Collected Stories - by Donald Margulies (Paperback)

About the Book

In order to explore the vexed emotional and legal question of a writer's right to create art from biographical material of another person's life, playwright Donald Margulies creates two of the most vivid and moving fictional characters of his career--Ruth Steiner, an aging author with a romantic past, and her young student Debra Messing, who exploits what she knows about her mentor's life.

Book Synopsis

"As usual, Margulies holds the rich ore of his material up to the light so that it sends beams in every direction. Changing styles in feminist thought, the tangled connections between creativity and ideology, the writer's odd place in our money-centered world, the way we turn our friends into surrogate families--while always fluid and lively, the play is thick with ideas, like a stockpot of good stew." -Michael Feingold, Village Voice

"Beautifully layered. Margulies delivers a spot-on glimpse of New York's literary scene: the power of a Times book review, or the milestone of the 92nd Y's authors series, or the significance of a little-known but much-revered lit mag like the now-defunct Grand Street. He's even better at teasing the sense of betrayal that can dissolve creative friendships...the ethics of friendship and fiction smack into each other." -Lisa Kennedy, Denver Post

"[Collected Stories] digs into its engaging tale of aesthetics and ethics with intelligence and sharp, literate humor....Mr. Margulies has found fertile material in the struggles of the creative classes to reconcile the demands of ambition with the exigencies of life." -New York Times

"This provocative piece of theater serves as a timely reminder that we are defined by our feelings and memories -- and such precious thoughts are sacred." -Matthew J. Palm, Orlando Sentinel

Collected Stories 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 Lisa Morrison, a student of Steiner's who, after publishing a much-ballyhooed first short-story collection under Steiner's direction, follows up with a novel that draws upon the Schwartz affair. The result is charged drama with the depth and weight of the finest prose fiction. Winner of the Los Angeles Drama Critics Award for Best New Play.

Donald Margulies received the 2000 Pulitzer Prize for Drama for Dinner with Friends. The play received numerous awards, including the American Theatre Critics Association New Play Award, the Dramatists Guild/Hull-Warriner Award, the Lucille Lortel Award, the Outer Critics Circle Award and a Drama Desk nomination, and has been produced all over the United States and around the world. In addition to his adaptation of God of Vengeance, his many plays include Collected Stories, The Country House, Sight Unseen, The Model Apartment, The Loman Family Picnic, What's Wrong with This Picture? and Time Stands Still. Mr. Margulies currently lives with his wife and their son in New Haven, Connecticut, where he teaches playwriting at Yale University.

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.