There's A Way In Which 'the Illusion'

I Don't Want To Name Names Because They'd Be Mad At Me If I Did, But People Who Are Significant Novelists Can't Get Published By Real Publishers At This Point, Or Have To Go Through Two Years Of Trying After Writing A Novel That's Taken Them Five Or Six Years And Simply Can't Get The Thing In Print. Or It Gets In Print And It Doesn't Get Reviewed In The New York Times Book Review And Disappears Without A Trace. I Mean, It's Terrifying. I Don't Know How Anybody Can Stand It. It's Such An Enormous Amount Of Work And The Economics Of It Are Really Quite Brutal.

But I Think What Made Me Go Into Theater Was Seeing My Mother Onstage. The First Thing She Did Was Mrs. Frank In 'the Diary Of Anne Frank.' The Second Thing She Did Was A Play About Freud Called 'the Far Country.' She Played A Paralyzed Woman In Vienna Who Goes To See Freud.

In The Modern Era, It Isn't Enough To Write, You Must Also Be The Writer, With A Capital 'w,' And Play Your Part As The Protagonist In The Cautionary Narrative In Which You Will Fail Or Triumph, Be In Or Out, Hot Or Cold, Ride The Wheel Of Fortune.

So I Think I'll Say The Obvious Thing: Theater Is Ephemeral. When A Production Is Done, It's Gone Forever. You Can Take Pictures Of It. You Can Make A Film Of It. But It's Not The Production. It's Not The Same Thing.

Before The Boiling Of Blood And The Searing Of Skin Comes The Secret Catastrophe: Before Life On Earth Becomes Finally Merely Impossible, It Will For A Long Time Before Have Become Completely Unbearable.