Richard Greenberg accepts the Tony Award for Best Play for ‘Take Me Out,’ 2003. Photo by Getty Images
East Meadow, 7th grade science class, September 1970. We were seated in alphabetical order, 12-year-old Gottlieb and Greenberg sharing a lab desk. I told Rich that my cousin Susan acted in a community theater production of Jean Anouilh’s The Flies, which convinced him she was a minor celebrity. Rich relished my family anecdotes and wove them into jokes and asides, possibly a song or two. We passed notes that cracked us up and fabricated stories about our teachers’ private lives. Rich’s ear for wit and humor made me feel smarter and funnier than I was. Even then, he was eager to raise an eyebrow in conspiratorial delight.
When a classmate said that Jews should go to hell, Rich turned blatant antisemitism into a quip about the orchestra in hell, as most of the Jewish kids played instruments (viola for Rich, flute for me). Drama kids were charmed by his theatrical prowess, casual sloppiness, and easy laugh. In a school teeming with jocks, he was our gateway to culture. Even then, his light shined bright.
For several years, Rich and I were each other’s dates for Christmas and New Year’s Eve. In high school, we’d go to East Meadow’s Apollo Diner; when we overlapped in Manhattan in our twenties, we’d go to Old John’s on Broadway, sometimes catching a holiday screening of It’s a Wonderful Life. On New Year’s, Rich would insist on returning home by midnight because he needed to be at his typewriter when the ball dropped. Following his lead, I’d do the same.
I have a letter from Rich dated November 1981. I’d written to him from grad school, questioning my decision to study Comp Lit when I only wanted to write fiction, and he encouraged me to “stick it out for as long as it seems worth anything, then go.” He was living at his parents’ house then, writing all the time, working on an exploitative TV script, “the dialogue so slick you can ice skate on it …” He confessed he’d requested two MFA applications, one for Yale, and one for Iowa. He wrote:
When you go to Yale School of Drama, something happens. You get produced. Somewhere. Theater companies read your script. There’s hope. A bit of a cachet.
Now let’s see if I can get it. And if I get in, if I can get money (damn you, Ronald Reagan.)
My play, “The Sweeter Music in His Mind” has gone through enough revisions to qualify as something I care about, and I really do think it has potential . . . I’m giving it to a friend of my father who is good friends with an agent whom he can get to read it — which might be wonderful.
Whatever.
So for me there are great doldrums glossed over with a feeling of activity — doors opening a crack, possibilities looming large, shriveling, being forgotten. Life.
That burst of activity opened all doors to a brilliant career that will never be forgotten.
Even amid his acclaim, Rich cared deeply about my work. When I swooned over James Salter’s Light Years, he worried about Salter’s lyricism influencing my prose, cautioning me not to be precious or pretentious. My first attempt at a novel didn’t sell, but Rich always spoke of that manuscript with affection, refusing to discount the promise of my ghost novel. (Rich had a ghost novel too, the Princeton thesis he wrote under Joyce Carol Oates.) Decades later, when I published my debut, he emailed a note that could serve as a treatise on the craft of fiction.
I’ve read your book and if it weren’t ridiculously arrogant of me to feel proud of you, I would feel so proud of you.
There’s now all this momentum, a sense of narrative drive, of wholeness. I loved how you’ve seized a subject matter — milieu, body of knowledge — and made it your own. We never doubt that you know what you’re talking about, which is not just the minimum necessary for winning the reader’s confidence but a positive pleasure of reading a novel — the feeling of going someplace full, of traveling.
And even I, who have no feelings to speak of, choked up toward the end: I’ve lived these people’s lives with them!
So, too belatedly, mazel to the power of tov. Can’t wait for the next one (that’s enthusiasm, not pressure.)
Rich was notoriously uncomfortable with fame. When he won a Tony or garnered a great review, he’d respond to a congratulatory email by asking when I was free for dinner, if I preferred white wine or red, reminding me that he’d bought separate plates for me, his kosher vegetarian friend. He’d serve me garlicky pasta at his small dining table, then we’d move to the living room to discuss work. He’d sometimes pace, sharing the outline of a new scene. When I handed over manuscript pages, he’d tell me what fell flat and what rang true. His pitch for language and innuendo was inscrutable.
In late May, I visited him at a nursing home. I’d just returned from a trip to India. Though he was bedridden and uncomfortable, his capacious mind was robust. We reminisced about high school. He asked about my work, and as always, reminded me of the ghost novel. And then he wanted to see photos of my travels. He scrolled through my phone, slowly, his eyes filling with wonder. He never wanted to visit India, but my photos had taken him somewhere he didn’t expect. Rich may have been one of our greatest living playwrights, master of irony and wit, but for that single hour, he was overcome with childlike awe. That was his final gift to me, and I’ll never forget it.
Now I try to envision the lines he’d write about his last months, the scenes he’d write about our attempts to eulogize him, but I come up empty. A great light has gone out. I watch clips from Three Days of Rain, The Assembled Parties, and Our Mother’s Brief Affair and I’m verklempt with gratitude. (Rich would have wanted me to use a Yiddishism.) His brilliance was legendary, but his kindness guided me on my path. Such a friendship was mazel to the power of tov.
