For over 50 years, as a historian, lecturer and author, he fought to protect Beaux-Arts buildings in New York and Chicago from falling to the developer’s wrecking ball.
Once a Marxist, he came to embrace hard-right positions, including the falsehood that Mr. Trump won in 2020, and to mentor Stephen Miller, later the Trump adviser.
His 15 well-plotted novels teemed with romance and strange coincidence. An erudite literary critic with an ear for language, he also wrote a raft of nonfiction books.
A renowned member of the New York School of poets, he also found accidental notoriety when he was photographed during the 1968 uprising at Columbia University.
‘By admitting that, I fear I will be drummed out of the Novelists’ Corps,’ she says. ‘The Black Bird Oracle,’ the latest in her best-selling ‘All Souls’ series, is just out.