TOM STOPPARD GREW FROM A MAN OF NO CONVICTION: AN APPRECIATION
In his later plays Tom Stoppard almost always included a character who turns from a life of frivolous tomfoolery, of one sort or another, coming face to face with evil in the world, and recognizing his responsibility to become the change he wishes to see. That was in fact the trajectory of Stoppard’s writings themselves. He went from being a writer who avoided writing about politics--someone who said his favorite line in literature was “I’m a man of no convictions—at least, I think I am”--to being someone who wrote a nine-hour trilogy of plays on the origins of Russian socialism, and for whom almost every new play for two decades ended up carrying some kind of political theme. I loved this change in Stoppard as much as I’d loved what he’d written before the transformation. To hyperbolize as one does in the face of a loss, Stoppard’s writings were in a small way the spur for such an intellectual awakening in me as well. As young theater kids, my brother and I were interested ...