August Wilson
August Wilson - who lived in Saint Paul for 12 yearsa while he wrote most of his decalogue on the black experience in America - died yesterday:
August Wilson, the Pulitzer Prize-winning playwright whose celebrated epic cycle chronicled the lives of blacks in 20th-century America, succumbed to liver cancer Sunday at Swedish Hospital in Seattle, where he has lived since 1990. Before that, he lived in St. Paul, starting in 1978, and wrote most of his oeuvre in the Twin Cities.
His death at age 60 was announced Sunday by personal assistant Dena Levitin. "He was surrounded by family," she said.
I don't suspect a lot of people know what we've lost:
"Radio Golf," the last of the 10 plays of his cycle, premiered at the Yale Repertory Theatre in April, some two decades after his 1984 breakthrough work, "Ma Rainey's Black Bottom," premiered at the same venue.
In June, he was diagnosed with the advanced liver cancer that would silence the breath of the man who gave the world such masterworks as "Fences" and "The Piano Lesson," both Pulitzer winners, as well as "Joe Turner's Come and Gone,"Jitney" and "Seven Guitars."
"Each work stands on its own as an important accomplishment, but taken together they are a singular body of achievement," said director Marion McClinton, nominated for a Tony Award for staging Wilson's "Gem of the Ocean" in New York. "I was lucky enough to have spent four days over the Labor Day weekend with him. It was obvious that he was sick, but his wit, his moral outrage, the lyrical storytelling, the love of his people were all there."
Posted by Mitch at
October 3, 2005 04:17 AM
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Mitch, I'm not trying to argumentative, but what is the big deal?
The Strib saw fit to put his death on the front page.
I can't help but wonder where that story would have landed if he were white and if he wrote plays that weren't critical of the USA.
Posted by: JB Doubtless at October 3, 2005 08:57 AMThe way media in my area have covered August Wilson's career, you would have thought he never set foot outside of Pittsburgh. I had no idea he ever went to Saint Paul, let alone spent so many years there. In fact, I had him figured for a New Yorker because of his vocation. Nice to know he got around a bit.
Posted by: Dave in Pgh. at October 3, 2005 09:04 AMJB:
"Mitch, I'm not trying to argumentative, but what is the big deal?"
He was one of the major American playwrites of the last 100 years. Other than that, no big deal.
"The Strib saw fit to put his death on the front page."
Fittingly so.
"I can't help but wonder where that story would have landed if he were white and if he wrote plays that weren't critical of the USA."
Have you seen, or read, any of Wilson's stuff?
Dave:
"The way media in my area have covered August Wilson's career, you would have thought he never set foot outside of Pittsburgh. I had no idea he ever went to Saint Paul, let alone spent so many years there. In fact, I had him figured for a New Yorker because of his vocation. Nice to know he got around a bit."
He lived on Cathedral Hill in Saint Paul, largely because it felt a lot like New York.
Posted by: mitch at October 3, 2005 10:31 AMMitch, of course I haven't read any of his stuff and I doubt if you have either.
That would make us like 99.99% of the population.
Who reads "Playwrights" anyway? Who goes to plays?
Other than the NPR crowd, I mean, so they can go around telling people how sophistamacated they are.
This idea that somehow our lives will change because of his death or that his death means a damn thing is nonsense.
Posted by: jb at October 3, 2005 11:11 AMDamn, who pissed in JB's Wheaties this morning? :D
Posted by: FJBill at October 3, 2005 11:36 AMFJ: Ha!
JB:
"Mitch, of course I haven't read any of his stuff and I doubt if you have either."
And there, again, you're wrong!
"That would make us like 99.99% of the population."
Make *you* like 'em. So what?
"Who reads "Playwrights" anyway? Who goes to plays? "
Smart people (political persuasion irrelevant) who like to suspend the literal for an hour or three and watch a story being acted out, and get their brains engaged in a line of thought outside their own day-to-day world.
A good play - and Wilson wrote a bunch of 'em - is like LSD; it expands your brain. Without the chromosome damage.
"Other than the NPR crowd, I mean, so they can go around telling people how sophistamacated they are. "
JB, just a question here: were you assaulted by a Comparative Lit professor as a child? I'm just trying to figure out why you - a smart guy who I happen to know did not grow up in a trailer court or a barrio or the ghetto - have this aggressive know-nothing streak. You seem to think the whole idea of finding intellectual fulfillment through art (or at all?) to be some sort of commie conspiracy.
It just ain't so.
Oh, yeah - and it has nothing, zero, to do with how one appears to other people. I go to plays, read frou-frou literature, patronize every kind of music there is from classical through whatever, because *I enjoy it*. There really is no other reason.
"This idea that somehow our lives will change because of his death or that his death means a damn thing is nonsense. "
Wow - for someone who's poo-poohing drama, you sure indulge in dramatics!
All our lives probably won't change. But if there's a part of your life that values great theatre, your life just got a little smaller yesterday.
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