Word: playlands
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Dates: during 1990-1999
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...most perplexing beach read of the summer is a train wreck of a novel by John Gregory Dunne, a very good writer (True Confessions, Harp) whose fiction usually stays nicely on the rails. Trying to figure out what went wrong with Playland (Random House; 494 pages; $25) should keep writers' workshops twittering until Norman Mailer publishes his next thousand pager...
...black anger overwhelmed white liberal gradualism in the '80s. Then, as the intransigent white government relented and prospects for peace improved, critics -- notably in New York City -- seemed to lose interest in a man they once hailed as great. Fugard's most recent pieces, My Children! My Africa! and Playland, dealt with South Africa's smoldering race hatred via small-scale, personal tragedies. Each had success elsewhere in the U.S. and around the world but closed quickly off-Broadway. Even at home in South Africa, where the shows were lauded, people wonder what a white liberal dissenter...