Books.org participates in affiliate programs including Bookshop.org and the Amazon Services LLC Associates Program. We may earn a commission from qualifying purchases made through links on this page, at no additional cost to you.
Overview
This latest work from award winning playwright John Guare, author of House of Blue Leaves and Six Degrees of Separation, addresses ideas of history and memory, fame and ignominy, reason and insanity, with trademark Guare imagination. It's 1885. Ulysses S. Grant is penniless and dying of throat cancer in his Fifth Avenue brownstone while struggling to finish his memoirs. He's continuously cajoled and pestered by everyone from his wife and children to his publisher, Samuel Clemens (aka Mark Twain), to - via drugged hallucinations - the Emperor of Japan. Although he completes his memoirs eventually, the audience is left questioning their accuracy, and, ultimately, the authenticity of history itself.Synopsis
This latest work from award-winning playwright John Guare, author of House of Blue Leaves and Six Degrees of Separation, addresses ideas of history and memory, fame and ignominy, reason and insanity with his trademark Guare imagination. In a Fifth Avenue brownstone in 1880s New York, Ulysses S. Grant is penniless, dying of throat cancer, and attempting to finish his memoirs while he's cajoled and pestered by everyone from his wife and children to his publisher Samuel Clemens (aka Mark Twain) and, via his drugged hallucinations, the emperor of Japan. Although the memoirs are eventually completed, the audience is left questioning their accuracy and, ultimately, the authenticity of history itself.
NY Times
...unmistakably the product of Mr. Guare's exotic yet very American imagination...distinctive theatrical exuberance.