Top Highlights

• mitigate the inevitable closed progression toward knowledge will weaken the tragedy. (The writer of the tragedy
• But the good drama (e.g., Twelve Angry Men) leaves the issue in doubt. It enmeshes the audience in the problems of the protagonists so that they may consider the arguments, now one, now the other, until, when hope is gone, persistence (of the author and of his or her creations) brings revelation, and the audience may leave the play surprised by the...
• There are, I think, two Americas. There is that which we decry on reading the newspapers. “Those fools,” we say, of the group not of our political bent, “how in the world can they believe the nonsense they are spouting? How can intelligent people act that way?” This is the America of “them.”
• And then there is the America we participate in—that fairly friendly and reasonable group of diverse interests and talents, happy to pitch in, the America of “us.” We see and participate in this group at the Little League, the Rotary, the Shul or Church, the block party, the sports bar—we speak its language in the conversation we strike up with the...
• rather pleasant place.