Tom Stoppard has died

My favourite quote from him:

“Because children grow up, we think a child's purpose is to grow up. But a child's purpose is to be a child. Nature doesn't disdain what lives only for a day. It pours the whole of itself into the each moment. We don't value the lily less for not being made of flint and built to last. Life's bounty is in its flow, later is too late. Where is the song when it's been sung? The dance when it's been danced? It's only we humans who want to own the future, too. We persuade ourselves that the universe is modestly employed in unfolding our destination. We note the haphazard chaos of history by the day, by the hour, but there is something wrong with the picture. Where is the unity, the meaning, of nature's highest creation? Surely those millions of little streams of accident and wilfulness have their correction in the vast underground river which, without a doubt, is carrying us to the place where we're expected! But there is no such place, that's why it's called utopia. The death of a child has no more meaning than the death of armies, of nations. Was the child happy while he lived? That is a proper question, the only question. If we can't arrange our own happiness, it's a conceit beyond vulgarity to arrange the happiness of those who come after us.”

Rosencrantz: Is that southerly?

Guildenstern: We came from roughly south.

Rosencrantz: Which way is that?

Guildenstern: In the morning, the sun would be easterly. I think we can assume that.

Rosencrantz: That it's morning?

Guildenstern: If it is, and the sun is over there for instance, that would be northerly. On the other hand, if it's not morning and the sun is over there, that would still be northerly. To put it another way, if we came from down there, and it's morning, the sun would be up there, but if it's actually over there and it's still morning, we must have come from back there, and if that's southerly, and the sun is really over there, then it's the afternoon. However, if none of these are the case...

Rosencrantz: Why don't you go and have a look?

Guildenstern: Pragmatism. Is that all you have to offer

R and G are dead is a true gem of the English language. Strongly recommend the film!

I'll never forget the first time I heard his name. As a kid, I had seen the Spielberg film Empire of the Sun starring a young Christian Bale and considered it one of my favorites. When I was an adult eagerly showing it to friends, one of them who was a theater major loudly exclaimed during the opening credits, "Tom Stoppard wrote the screenplay?!" I knew most of the names in the opening credits but had no idea who Tom Stoppard was until that moment.

When he passed away a couple days ago, I was surprised to discover he was originally from a Moravian town I've been to since one of my ancestors grew up 10 miles farther down the road. The twists and turns his family took escaping from there to the other side of the world and back no doubt enhanced his keen insight into people.

The Player giving a bit of meta-commentary (meta-meta-commentary?) on plays in Rosencrantz & Guildenstern Are Dead:

"Well, we can do you blood and love without the rhetoric, and we can do you blood and rhetoric without the love, and we can do you all three concurrent or consecutive. But we can't give you love and rhetoric without the blood. Blood is compulsory. They're all blood, you see."

One of his less famous works is a audio play based heavily on Pink Floyd's Dark Side of the Moon. A recommended listen. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Darkside_(radio_play)

A fun side effect story https://bsky.app/profile/neilpollyticks.bsky.social/post/3m6...

"She has been subjected to an onslaught of abuse that highlights an insidious authoritarian and misogynistic trend." -- Tom Stoppard on J.K. Rowling

Tom Stoppard famously described Edinburgh as the "Reykjavik of the South" as a gibe about its claim to be the "Athens of the North".

I wish National Theatre would re-release the Rosencrantz and Guildenstern are Dead productions with Cumberbatch and Radcliffe in memoriam, either on NTatHome or in theatres...

Almost everyone here will have seen a movie he was the screenwriter for or contributed to: Shakespeare in Love, Brazil, Empire of the Sun, even bits of Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade.

A lot of folks here will have read either Rosencrantz & Guildenstern Are Dead or Arcadia, which are still probably his best plays, and certainly the best introduction to his work. I personally also really like The Invention of Love, about the gloomy tortured homosexual poet and classical scholar A.E. Housman, which was also apparently Stoppard's favorite of his plays. It's definitely niche territory though and you might need to care at least just a little about A Shropshire Lad and latin textual criticism. The Coast of Utopia is even more packed with history and erudition, although worth a read; the currently top comment here is a quote from it about death, childhood, and the pursuit of happiness.

He had an interesting combination of traits that many HN readers will probably appreciate: erudite to the point of elitism, although never attended college; a self-described "small c. conservative in politics, literature, education and theatre" with libertarian inclinations, but he wrote a sprawling trilogy about 19th-century Russian socialist and anarchist exiles (The Coast of Utopia).

Now that he's dead, I want to go back and re-read all his plays, including the ones I never managed to get to before.

Every nerd should read or see Arcadia. It is, perhaps, the finest work of modern theater. And it's heavy on math. The lead is based on Ada Lovelace.

I wrote an extended essay on “Rosencranz and Guildenstern Are Dead” in high school… 1998-1999 period. I loved his screenplays even though I’m not a great fan of theatre in general. 88 is a ripe old age but it’s still deeply saddening.

GUIL: Hm?

ROS: Yes?

GUIL: What?

ROS: I thought you...

GUIL: No.

ROS: Ah.

I am here to recommend Jumpers. Not his most famous but one of his best. What a genius. RIP.

Wrote a paper on "Shakespeare in Love" (and the original Shakespeare) for lit in highschool.

My paper wasn't any good. Really in retrospect or at the time.

How he had reinvented it, reinvigorated it. (TIL about banished Rama and Sita from the Bhagavad Gita.) But then I realized it would just be easier to be a critic.

Anyways, truly when I lucked into big time screenwriting gigs it was in part because of the time I had spent writing a paper about Tom Stoppard's work.

I also remember watching "Finding Forrester" a lot. Punch the keys!

Well, "Arcadia" is good, but "Tron Legacy" & "Star Trek" are better. Famously he hated ghost writing, so I hope he can make his peace with it now.

The real inspector hound is a great short play for kids. Breaking the 4th wall.

Arcadia was the best play ever.

I was fortunate enough to see Leopoldstadt on Broadway. It was an absolutely brilliant, deeply moving play based on Stoppard's family history.

He is not on a boat.

I wonder how much art and science never came to be because the people who would have created it didn't escape the Nazi death machine, unlike Stoppard.

The entire group of "Martians" (von Neumann, Teller, Pólya, Szillard, von Kármán tec.) were Hungarian Jews. More than half of that community perished.

Steve Sailor's obituary is very much worth reading, too: https://www.stevesailer.net/p/sir-tom-stoppard-rip

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