The conflict between the established artist and the adulatory fan who becomes a protégé, disciple, colleague and friend—and finally threatening rival—is one of those great topics…It resurfaces in Donald Margulies's provocative new play, COLLECTED STORIES, which confronts the prominent short-story writer Ruth Steiner with her student turned confidante turned competitor Lisa Morrison. What is new here is that the women are teacher and student both in academia and in life, that they come from different social milieus, and that for her first novel, Lisa has also cannibalized Ruth's experiences, to wit her youthful, shattering affair with the poet Delmore Schwartz
The conflict between the established artist and the adulatory fan who becomes a protégé, disciple, colleague and friend—and finally threatening rival—is one of those great topics…It resurfaces in Donald Margulies's provocative new play, COLLECTED STORIES, which confronts the prominent short-story writer Ruth Steiner with her student turned confidante turned competitor Lisa Morrison. What is new here is that the women are teacher and student both in academia and in life, that they come from different social milieus, and that for her first novel, Lisa has also cannibalized Ruth's experiences, to wit her youthful, shattering affair with the poet Delmore Schwartz
|