As the ordinary poet of a working company of players, he sought plots under deadline pressure rather than after some long, deliberate meditation on how to turn fiction into drama. "What have you got for us this month, Will?" the players asked him, and, thinking quickly, he'd say, "I thought I'd do something with the weird Italian story I mentioned, the one with the Jew and the contest." "Italy again? All right. End of the month then?"
the new yorker
oct 17, 2016
