David Gordon

Start with a hack writer as narrator. Add a serial killer and you could have a recipe for another cliché-ridden piece of crime fiction. But in his first novel, "The Serialist," David Gordon walks the cliché tightrope and succeeds. The book is funny, with a satirical edge, and unlike some literary authors who play with genre, Gordon knows how to write a potboiler. The writer-protagonist here is Harry Bloch. His credits include 23 novels: vampire books, sci-fi knockoffs, hard-boiled inner-city yarns.

KABUL, Afghanistan - An American contractor was detained illegally for 24 hours in an Afghan prison, beaten, denied more than basic medical help and told he wouldn't be released unless his company paid $2.4 million, according to three U.S. congressmen and his employer. Contractor David Gordon was released Friday afternoon after the congressmen wrote a letter to U.S. Secretary of State John F. Kerry and after the company's attorney in Afghanistan appealed to U.S.-led coalition forces.

David M. Gordon, 51, leading leftist economist, author and educator who wrote economic essays for The Times. His books, articles and many of his lectures as a professor at New York's New School for Social Research centered on what he considered waste and inefficiency within America's corporate management. His most recent book, "Fat and Mean," to be published in May, claims that management remains bloated and inefficient despite recent downsizing in most companies.

PARK CITY, Utah - “It's been awhile,” director David Gordon Green said as we shook hands on Sunday. Indeed it had. It was, in fact, 10 years almost to the day since I'd interviewed Green at the Sundance Film Festival, and the trajectory of his career had been little short of unprecedented. In 2003, Green was in Park City with “All the Real Girls,” one of a series of small, contemplative films that had some people thinking of him as the next Terrence Malick. Instead, he became celebrated as the director of the big-budget stoner action comedy “Pineapple Express.” SUNDANCE: Full coverage Back then, Green expected he would direct an independent version of John Kennedy Toole's “A Confederacy of Dunces”; instead, he ended up with the Jonah Hill comedy “The Sitter,” the James Franco-starring “Your Highness” and a thriving business directing commercials.

To David Gordon, choreography has always been the C-word, something that others--perhaps better equipped and more captivated by mere dancing--do for a living. Not Gordon. Others may grandly say that they create dances, but ever since he began his dance career in the early '60s, Gordon has slyly described what he does as "constructing pieces." That is, until recently. For Gordon's latest construction, "United States," is a real dance, replete with glitzy show tunes and dreamy adagios.

David Gordon has made a career out of defying categories. A maverick choreographer-writer-director who first made his mark with the experimental Judson Dance Theater in the 1960s, he's turned in recent years to making interdisciplinary stage creations that are as much theater as dance. He's also forged some unusual ways of developing his works.

What defines a masterpiece? Originality? Or simply the passage of time? This question is at the heart of David Gordon's "Trying Times (Remembered)," which opened Wednesday night at REDCAT. Performed by members of Gordon's New York-based Pick Up Performance Co(S.) and a clutch of dance students from California Institute of the Arts, the hourlong piece is an appropriately postmodern remounting of Gordon's 1982 "Trying Times," which in itself was a postmodern investigation of George Balanchine's 1928 "Apollo."

David Gordon, writer, director and choreographer, acknowledges a practical reason for reworking his 1982 stage piece "Trying Times," this time as "Trying Times (remembered)." The National Endowment for the Arts offered him a grant to do it -- and times are tough when it comes to funding in the arts. "It's the only piece anybody ever gave me money to revisit," Gordon says.

Families are all happy in the same way, we know from Tolstoy, but unhappy in different ways. Lev Nikolayevich, meet the Gordons. Papa--the mustachioed post-modern choreographer David Gordon--has barrettes in his hair and is wearing a frock and acting like a holy terror. Mama--Valda Setterfield, a stately former Merce Cunningham dancer and now an actress--is in a tizzy. Son--downtown actor, writer and director Ain Gordon--is dealing with it all. They never seem to stop talking or moving.

David Gordon: An article in Tuesday's Calendar about writer-director-choreographer David Gordon misspelled the first name of one of his "Trying Times" collaborators, Power Boothe, as Powers.

The Serialist A Novel David Gordon Simon & Schuster: 336 pp., $15 paper

Start with a hack writer as narrator. Add a serial killer and you could have a recipe for another cliché-ridden piece of crime fiction. But in his first novel, "The Serialist," David Gordon walks the cliché tightrope and succeeds. The book is funny, with a satirical edge, and unlike some literary authors who play with genre, Gordon knows how to write a potboiler. The writer-protagonist here is Harry Bloch. His credits include 23 novels: vampire books, sci-fi knockoffs, hard-boiled inner-city yarns.

David Gordon: An article in Tuesday's Calendar section on choreographer David Gordon referred to the Sharon Disney Lund School of Dance as REDCAT's Sharon Disney Lund School of Dance. The dance school is one of the schools at CalArts, not REDCAT.

What defines a masterpiece? Originality? Or simply the passage of time? This question is at the heart of David Gordon's "Trying Times (Remembered)," which opened Wednesday night at REDCAT. Performed by members of Gordon's New York-based Pick Up Performance Co(S.) and a clutch of dance students from California Institute of the Arts, the hourlong piece is an appropriately postmodern remounting of Gordon's 1982 "Trying Times," which in itself was a postmodern investigation of George Balanchine's 1928 "Apollo."

David Gordon: An article in Tuesday's Calendar about writer-director-choreographer David Gordon misspelled the first name of one of his "Trying Times" collaborators, Power Boothe, as Powers.

David Gordon, writer, director and choreographer, acknowledges a practical reason for reworking his 1982 stage piece "Trying Times," this time as "Trying Times (remembered)." The National Endowment for the Arts offered him a grant to do it -- and times are tough when it comes to funding in the arts. "It's the only piece anybody ever gave me money to revisit," Gordon says.

The Serialist A Novel David Gordon Simon & Schuster: 336 pp., $15 paper

David Gordon: An article in Tuesday's Calendar section on choreographer David Gordon referred to the Sharon Disney Lund School of Dance as REDCAT's Sharon Disney Lund School of Dance. The dance school is one of the schools at CalArts, not REDCAT.

After years of cutting his teeth in independent film, David Gordon Green is one of the big boys now. The youthful 32-year-old writer and director, who still happens to wear braces, says he no longer gets carded at bars. But his newfound maturity pales in comparison to the thrill of being invited to host his own three-night film retrospective this week at American Cinematheque's Egyptian Theatre in HollywoodEgyptian Theatre in Hollywood. "My reaction?