Theatre, History, and Literature
"As I was maturing as a writer, the interplay of form… history and drama and literature…intrigued me."
Four years after “Sherman the Peacemaker,” premiered in Chapel Hill my second play went up at the Trinity Square Repertory Company in Providence, R.I. “Jonestown Express” was the third iteration of my Jonestown obsession and focused on the unknowable: the nature of choice at the end of four of Jones’s followers. My experience at Trinity Rep, where I was made an artistic associate for a year, was surely the most satisfying artistic experience of my career, because I got to work with a wonderful, brilliant, iconoclastic director named Adrian Hall. I describe my collaboration with Adrian in my essay below called “Combing.”
We left Chapel Hill in 1981 for New York with our first two children in tow. There, I began to write for the New Yorker, Vanity Fair, and the New York Times among others, always harking back to the touchstone of my fascinations. As the memory of Vietnam began to fade in the 1980s, I became interested in how the war would be remembered and taught. In the essay, “Coming to Terms” I address that question, especially how the war would be presented on the stage and screen. The question is how historical embarrassments are dealt with by future generations. I went to Japan and to Germany to see how those countries handled their World War II memories. The result was “How Japan Teaches its History” for the New York Times Magazine, and “The Other Children of the Holocaust” for Esquire. The answer is that those countries and my own didn’t deal with embarrassment very well at all.
In a New Yorker piece called “You Can Not Refine it” I moved my interest in General Sherman from the stage to prose by retracing his march across the south, going back and forth between the what the factual history is, and how it has been revised in modern times. Entering the “pearly gates” of the New Yorker and working with its legendary editor, William Shawn, made a book possible. In Sherman’s March and Vietnam, published in 1985, I made the link between the Civil War and Vietnam precise. The hinge between them I called “The Sherman Parable.” (below)
"A fine meditation on American history, absorbing in its narrative and compelling in its challenge to the national conscience." Arthur Schlesinger, Jr. on Sherman's March and Vietnam
As I was maturing as a writer, the interplay of form… history and drama and literature…intrigued me . With my NPR documentary about Jonestown, “Father Cares: the Last of Jonestown” I experienced the power of radio. With my PBS Frontline documentary, “88 Seconds in Greensboro” as well as the Nixon Interviews of 1977 I came to know the power of the visual image. Thirty years after that with the movie “Frost/Nixon” it was the magic of Hollywood.
Every story, I came to believe, longs for its perfect voice. In 2012 I returned to my experience with the Nixon Interviews and my secret association in 1977 with the Mormon-born author, Fawn Brodie, and her controversial biography about the Mormon prophet, Joseph Smith. Her excommuncation from the Mormon Church for challenging the divinity of the Mormon prophetin her book had great relevance for the presidential campaign of Mormon candidate, Mitt Romney, in that year.
We left Chapel Hill in 1981 for New York with our first two children in tow. There, I began to write for the New Yorker, Vanity Fair, and the New York Times among others, always harking back to the touchstone of my fascinations. As the memory of Vietnam began to fade in the 1980s, I became interested in how the war would be remembered and taught. In the essay, “Coming to Terms” I address that question, especially how the war would be presented on the stage and screen. The question is how historical embarrassments are dealt with by future generations. I went to Japan and to Germany to see how those countries handled their World War II memories. The result was “How Japan Teaches its History” for the New York Times Magazine, and “The Other Children of the Holocaust” for Esquire. The answer is that those countries and my own didn’t deal with embarrassment very well at all.
In a New Yorker piece called “You Can Not Refine it” I moved my interest in General Sherman from the stage to prose by retracing his march across the south, going back and forth between the what the factual history is, and how it has been revised in modern times. Entering the “pearly gates” of the New Yorker and working with its legendary editor, William Shawn, made a book possible. In Sherman’s March and Vietnam, published in 1985, I made the link between the Civil War and Vietnam precise. The hinge between them I called “The Sherman Parable.” (below)
"A fine meditation on American history, absorbing in its narrative and compelling in its challenge to the national conscience." Arthur Schlesinger, Jr. on Sherman's March and Vietnam
As I was maturing as a writer, the interplay of form… history and drama and literature…intrigued me . With my NPR documentary about Jonestown, “Father Cares: the Last of Jonestown” I experienced the power of radio. With my PBS Frontline documentary, “88 Seconds in Greensboro” as well as the Nixon Interviews of 1977 I came to know the power of the visual image. Thirty years after that with the movie “Frost/Nixon” it was the magic of Hollywood.
Every story, I came to believe, longs for its perfect voice. In 2012 I returned to my experience with the Nixon Interviews and my secret association in 1977 with the Mormon-born author, Fawn Brodie, and her controversial biography about the Mormon prophet, Joseph Smith. Her excommuncation from the Mormon Church for challenging the divinity of the Mormon prophetin her book had great relevance for the presidential campaign of Mormon candidate, Mitt Romney, in that year.
Articles:
"On teaching Historical Embarrassments"
date unknown view PDF “Longing for Andrew Johnson” unpublished, 1974 view PDF “The Other Children of the Holocaust” On German youth after Hitler, Appeared in Esquire, Sept. 1984 view PDF “You Can Not Refine It” On Sherman, appeared in the New Yorker, Jan. 28, 1985 view part I PDF, view part II PDF "The Sherman Parable" From Sherman's March and Vietnam published in 1985 view PDF “How Japan Teaches its Own History” October 27, 1985, New York Times Magazine view PDF "Coming to Terms" Appeared in American Theatre, May 1985 view PDF “Theatre in Turbulent Years” Appeared in Theatre Profiles, 1986 view PDF "Brecht and the Biographer" Appeared in The New Theatre Review, Lincoln Center, Fall 1994 view PDF “Combing” On working with iconoclastic director, Adrian Hall, on Reston's play, "Jonestown Express" Dec. 1998 view PDF “Failing the 1868 Test” Appeared in the New York Times, during Clinton impeachment, date unknown 98-99. view PDF |
,“A Prophet in his Time”
On Kushner Homebody/Kabul, appeared in American Theatre Magazine, March 2002 view PDF “It Isn’t all about Columbus” Appeared in the USA Today, October 10, 2005 view PDF “All History is Modern History” Foreword to Eye Witness to History, book by National Geographic published 2010 view PDF "How to give the GOP debates meaning" Appeared in the USA Today, January 6, 2012 view PDF "The Mormon Excommunication of Fawn Brodie" Essay, Summer 2012 view PDF, view website "Trailing Martin Luther" Appeared in the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel 2013 View PDF, view Website |