Excerpts from The Rosenberg Trial and its Artistic Influences
“This is my rendering”
Thane quoted Mr. Kushner (himself paraphrasing Plato), from a 1995 interview in Mother Jones magazine: “People shouldn’t trust artists and they shouldn’t trust art.” He then asked for thoughts on history being filtered through the mind, the imagination. In response, Kushner said, “I think that there are issues of responsibility… I was very careful with Roy Cohn [as a character in Angels in America] not to attribute anything to him that he didn’t himself claim.” He stated that he wrestled with “whether it is ethically responsible to fictionalize a living person.” Mr. Doctorow added his perspective: an author is “similar to an artist. Set up your easel and there’s a subject, a real life subject. There’s your rendering. The compact between you and the audience is clear, ‘this is my rendering.’”
“Yes and Not Necessarily”
Later, expanding on the notion of the artist’s rendering, Doctorow offered that “public figures make fictions of themselves. If you really want to read fiction about J.P. Morgan, read his authorized biography…I’ve never written about a public figure in which I feel I’ve been lying.” Kushner said, “with historical fiction, there are 2 questions, and the answers should be ‘Yes’ and ‘Not Necessarily.’ The first question is, ‘Did this happen?’ and the second is, ‘Did it happen in this way?’”
“The Final Prophecy”
Thane then invited Kushner and Doctorow “to think about the implications of revenge as a model of justice,” providing that, “with respect to the Rosenbergs, neither of you seem interested in revenge, but much more interested in forgiveness.” Kushner spoke of the impossibility of healing in a legal context: “we’ll never get justice in the courts, this [redemptive storytelling] is the only way to get justice.” Doctorow added that “We all live lives of moral consequence, and finally the whole scene has to be delivered and … the moral truth of the issue is the final prophecy, if you will, of what’s going on.”
We are awaiting photographs and, potentially, audio or video recordings of the evening; when anything becomes available online it will be accessible via this site. Please use the comments link below to discuss these excerpts or anything else that was said during the event!
January 21st, 2006 at 6:10 pm
Says:
Just wanted to note a couple things from the talk that really blew me away but weren’t mentioned above.
One was Mr. Doctorow’s revelation about using a child’s perspective to approach morally or legally ambiguous situations. Really stunning, in the sense of being one of those genius ideas that’s so elegant and simple, yet could still take someone years (or 150 pages) to think of or stumble upon.
Another thing (touched on by both Mr. Doctorow and Mr. Kushner) that never really occurred to me before, even though in retrospect it’s one of the unifying characteristics of my all-time favorite books and movies, is the way that multiple perspectives and shades of grey can be so much more effective than absolutes when you’re attempting to aestheticize something as complex as reality. Even in the case where you’re dealing with a moral absolute, like the evil of the Holocaust. In fact, looking back, that’s precisely what made reading Malamud’s The Magic Barrel such a revelatory experience for me (and it was) — the thing was filled with surprising protagonists, unsympathetic victims, and all sorts of characterization curveballs.
January 27th, 2006 at 8:11 pm
Says:
Kushner said, “I was very careful with Roy Cohn [as a character in Angels in America] not to attribute anything to him that he didn’t himself claim.” Kushner also noted that a theme of Angels in America is “forgiveness.” Given the author’s assertion that he tried to present Roy Cohn in a factually reliable manner, that the character is unrepentantly malevolent throughout the play, and that Ethel Rosenberg shows ultimately that she does not forgive Cohn, shall we presume Kushner opts for revenge over forgiveness?
Perhaps Kushner has answered this himself, through his paraphrase of Plato: “People shouldn’t trust artists and they shouldn’t trust art.” But many do. To what extent do artists who introduce this blurring of reality and fantasy in their fiction contribute to acceptance of the blurring of truth and falsehood by communicators in advertising, business, politics, and other venues? Consider this question both from the standpoint of the educated and the naive public.