Word: plot
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Dates: during 1990-1999
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...plot is based on Vogel's experience with her own brother, who asked her to travel to Europe with him after he found out that he had AIDS. Vogel, unaware that her brother was ill, refused to travel with him, and he died soon afterwards...
Even without the Harvard jokes, the script is funny--kitschy, but funny. The play is described in the program as "a late-20th-century response to the Elizabethan masterpiece," Doctor Faustus, by Christopher Marlowe. The plot has no surprises: a previously upstanding citizen and scholar sells his soul to the devil in exchange for having his innermost wishes fulfilled and must eventually pay the price for his folly...
Every neurosis known to man and Freud is shared by the two dysfunctional writers who hurtle through the obstaclecourse plot of Wonder Boys. Grady Tripp, who narrates the novel, has produced no new books in the seven years that he has taught creative writing at a small Pittsburgh college. Instead, he spends his time smoking huge amounts of marijuana and churning out thousands of pages of his own novel, also called Wonder Boys, which he knows he will never finish. James Leer, one of Grady's students, is twenty years younger but no less screwed up. An awkward loner...
...plot progresses, Grady fails to solve any of his problems, but his goodnatured confusion is winning, and we can't help but develop a real affection for him. The devastating effects of his irresponsibility on his wife, his mistress and his agent are clear enough, but it is also clear that Grady has nothing but good intentions. His general predicament is mirrored in the fate of his bloated masterpiece; despite all his ideas and plans, he just can't bring anything to a successful conclusion...
...have to confess that I love the play, despite its somewhat saccharine rags-to-riches plot. I love the way Henry Higgins bombards Liza with continuously more inventive insults, to which she can only respond "coo" and look offended. I still think that "bedraggled guttersnipe" is the height of wit. Henry Higgins has that I'm-too-slick-for-words-but-I-fall-for-women-from- the-underclass kind of style that I find admirable in middle-aged linguists...