Contents (7)
This edition first published in the United States in 2016 by
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Copyright © 2016 by Neil LaBute
All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopy, recording, or any information storage and retrieval system now known or to be invented, without permission in writing from the publisher, except by a reviewer who wishes to quote brief passages in connection with a review written for inclusion in a magazine, newspaper, or broadcast.
ISBN 978-1-4683-1652-0
for judith and leigh
“i have everything, yet have nothing …”
—jean racine
CONTENTS
PRAISE FOR THE PLAYS OF NEIL LABUTE
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
ALSO BY NEIL LABUTE
COPYRIGHT
DEDICATION
PREFACE
ALL THE WAYS TO SAY I LOVE YOU
ALL MY WHITE SINS FORGIVEN
WITH HAIR OF HAND-SPUN GOLD
PREFACE
“For sale: baby shoes, never worn.”
So goes the shortest of short stories attributed to Ernest Hemingway (though, like much of his life, there is contention as to whether this too is truth or fiction). I don’t really care. I love that someone wrote it and I like to believe it was Hemingway. He sounds like the type of author who could write it—the man behind so much lean and muscular prose—and just the kind of person who would bet his fellow writers at Luchow’s or the Algonquin that he could “write a complete novel in just six words” and then do so in such bravura fashion (fully collecting his earnings at the end of the wager as well, no doubt).
More importantly—and don’t tell Mr. Hemingway this—I love the words and the story and how I feel every time I tell that tale or someone tells it to me. I get the chills and the hairs on my arms stand at attention. Those six words are beautifully chosen and shaped and assembled into a complete cavalcade of woe. I feel them as a person, I love them as an artist and I agonize over them as a father.
As a writer, I envy the shit out of them and the person who created them (just in case it was Ms. Dorothy Parker instead of Mr. Hemingway, as previously reported).
That’s actually one of the best feelings in the world when you’re a writer. “Envy.” Loving a piece of work by someone else so much that you wish that you had written it. It’s not a bad thing. For me, to have written Machinal instead of Sophie Treadwell or All My Sons instead of Arthur Miller or Disgrace instead of J.M. Coetzee or The Secret History instead of Donna Tartt would be a wonderful thing and I envy each and every word that those authors wrote instead of me. In a good way. In a healthy way that says “thank you for being so damn great and for setting the bar so damn high and for taking me to places with your writing that I still need to go in my own.” It’s nice to have heroes—in both your real and your literary life—and I don’t see anything wrong with a little healthy competition.