Jennifer S. Altman New York Times
Tony Kushner, left, E. L.
Doctorow and Thane Rosenbaum
watching a scene from the HBO
version of Mr. Kushner's play
"Angels in America."
Posted on 01/21/2006 4:17:32 AM PST by Pharmboy
Jennifer S. Altman New York Times
Tony Kushner, left, E. L.
Doctorow and Thane Rosenbaum
watching a scene from the HBO
version of Mr. Kushner's play
"Angels in America."
The discussion was supposed to be about Julius and Ethel Rosenberg, ...
E. L. Doctorow was there, ... So was Tony Kushner, who placed the ghost of Ethel Rosenberg at the deathbed of her prosecutor Roy Cohn in his Pulitzer Prize-winning play "Angels in America."
snip
"Do artists worry about getting it right at all?" asked Thane Rosenbaum, a novelist and law professor who served as the evening's moderator. "Is that the burden of the artist?"
Mr. Doctorow and Mr. Kushner touched on the recently released Steven Spielberg film "Munich." snip... The panelists went on to discuss James Frey's disputed memoir, "A Million Little Pieces," ..."There's a tolerance for lying and a tolerance for confusing fact and fiction that has grown and grown and grown," Mr. Kushner said. snip..
But though both writers have appropriated historical events and figures for their fictions, neither admitted to complicity in the trend.
"Our justification and our salvation is that people know we're liars," Mr. Doctorow said. snip...
...Al Pacino, playing Cohn, explained his role in assuring Ethel Rosenberg's death. "That sweet unprepossessing woman, two kids, boo-hoo, reminded us all of our little Jewish mamas - she came this close to getting life," the Cohn character said. "I pleaded till I wept to put her in the chair."
snip...
...Mr. Kushner said. "The debate about 'Munich' is completely politically overdetermined."
... Did this happen?" he said, adding that the only responsible answer must be yes. The second question, he said, is "Did this happen in this way?"
"The answer to that," Mr. Kushner said, "if you're a grown-up, is 'Not necessarily.' "
(Excerpt) Read more at nytimes.com ...
Doctorow and Kushner have some chutzpah, eh? Sitting there and saying that it's ok for them to lie since they are serving a higher truth--to Art. Yeccchhhh...
Pulitzer Prize-winning play "Angels in America."What prize category did it win? Most incredibly bad piece-of-crap ever filmed?
Moreover, he said, he could not find a place in his book for Ethel Rosenberg's brother, David Greenglass, whose testimony helped send the couple to the electric chair. "No work of fiction could make that believable," Mr. Doctorow said. "It's too incredible and unnatural and hideous."Don't you just hate reality?
Once in a while he pens another socialist screed for the local rag.
"Now kids, let's all hold hands"
Pharmboy,
Perhaps most important, most arts (especially emerging arts) are lacking moral taste and judgment.
Arts cannot be great without accuracy, cogency, clarity, and cohesion. They may, as John Gardner wrote in his great book "On Moral Fiction" joke, or mock, or while away the time, but these arts have no place except in the shadow of great art.
Things like, for example, the images of happy, smiling healthy Ukrainians from people who knew that millions were starving; or the passionate insistence on the innocence of Sacco and Vanzetti or Alger Hiss from people who knew the truth.
Truth has never mattered to these people. Only the agenda matters.
The only truth in the article: when Doctorow said that it was OK since everyone knew they are liars. Sheesh...
Re-writing history is his sideline.
_"...our salvation is that people know we're liars," Mr. Doctorow said."_
Salvation from what, exactly? A bad review in the NYTimes? Oh, the horror...
The play won the Pulitzer, not the HBO tv version.
He's talking about the difference between novelists and journalists. Novelists are allowed to make up stories. I'm reading Doctorow's "The March" right now, and it's very, very good.
The Rosenberg's grandaughter did a documentary about her grandparents. Her conclusion, like that of the sons was that they were definitely guilty. The Venona papers pretty much ended the speculation they were innocent. The argument they make now is that they should not have been executed. An arguable point for sure, but at least we don't have to listen to anymore ridiculous arguments about their innocence.
Well, perhaps we disagree on this, but I do not equate fiction writing with lying, and I did not read his statement as you did anyway. And the fact that he is a talented writer makes his agenda-driven "art" only the worse...
Well, a plain reading of the discussion tells me they were discussing the difference between fiction and a so-called "non-fiction memoire" from Frey. Frey is under attack (and rightfully so) because his story was marketed as non-fiction. Doctorow and Kushner both write fiction, even if historical.
So in that sense, Frey lied, but Doctorow doesn't.
Attempting what he called "some badly articulated French theory," Mr. Kushner said, "We're making a kind of reality that's coming increasingly to supplant the rock we are standing on."
But though both writers have appropriated historical events and figures for their fictions, neither admitted to complicity in the trend.
"Our justification and our salvation is that people know we're liars," Mr. Doctorow said. "The kind of genre-blurring done by the president of the United States is quite different. He is a storyteller, a fabulist, and presents as truth and facts stuff that is totally fictive."
With all due respect, the more I read this, the less I agree with you. Kushner seems to be criticizing himself and other writers for destroying the "rock" of truth that they are supposedly standing on, while at the same time justifying it. And Doctorow is not comparing fiction to non-fiction, but rather comparing himself to Bush.
that's true, my mistake
maybe the play was better than the HBO version
hard to imagine, given the script
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