The Dallas Theater Center was selected to present my adaptation of a Faulkner novel at the Theater of Nations competition in Paris. The year was 1964, a year after the Kennedy assassination, and the novel was As I Lay Dying. A troubled Charles “Chip” Bohlen, US ambassador to France, called to say that the French loved President Kennedy and posters highlighting Dallas and “As I Lay Dying” would horrify them. The title of the play had to be changed. 

On a transatlantic call I changed the title of the play to “Journey to Jefferson,” and the Dallas Theater Center production of the play received a Special Jury Award. 

One night when we were dark, the cast decided to see Marcel Marceau who was appearing at a nearby theater. Marceau had been to America, appeared on television and was both famous and popular. Some in the cast had studied with his mentor, the esteemed Etienne Decroux. 

Decroux had come to Baylor University in Waco, Texas for a time to teach stage movement. Baylor is a Baptist school. Waco had a reputation for being askew even before the Branch Davidians. Decroux announced that the students would report to his classes on stage nude. Adjustments were made. 

Marceau did exquisitely what most mimes did unconvincingly. Those in the DTC cast who had studied with Decroux sent a message to Marceau and after his performance we were invited to his dressing room. The conversation was somewhat disconcerting because Marceau still wore his mime face but talked with his mouth devoid of gestures. 

When asked about Decroux, Marceau expressed sadness tinged with resentment because he and his mentor were estranged. Decroux believed Marceau was prostituting his art. What Decroux does, Marceau said, is like worship. It’s between him and God with no regard for the audience. Decroux and Jean-Louis Barrault performed scenes on stage and film to small audiences of passionate votaries. Marceau made his art accessible to those who haunted television. Was that prostituting his art? 

Except for those who write for hire, a writer must first please herself. If she isn’t pleased with it, why would she want others to see it? But she isn’t writing to herself. She is writing to be read even if by only one person. How many times can a writer require a reader to turn to a dictionary because the right word is not a common word? How many times can you expect a reader to stop reading and think through a paragraph before he tosses the book aside? Faulkner requires more of a reader than Hemingway does.

Is an amusing story anecdote or parable? Can a poet who writes a poem that occurs in a flash of inspiration expect a professor of literature or a student who loves poetry to spend more time studying the poem than it took to write? How far must you bend to reach a larger audience before you stoop?

In fiction, a quick read has come to mean a quick sale. The text is supposed to “drive” or “compel” the reader through a story and to linger in the mind no longer that it took to read and discard. Is that the best way to read a story? Aren’t some stories intended to be absorbed rather than ingurgitated? 

I think most artists work with whatever matter is given them and craft it into what they think it should be without thought of who might care. Not that the artist will ever be satisfied with the completed work. If he were he wouldn’t try again. Most writers have written a paragraph, a poem, a story, knowing that they will have to battle editors, lose readers and accept condemnation from critics but are determined to do it anyway. Damn the torpedoes, this is the way it must be.