August Wilson: Poet, Pugilist, Playwright

August Wilson: A Life by Patti Hartigan, Simon and Schuster, 544 pages, $32.50.

By Robert Israel

I met playwright August Wilson (1945-2005) at Penumbra, an African-American troupe, in St. Paul in 1979 when I was writing for a Twin Cities weekly paper. Wilson had a day job as a writer at the Minnesota Science Museum. He introduced himself as a poet, but looked like a pugilist, as if he had just stepped out of the boxing ring. He had a self-assured demeanor and a randy glint to his eye. Wilson made it clear that, when it came to writing, he’d only settle for delivering knockout punches and would never exit the boxing ring unless he held his hard-won trophy aloft. A group of us, mostly ink-stained wretches, would retreat to a local bar after performances in which we’d marvel at his impromptu poetic recitations, words gushing forth in rhyming torrents. During these alcohol-fueled sessions, Wilson embodied this description, from a poem by Sylvia Plath: “You leave the same impression of something beautiful, but annihilating.”

At the time, there were no poetry slams. Their precursors, in the African-American tradition, were called “toasts,” memorized vocal narrations of sexual conquests and violent altercations spoken aloud via bawdy, musical rhymes. In this genre, Wilson had a rival, the African American poet Etheridge Knight, who lived nearby in South Minneapolis. My feeling is that Knight could have gone a few rounds with Wilson and possibly bested him. Knight was an ex-convict, a disabled Korean War veteran, and a recovering drug addict. I attended several of his mesmerizing poetry recitals at the Cedar Riverside People’s Center. “Run sister run — the Bugga man comes!,” Knight chanted from his gut-wrenching poem “The Violent Space, (or when your sister sleeps around for money).” If the two poets ever met in real life — after all, they occupied the same “violent space” — I have found no record of it.

You will not find the aforementioned discussion of Wilson’s poetic roots in Patti Hartigan’s authorized biography of Wilson, August Wilson: A Life. In fact, her book contains only a few brief citations of Wilson’s poetry. She explains that “the August Wilson Estate declined authorization.” Sadly, this omission results in a huge loss when it comes to understanding, and appreciating, Wilson and his writing. Time magazine insisted that Wilson wrote “pure poetry” that was drawn from a deep well. One finds many “toasts” in his plays, verbal jousts between characters, intoned with the same mesmerizing torrent of words he used during those St. Paul booze sessions that illustrated what he called “blood memory,” streams of language that tapped into what he claimed were ancestral roots that stretched back over the centuries.

Wilson wove these “blood memories” forcefully into his plays, beginning with Ma Rainey’s Black Bottom, first developed at the O’Neill Center in Connecticut, then at Yale Rep, and finally on Broadway, and in Fences, which had a similar development arc and went on to win both the 1987 Pulitzer Prize and Tony Award (both plays were later made into films). It was during the tryout run of Fences in New Haven, starring James Earl Jones, that I was reintroduced to Wilson by the late Trinity Rep actor Ed Hall (who gets a special mention in Hartigan’s book). Hall, a favorite of Wilson’s, was my neighbor from Providence; he premiered the role of Bynum Walker in Wilson’s Joe Turner’s Come and Gone.

Hartigan takes us behind the scenes, looking at the stressful business challenges Wilson faced, particularly when he sparred with wealthy sponsors and exploitative lawyers. She offers some sharp glimpses into Wilson’s private life, describing his voracious proclivity to pursue women in extramarital affairs. She examines the consequences of his infidelities, namely that two out of his three marriages ended in divorce. Wilson was also given to fits of violent temper, and Hartigan describes his outbursts of rage in unsparing detail. Those close to him attributed his anger as the product of his troubled youth. Born Frederick August Kittel, Jr., Wilson endured poverty and racism during his formative years and dropped out of school at age 15, living hand-to-mouth in his hometown of Pittsburgh as he developed his artistic métier.

Wilson benefited from tutelage by disciplined directors, theater critics, and dramaturges, among them Michael Feingold, Edith Oliver, and Yale Drama School dean Lloyd Richards, who helped him shape his scripts for the stage. Before succumbing to cancer at the age 60, Wilson had finished 10 scripts that chronicle, decade by decade, the Black experience in America in the 20th century. He was awarded a second Pulitzer Prize in Drama in 1990 for The Piano Lesson.

Hartigan also reveals that Wilson was a bit of a “fabulist,” and she cites instances in his late career autobiographical work, How I Learned What I Learned, that were outright lies. These embellishments do not diminish Wilson’s accomplishments or tarnish his artistry, which was profound. American authors, such as Mark Twain and Ernest Hemingway, have indulged in expansive egotistical fancies: they were, like Wilson, fiction writers. Hartigan also reports that, near the end of his life, even after learning of his dire health issues, Wilson never stopped working, mulling over writing a novel and screenplays (several scripts were left unfinished at the time of his passing).

