Tom Stoppard

November 1, 2020
The celebrated playwright gets the Lee treatment. Stoppard (b. 1937) asked award-winning literary biographer Lee to write his biography, giving her "access to a wealth of materials and permission to quote from them." In this thorough, sympathetic, and eminently readable text, the author tracks his early years in Czechoslovakia through his time in Singapore, India, and England, where he met his stepfather, Maj. Kenneth Stoppard. Interestingly Lee notes that Stoppard, who dropped out of college, didn't show much interest in the theater until he was a reporter for a Bristol newspaper. The city's vibrant arts scene motivated an "anxious, eager, ambitious, shy and unworldly" young man who became friends with Peter O'Toole. A job with another paper had him writing film and play reviews, covering "everything that came out, from new European cinema to Hollywood romances, from Westerns to film noir, from musicals to disaster movies." As she has done in her previous top-notch books, Lee carefully unwinds autobiographical links between her subject's life and works. Despite his newspaper work, Stoppard knew that plays were "his business" and "theatre was where he might find rapid success." His first play, A Walk on the Water, was produced in 1963, and Rosencrantz and Guildenstern Are Dead, which began as a one-act play, debuted in 1966. Though the "first reviews" were "terrible," most were "ecstatic," making Stoppard "all at once successful and famous." As Lee masterfully explores both her subject's life and work, she portrays a uniquely talented writer fully in tune with a wide variety of influences. She pays close attention to his screenplays, as well, including Steven Spielberg's Empire of the Sun, Shakespeare in Love ("one of his best-loved pieces of work"), and a TV adaptation of Ford Madox Ford's Parade's End. He enjoyed doing films but noted that they weren't a "continuation of one's life as a writer" but rather "a detour." Ultimately, this expansive portrait of a significant 20th-century artist is a biographical masterpiece. Stoppard chose his biographer well. Authoritative and exhaustive--another jewel in Lee's literary crown.

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Starred review from December 1, 2020

In 1946, Jewish playwright Tom Stoppard (b. 1938) landed in England after having fled Nazi-occupied Czechoslovakia and spending years as a refugee in Singapore and India. With an English stepfather and a Czech mother determined to make her children 100 percent English, Stoppard started out as a reporter for a newspaper in Bristol, moved to writing columns and freelancing, and burst onto the arts scene with the comedy Rosenkrantz and Gildenstern Are Dead (1966), about two throwaway characters in Hamlet who don't know if they exist at all outside a play in which they're decidedly peripheral. James Tait Black Prize winner Lee (emerita, English Literature, Oxford Univ.; Penelope Fitzgerald: A Life) is the perfect choice to write about Stoppard's riveting life. She explores how his talky plays are filled with ideas, made human in the characters who give voice to them--Stoppard read Wittgenstein during the creation of Jumpers (1972); 2015's The Hard Problem centers on the nature of consciousness. In the 1980s, Stoppard rediscovered his roots as a Czech and later a Jew--but he remains in his life and writing a committed, contented Englishman. Lee's knowledge of all the key players and discussions of Stoppard's writings are models of exposition, capturing a personality that is generous, supportive, and, well, fun. VERDICT A major biography of a major, and appealing, literary figure, this study will jump off the shelves.--David Keymer, Cleveland

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Starred review from January 11, 2021
Lee (Penelope Fitzgerald: A Life) tackles the life and works of a playwright who started “without a cause, except the cause of good language and good art” in this exhaustive biography of Tom Stoppard. To account for the prolific artist who “suddenly became famous in the late 1960s,” Lee makes use of diaries, drafts, and letters, as well as interviews. Stoppard was born in Czechoslovakia in 1937; two years later, his family moved to Singapore, then to India, and, finally, England. Lee sheds light on Stoppard’s relationship to his “Czech-ness” (in the late 1960s he was indifferent, but in the late 2000s he “spoke with tender feelings about his origins”) and his Jewishness (he was unaware his mother was Jewish until 1993). His political activity is also covered, in particular his relationship with Václav Havel, a writer who became Czechoslovakia’s president and whose works Stoppard translated. Lee’s treatment of Stoppard’s plays (including 1966’s Rosencrantz and Guildenstern Are Dead and 1974’s Travesties) break down the playwright’s process, detailing a play’s conception and production: Travesties, for example, was written in his “most intense period of fatherhood” and took nine months. Lee’s account is a deeply detailed and valuable contribution to literary history.

January 1, 2021
Playwright Tom Stoppard's brilliant career gets the treatment it deserves in this authoritative (if overlong) biography by master biographer Hermione Lee. Stoppard authorized Lee to write his story. She had a wealth of material, beginning with his family's escape from WWII Czechoslovakia, his years with his mother and brother in India, and their eventual migration to England. Once transplanted, he led a charmed life. After a brief career as a journalist, Stoppard gravitated towards the theater, where his love of wordplay and his conceptual brilliance merged in plays such as Rosencrantz and Guildenstern Are Dead, Arcadia, and The Coast of Utopia. Critics analyzed his work; theater work led to lucrative film assignments. Stoppard's generosity is on full display, from his championing of political dissidents to financial support of friends and family. Lee seems to have perused every available source, conducting 100 interviews, and her finest achievement is her analysis of his plays' interconnections with philosophy, history, politics, and science. Missing is an in-depth account of Stoppard's inner struggles. Fellow playwright David Hare called Stoppard "unreachable," and few spoke ill to Lee of the still-living playwright. Still, Lee brings her readers as close to a literary genius as most of us will ever get.

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