To the editors:
What’s more, you have missed every important point this play was intended to make. Unless you are hard of hearing, you shouldn’t have said that Genevieve wanted to “inherit the house” and “sell it.” Nor should you have quoted a nonexisting sentence, to wit: “Things are different today,” nor should you have misquoted the word “safest” (in terms of birth-control) in Gene’s speech and replaced it with the word “easiest.” It’s highly unethical on your part and detrimental to me and to the future of my play to be putting words in my mouth that are not there. Thus as the word “easiest” does not make any sense in this context, you’ve misquoted me with the vile, devious intention to make me sound “silly.”
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With regard to cliches in the play, people do use cliches when appropriate. And yet you have’t mentioned even one from the entire play; unless you meant the sentence, which ironically you describe as being similar to the ones from a foreign language textbook “And they say that one of the ways to a man’s heart. . . . ” But then, if this is the sentence you call cliche, it was not very brilliant on your part for having realized it, since as it begins with the words “And they say. . . . ” it conveys the fact that it’s a saying, or a maxim, or an American cliche, if you would rather call it as such. Perhaps you don’t know the difference between a proverbial phrase, a saying, or a maxim, and you lump them all in the category of cliches. Also, what you might consider a cliche could be just a stock phrase, even an idiomatic phrase.
Therefore, Laurie’s covering the furniture up was to show her that she finally got over that grief, which ties up as well with Gene’s using this as an excuse to shock her parents later on. Moreover, Laurie’s being a nutritionist also ties up with Gene’s accusation later on that her mother used her children as guinea pigs. As for telling what kind of work Fred is doing, wouldn’t it have seemed odd to let the audience wonder about it? especially since we had to learn about the kind of work Laurie is doing? And yet, all the information given in everything mentioned above didn’t take more than a sentence or two. And as there is so much to say in this play, I’ve even overlooked the “three times rule” in an effort to make it shorter. Thus, as I must refer to your saying “her characters say in three lines what other writers would have them say in one,” I also wish to point out that you thought it safe to say this and that there is no way that anyone could contradict you. Yet, there is: I’ve already asked the Reader to tell you that I challenge you, and to convince you to rewrite five pages of dialogue and try to say with less what (according to you) my characters say with more. I also explained what pages I mean: (1) Fred–Laurie–Gene; (2) Fred–Laurie; (3) Laurie–Gene; (4) Fred–Gene; (5) Gene–Kurt.
However, you are right that Christine Irwin was not dramatic enough at the time you saw the play (as you judged by her “too-quiet delivery”), but you are wrong about Shaneyfelt. He does not look over his shoulder as he exits, but when he does, as a person parting with a loved one (his wife or daughter), it’s natural to give a last look to her. I do the same even though the person I’m parting with is not always someone I’m very close to.
