Sir, – In answer to the letter (October 18th) about the language used in my play The Talk of the Town, I am sorry that Yvonne Jerrold and two other relatives of Maeve Brennan’s (Joan Doyle and Jim Bolger) were offended by my choices with regard to Brennan’s verbal sparring with her American male colleagues in the 1950s. Like many plays about historical subjects, The Talk of the Town (Project Arts, to October 20th) does not aim to marshal factual biographical data. Instead, it is a drama – a necessarily fictional piece (because almost entirely composed of invented conversations), shaped with the aim of creating an involving work of theatre. For instance, I chose to meld two of Brennan’s editors at the New Yorker, William Maxwell and William Shawn, into one character. My aim was to create a play that would engage audiences in 2012, about a social world now more than half a century gone. In researching The Talk of the Town, I drew inspiration from a great number of sources, without basing the play on any one of them. Angela Bourke’s excellent biography of Brennan was a starting point for many flights of dramatic imagination, although it was Brennan’s own body of journalism and fiction that always served as my touchstone.
I only hope that my play will contribute to the resurgence of interest in Brennan as a major short story writer of the 20th century as well as an enduringly fascinating woman. – Yours, etc,