Collected Stories

by Donald Margulies

Overview

In Collected Stories, playwright Donald Margulies explores the vexed emotional and legal question of a writer's right to create art from the biographical material of another person's life--particularly when that other person is also a writer. Meditating upon the recent, real-life conflict between poet Stephen Spender and novelist David Leavitt, Margulies has created two of the most vivid and moving fictional characters of his career: Ruth Steiner, an aging, highly regarded author who never wrote about her youthful affair with real-life poet Delmore Schwartz, and Debra Messing, a student of Steiner's who, after publishing a much-praised first short-story collection under Steiner's direction, follows up with a novel that draws upon the Schwartz affair.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781559367486
Publisher:	Theatre Communications Group
Publication date:	07/25/2012
Sold by:	Barnes & Noble
Format:	eBook
Pages:	112
File size:	353 KB

About the Author

Donald Margulies's other plays include "Collected Stories", "The Loman Family Picnic", "Sight Unseen" and "Dinner with Friends", for which he was awarded the 2000 Pulitzer Prize for Drama.

Editorial Reviews

With his fine ear for detail, Margulies creates an authentic, insular world, and he gives equal weight to the opposing viewpoints of two formidable characters.

L.A. Times

This is probably Margulies' best play to date...

NY Post

Margulies' play is an affecting character study and a well-drawn portrait of the insular world of fiction writers, demonstrating his gift for sharply written and incisive dialogue.

Hollywood Reporter

Probing the development and ultimate disintegration of a student-teacher relationship over the course of six years, Donald Margulies' new play is an engaging, witty and painful work.

Time Out

As usual, Margulies holds the rich ore of his material up to the light so that it sends beams in every direction...always fluid and lively, the play is thick with ideas, like a stockpot of good stew.

Village Voice