Entertaining Strangers
1977
Allen Lane
This book has an academic setting – “a large technological institute in the Boston area” – and follows the rise of a visiting instructor, presumably from England, as he ingratiates himself into the Humanities department and snakes his way up the ladder of success. It is basically the plot of Moliere’s Tartuffe, as it explores the susceptibility of Americans to the English accent and the superior culture which they think accompanies it. This book got me threatened with a lawsuit for libel, but I avoided it by changing a few unimportant details. It was published in England where it was pronounced “anglophobic”. Later on, I turned it into a play entitled Human Events.
The Gospel According to Joe
1974
Harper and Row
Here is an anachronistic retelling of the gospel story, with the narrator now being the put-upon father of Jesus struggling to cope with the political turmoil in America in the late sixties and early seventies. I wrote this book at a time when my students at M.I,T. were rebelling against the Viet Nam war while my children at home were crashing into adolescence. As I remember it, it has a few moving moments and a number of laughs. The New York Times refused to allow any advertisements of this book on the grounds that the book was “blasphemous.” The best scene in it is probably one where Joseph and Mary journey to the “capital” to visit Pontius Pilate in the hope of getting their son out of jail. Pontius and his wife Phyllis invite the anguished couple for cocktails, but underneath the polite banter and fancy hors d’oeuvres , nothing much can be done to release the poor lad.
The Snow Ball
1984
Arbor House
This is a book about ballroom dancing – not the frantic, gymnastic type of dancing we see today on TV, but rather the graceful, amateur moves in what is now sometimes called “couple dancing”. I grew up in a world which obligated us for at least four years to go to a dancing school, where we were taught by the same man who had instructed our parents, and even our grandparents, on how to waltz, fox-trot, and rumba. Through dancing school, we learned how to bow to girls, offer them our arm, hold them carefully, and most importantly how to lead them around the dance floor. More than that, we learned how to connect with them at a time when education and culture kept us apart. My novel focuses on a young couple – a rich girl and a boy from across the tracks – who get good at dancing, and the attempt, many years later, to bring them back to town so they can dance together once again in celebration of the refurbishing of a lovely old hotel ballroom. I turned this novel into a play, also titled The Snow Ball.
At the age of 80, I feel personally fortunate to have come up with what one might call a hit play, even if it is only playing in a smallish theatre for a relatively short time. I’m not at all sure I have many more plays under my belt, but even if I don’t, I can hardly complain after having written Black Tie. It has been, for me at least, a particularly rewarding experience from beginning to end, providing the collaborative joys and audience responses which engaged me when I first was attracted to this strange and wonderful profession many years ago.