. Seas parted, doors opened, and men with coffee breath and thinning hair told me I wasn’t just extremely talented, I was lovely. I believed every word. Fans surrounded me like fruit flies on a ripe peach.”

Baby, the ass-shaking star of the second story, has interrupted her international tour to attend the Pittsburgh funeral of her elementary-school music teacher, Mrs. Melozzi, whose daughter has asked her to perform Mrs. M’s favorite Debussy prelude for the funeral service. She’s having a crisis of confidence: “Goddamn Debussy. Why did he have to write complicated music that sounds so simple? ‘La Fille aux Cheveux de Lin’ — ‘The Girl with the Flaxen Hair’ — won’t sound good unless it sounds effortless. Effortless takes years.” Will Baby conquer Debussy? I held my breath on the last page. Anyone would.

If you play music at any level or know someone who does or is even contemplating a career in music, or if you like smart, reality-based fiction, or whatever, “Manhattan Road Trip” is at least as worthy as name-a-bestseller. [To buy the book from Amazon, click here. For the Kindle edition, click here.]

25 years ago, I wrote a documentary about Donald Trump. He huffed and puffed, and the documentary was never shown. He’d kill it again if he could. But “Trump: What’s the Deal?” is now available on iTunes. The new trailer gives you the idea right off: “The old Trump. The new Trump. The same Trump.

How’s this for perfect timing: a children’s book about air, published on International Women’s Day by Maya Ajmera, President and CEO of Society for Science & the Public, and Dominique Browning, co-founder of Moms Clean Air Force, with a foreword by mega-mom Julianne Moore. “Every Breath We Take: A Book About Air” is written for 4-to-8 year- olds who are full of questions about everything. And this 32-page book, with terrific photographs of kids playing, investigating and just breathing, celebrates the importance of air (“You can hug yourself and feel the air moving in and out”), pounds home the need for clean air (“Dirty air can make us sick”) and offers an almost spiritual conclusion (“Clean air is like love. It’s invisible, but it makes life better.”) — it’s one more reason I wish my daughter could be small again. [To buy the book from Amazon, click here. For the Kindle edition, click here.]

In an attempt to separate my 14 year-old daughter from her phone and her ignorance of anything that happened before last week, I’m taking her to England for a week or so in August. This is a splendid opportunity for me to play the part of Clark Griswold, Idiot Dad. I can’t. I won’t. So, beyond the obvious, I welcome suggestions that could take Not Altogether Annoying Dad and The Small Person past the velvet rope in London. And other destinations. Bath? Stonehenge? A day of walking? As ever, suggestions to HeadButlerNYC@AOL.com. And thanks.

I saw “45 Years” this week — for the second time. I needed to watch the final few minutes again, I needed to see how Charlotte Rampling feels the full force of what has happened to her and realizes that she needs to do something about it. If you are young and new to love or only in the first few decades of a long-playing romance, this might not be the movie for you. (Go see “Spotlight,” “The Big Short,” “Brooklyn.” Avoid “Carol.”) But if you have achieved a certain age, if you have learned that intimacy is everything in a marriage and that there can be a very high cost to keeping your secrets secret, “45 Years” could be the movie of your year. Slow? Yes, like an Ingmar Bergman film is slow. But 95 minutes of Charlotte Rampling, looking every bit her age, fighting for understanding and balance? My God, I could watch that for days.