Tom Stoppard: A Life
Tom Stoppard is perhaps our greatest living playwright, with  over 25 plays produced since 1965 and a cornucopia of honors,  including numerous Tony awards, an Oscar for the screenplay of  Shakespeare in Love, and a knighthood. Yet Stoppard is and  always has been a hard man to pin down, and noted critic and  academic Nadel freely admits that "Stoppard in many ways resists  biography." Fortunately, that does not keep him from trying and,  600-plus pages later, largely succeeding. Canadian  critic/biographer Nadel (Various Positions: A Life of Leonard  Cohen) spends considerable time wending his way through the  Stoppard chronology, dwelling on the linguistically lush plays  like Rosencrantz and Guildenstern Are Dead, Jumpers, Travesties,  The Real Thing, and Arcadia, all of which are uniquely complex,  comedic, and intellectual. This thorough and fresh text updates  and surpasses Michael Billington's 1987 Stoppard the Playwright.  The best and most complete Stoppard biography available, this is  a no-brainer acquisition decision for all collections. Barry X.  Miller, Austin P.L., TXCopyright 2002 Reed Business Information, Inc.