Voice of our Shadow

I tried a first-person narrator – a girl who'd been jilted by one of the guys. That didn't work, so I tried being one of their parents. Absolutely nothing. Next I filled three sheets of paper with Ross and Bobby stories. Some of them made me laugh; others made me guilty or sad. Remembering everything made me obsessed with the idea of getting a bit of their world down on paper. Nothing was going to stop me.

It's fu

How many times had I watched my brother brush his long hair into a perfect shining swirl, slap on a gallon of English Leather cologne, and wink at himself in the bathroom mirror when he was done? "Looking good, Joe. Your brother is look-ing good!"

I thought about it for a while and, sitting down at the typewriter one afternoon, opened the story with those same words addressed to an adoring little brother who sat on the edge of the bathtub watching him prepare for . . . I had no idea of where to go from there.

It took me two weeks to write. It was about a bunch of toughs in a small town who are getting ready to go to a big party at a girl's house. Each boy has a little section of the story, and in turn tells you about their lives and what he thinks will happen tonight when the party gets going up at Brenda's.

I never worked on anything so hard in my life. I loved it. I laid each story on top of the previous one as gently as if I were building a house of cards. I shifted them around and around incessantly for best effect and made my teacher mad because I turned the assignment in a week after it was due. When I was done, however, I knew I'd written something good, maybe even special. I was really proud of it.

My teacher liked it, too, and suggested I submit it to a magazine. I did; over the months it made the rounds of all the major and minor places. Finally Timepiece – circulation 700 – took it. Payment was only two contributor's copies, but I was overjoyed. I had the cover of that issue framed and put it up on the wall in front of my desk.

Three months later a theatrical producer in New York called and asked if I'd be willing to sell him the world rights to the story for two thousand dollars. Amazed, I was on the verge of saying yes when I remembered stories of writers being gypped out of carloads of money by co

You know what happens when you sell a story to someone: they push it and pull it and turn it inside out. When they're done eviscerating it ("shaping it up," they like to call it), they put it in front of the public with a line in the program that reads something like "Based on an original short story by Joseph Le

The producer of the play, a tall man with bright-red hair named Phil Westberg, called me just after he'd bought the story and politely asked how I would approach it as a play. I didn't know anything, so I said something dumb and forgettable, but he didn't want to hear what I had to say anyway, because he had it all pla

Phil and his gang went on to use my story as the basis for the wildly successful (and depressing) play, The Voice of Our Shadow. Among other things, it is about sadness and the small dreams of the young, and besides ru

The hoopla over the play began in my senior year in college. I thought it was great at the begi

Within a few months I had more money than King Tut. I was also exhausted and embittered by the same well-meant questions and the same disappointed looks on faces when I told them no, no, I didn't write the play, you see . . .

When I discovered that my university offered a six-week course in modern German literature in Vie

I loved Vie

There are cafйs where you can sit all morning over one cup of wonderful coffee and read a book without anyone ever disturbing you. Small, smelly movie theaters with wooden seats, where a couple of sad-looking models put on a "live" fashion show for you before the feature goes on. I had a favorite gasthaus where the waiter brought dogs water in a white porcelain bowl with the name of the restaurant on the side.

It is also the only city I know that gives up its best parts grudgingly, unhappily. Paris slaps you in the face with oceanic boulevards, golden croissants, and charm on every square inch of its surface. New York sneers – completely assured and indifferent. It knows that no matter how much dirt or crime or fear there is, it is still the center of everything. It can do what it wants because it knows you will always need it.