Who: D. T. Max, Michael Schulman
What: Book launch
Where: The National Arts Club, 15 Gramercy Park South
When: Thursday, November 17, free with RSVP, 8:00
Why: “I always wanted to write about Stephen Sondheim. Actually, long before writing about him was a possibility, I just wanted to meet Stephen Sondheim. In the spring of that long-ago year 1977, my mother went to a benefit for the Phoenix Theatre, a repertory company that pioneered off-Broadway theater. The event included a performance of Side by Side by Sondheim, a revue of the composer-lyricist’s songs. Going to benefits was not the sort of thing my mother usually did, but my uncle was a playwright whom the Phoenix had championed, and he might have persuaded her. Sondheim at the time was exactly the sort of creator the Phoenix wanted to associate itself with. He was remaking the American musical in the same way the Phoenix was trying to remake the theatrical landscape.”
So begins D. T. Max’s new book, Finale: Late Conversations with Stephen Sondheim (Harper, November 22, $20.99), which collects three years of interviews he conducted with Sondheim, including discussions about technology, boring books, pop music, movies, New York City, the joys of live theater, and more. It was initially going to be for a profile for the New Yorker, focusing on a new musical Sondheim was writing, but the pandemic and the maestro’s death changed things. On November 17 at 8:00, Max (The Family That Couldn’t Sleep: A Medical Mystery, Every Love Story Is a Ghost Story: A Life of David Foster Wallace) will be at the National Arts Club to launch Finale with the help of fellow New Yorker scribe Michael Schulman; admission is free with advance RSVP.