The Secret Knowledge

whose ‘Good wishes I must seek.’ I will call it ‘the World,’ or ‘World Opinion.’ Or, ‘What might I apologize for . . .’ ”

Why would any American Jew wish to become a “citizen of the World”? This fantasy is akin to one who believes in the benevolence of Nature. Anyone ever lost in the wild knows that Nature wants you dead.

26

FEMINISM

One might say that the politician, the doctor, and the dramatist make their living from human misery; the doctor in attempting to alleviate it, the politician to capitalize on it, and the dramatist, to describe it.

But perhaps that is too epigrammatic.

When I was young, there was a period in American drama in which the writers strove to free themselves of the question of character.

Protagonists of their worthy plays had made no choices, but were afflicted by a condition not of their making; and this condition, homosexuality, illness, being a woman, etc., was the center of the play. As these protagonists had made no choices, they were in a state of innocence. They had not acted, so they could not have sinned.

A play is basically an exercise in the raising, lowering, and altering of expectations (such known, collectively, as the Plot); but these plays dealt not with expectations (how could they, for the state of the protagonist was not going to change?) but with sympathy.

What these audiences were witnessing was not a drama, but a troublesome human condition displayed as an attraction. This was, formerly, known as a freak show.

The subjects of these dramas were bearing burdens not of their choosing, as do we all. But misfortune, in life, we know, deserves forbearance on the part of the unafflicted. For though the display of courage in the face of adversity is worthy of all respect, the display of that respect by the unaffected is presumptuous and patronizing.

One does not gain merit from congratulating an afflicted person for his courage. One only gains entertainment.

Further, endorsement of the courage of the affliction play’s hero was not merely impertinent, but, more basically, spurious, as applause was vouchsafed not to a worthy stoic, but to an actor portraying him.

These plays were an (unfortunate) by-product of the contemporary love-of-the-victim. For a victim, as above, is pure, and cannot have sinned; and one, by endorsing him, may perhaps gain, by magic, part of his incontrovertible status. (An ancient poker adage has it that the Loser can’t get enough to eat, and the winner can’t sleep. Its application to the postwar West, I leave to the Reader.)

But a synergistic elaboration of the essence of the victim play was that the Afflicted could in no wise be portrayed as flawed. But, if they could not be flawed (that is, if they had not made, as heroes of the drama, a wrong choice), how could they be the fit subject of a drama? They could not.

My first personal experience of Political Thought in the Arts dates from my first commercially produced play. This was Sexual Perversity in Chicago, which ran, for some time, off-Broadway at the Cherry Lane Theatre in New York.

A woman critic at the Village Voice accused me, in a review of this play, of misogyny. Why? Because misogyny was a subject of the play.

In my play, two couples, two men and two women, contend. The younger man and woman, Dan and Deborah, have fallen in love, and the older pair, respectively, their best friends, scheme to keep them apart. A common, and, I thought, inoffensive theme. But the champion of the Oppressed took against me. How odd, I thought, for one might have supposed the title, characterizing the behavior in the play as perverse might have allowed the poor critic, if not some enjoyment, at least a guide to her conjectures as to my motives. (Cezanne’s labeling various still-lifes as dealing with fruit, for example, sparing his critics the misapprehension that they were portraits of the table.) But, no.

I have received many close-this-play reviews over the years, and that is both part of the cost of my doing business, and one of the prices of a Free Press. The same Constitution which protects my right to write my plays, shields the right of the critic to write drivel. Why do I instance this long-ago hatchet job?

Because, to this day, nearly forty years after that review, I am asked, in lectures, classrooms, and interviews why I hate women.⁶²

A rhetorical question is essentially an attack, and this protracted attack must be laid, not to the account of the poor writer at the Village Voice, but to that “movement,” for which, I presume, she thought she spoke: the “Feminist Studies” so beloved of our great Universities.

I found these attacks upsetting first because I am a sensitive fellow, and, second, because, to the contrary, I love women. I’ve been privileged to have spent my life surrounded by them; and it seems to me a matter of course that men and women should get on well together, which was, after all, the theme of Sexual Perversity in Chicago.

Here is another question spawned by the University: Why do I not write for women? (This expounded by the students, I believe, burdened by the rigors of studying both feminism and drama.)

The answer, I do write for women, is unsuccessful in averting wrath, for the wisdom inculcated by the University is not, it seems, of that weak variety which bows before fact. I have written many plays and parts for women; nearly as many as I have written for men, and, probably as many as any other dramatist of my generation, man or woman. But the question, again, is not a request for information, but an attack. Well, that’s all right.

I came across an old trunk, full of bills and posters, playbills, and correspondence of my youth. The correspondence was almost exclusively of two kinds, rejection slips and love letters.

I remember of the rejections, at the time of their receipt, that I, after the first momentary blaze of indignation, felt, of the producers, agents, and publishers who had rejected my work, “too bad for you, who are going to be the loser thereby”; and I remember feeling at the time, of the letters, and feel still today, a gratitude for and wonder at the generosity of women.

A writer’s life is lived, and, I think, must be lived, in solitude. For it is a dialogue with one’s own thoughts, and, often, a dialogue about one’s own thoughts; and the corrosive nature of this struggle is often unpleasant, devouring one’s time and weakening one’s capacity for simple human interaction. This is a minuscule price to pay for the privilege of earning one’s living as an artist; but the price, though small (if it is a