Hartigan’s writing style is dry and reportorial, honed during her years at the Boston Globe where she was an arts reviewer and reporter. While this disciplined approach works well when it comes to resuscitating the multifarious facts of Wilson’s life, it fails to capture the combustible passion that Wilson — as playwright and poet — infused into his works. As a biographer, she has the nagging habit of repeating details, sometimes on the same page, and often within later chapters, that even casual readers will have already absorbed at first reference. She seems oblivious to the fact that readers possess the intelligence to recall multiple details — that there is no need for her to insert pesky reminders.

What we get from Hartigan’s book is a workmanlike portrait of August Wilson, a dutiful timeline that never delves deep enough into his poetic soul. Wilson emerges as a writer who fought hard, kept his eyes on the prize, and accepted nothing less than triumph. He was a champion in the boxing ring that is the American theater.

**

A previous version of this review appeared in The Arts Fuse magazine (Boston), on August 13, 2024.

Remembering William Friedkin

William Friedkin (1935-2023)

By Robert Israel

The man was seated closest to the swinging doors at the edge of the horseshoe bar. He was bespectacled, wearing a suit with his tie askew, the penultimate lonely-man-at-the-bar.

It had to be a Wednesday night, in the fall of 1990, because, as editor of The Jewish Advocate, that was my late night at the office, and after putting the newspaper to bed, I celebrated by hoofing it a few blocks to my favorite watering-hole, the Union Oyster House on Blackstone Block. I also knew my friend, the late John Ferrarri, would be working. John, who held the unofficial title of Chairman of the Bar, knew what I liked – three little neck clams and three oysters, a cup of chowder, and a draught of Bass ale. Upon entering the establishment, once we locked eyes, he’d commence to prepare these items to serve me. My usual seat at the center of the bar – it afforded me a view of the foot traffic on Union Street – was taken, so I sat next to the bespectacled man, and bid him good evening.

“How do you do?” this sullen man said. “I’m Bill.”

“Pleased to meet you,” I replied, and then John approached.

“This is Mr. Israel,” John said, “he’s a teacher.”

John knew that I had left my job teaching high school drop outs in the inner city a few years before, but he insisted on identifying me as a teacher anyway, always introducing me as “Mr.”

“Mr. Friedkin is a movie director,” John said, and he placed a cup of chowder in front of me, wedged in place by folded napkins to compensate for the horseshoe bar’s tilt.

“I know your work,” I said to Friedkin.

“I’m sure you do,” he replied, laughing. “And you want to know all about it, I bet.”

“Mr. Friedkin is in town to scout locations,” John interrupted, placing the plate of clams and oysters next to the bowl of chowder.

“I’m really here to say hello to John,” Friedkin said.

“So you’re not scouting locations?”

“I’m always scouting,” Friedkin said, “but I really just wanted to check in with John.”

John Ferrarri had that effect on most everyone who visited the restaurant. He had an uncanny ability to make you feel welcomed and comfortable and willing to share your stories with complete strangers. He did this simply, directly, and without fanfare, breaking the ice by telling jokes – and they were terrible jokes – and making sure you knew you were the only one that mattered, even if the place was crammed to the rafters with customers.

“So I want to know how you did that scene in The Exorcist,” I began, “the one where the young girl is in the bedroom…”

“Not going to happen,” he cut me off.

“Oh, c’mon,” I begged.

“Not tonight, Bob,” he said, “but we can talk about other stuff.”

And so we chatted for the next hour or so about our shared Ukrainian Jewish roots. He talked about his parents, about growing up as a first-generation Jewish kid in Chicago, and told me about his grasp of the Yiddish language and how, by understanding the harsh sounds of Yiddish, he felt he had an advantage when he began filming the clipped dialog found in The French Connection, a film that won him an Academy Award for Best Director.

“I had to learn how to get the nub of things in English because I was always translating Yiddish into English in my head,” he told me. “You’ve got to cut through the verbiage, especially when your making a film about cops chasing drug dealers.”

After awhile, it was time to head home. We shook hands. I told him I was a newspaper editor and reporter. He laughed.

“I knew right away you weren’t a teacher,” he said, chortling. “So I’m especially glad I didn’t discuss my films.”

Friedkin, who died this week at age 87, was a man who never forgot his roots. Before we both exited the Union Oyster House that night, he told me a joke in Yiddish – and no, I cannot remember it all these years later – but it was very much like him, earthy, a bit bawdy, and he delivered with just the right punch and swagger. I handed him my card and invited him to be formally interviewed for the newspaper. He thanked me. He said he abhorred interviews, but he’d certainly enjoy meeting up again when he returned to Boston.

“Any friend of John’s is ok with me,” he said.