“Loses his life at 91.” Fred was reading a headline. The story under it related the recent fate of a dramatist who had, in his younger years, been a boxer. Fights were won and lost. He bowed out after an example of the former. “You go out on top because it lets you see what else you’re under,” he said. The aphorism advanced into a hundred newspapers, and then a hundred more. There was suddenly a call for more of same. He wrote a small book called Punches Thrown and Landed and then his first play, a thinly veiled account of his upbringing in the toughest neighborhood in Baltimore. The play changed it to Boston. He penned nine more plays, ranging from the stark (Her Dark Eyes, an account of his mother’s incipient dementia) to the sportive (The Stealthy Rose, about a flower intent on seducing a beautiful young writer). Two were adapted into films. Fred had seen one of the movies, City of Effects, which followed three intertwining plots, one romantic, one political, and one medical. All took place in Paris. The film was heavily subtitled. The screening was the film’s premiere, and the dramatist was present. A French critic interviewed him before the movie started. “In most of your movies, the protagonist or someone close to him or her loses their life,” the critic said. The dramatist put up a finger. “I must object,” he said. The finger crouched down until it was part of a fist. “The phrase affronts me. Fights are won and lost. Lives are not. Lives are lived and then translated.” The critic, nodding, translated for half the crowd, which nodded also.
©2020 Ben Greenman/Stupid Ideas
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