Overview
From the New York Times bestselling author and beloved critic and columnist, a memoir that captures the tangled pursuits of art, ambition, and belonging, set against the backdrop of a tumultuous and tragic era of New York theater
In 1980, Frank Rich joined the New York Times as a second-string drama critic, a dream job by any account – thrusting him into the heart of the theater world he had set his sights on since age seven. A child of divorce, growing up in Washington, DC, Frank found refuge early in Broadway cast albums, weekly issues of Variety, and the city’s touring house, the National Theater. He bought standing room tickets for every show he could afford, and secured a job as a ticket taker, trading the emotional turbulence of his mother’s second marriage for an imagined family, one whose bright lights promised a place he belonged. In the world of the theater, he found a calling. But after having finally made his way to Times Square in adulthood, Frank realized he had lashed himself to the mast of the New York theater scene just as it was starting to lilt amidst economic recession and surging crime rates. Drowning in red ink, and with a lethal epidemic on the horizon, Broadway was in no position to save itself, let alone him. The Times was facing its own crisis, entering its last decade as a print newspaper before being upended by the Internet. Frank, in the center of this rapidly changing cultural world, clung to the edge of a dream that was increasingly out of reach.
Papering the House is Frank’s account of those vibrant but bittersweet years, of the theater he worshipped, and the life he built around it. Vaulting between the rich intimacy of his own memories and the backstage drama of American theater history, Frank brings to life the New York of smoke-filled newsrooms, opening-night intrigue, and towering personalities, including Joe Papp, David Merrick, and Stephen Sondheim. He recounts the controversies he waded into as a critic – and the erosion of criticism in general – alongside the industry’s struggles, including the devastation of AIDS on the theater community. As he navigates fatherhood, divorce, new love, and great loss, Frank begins to understand why he sought shelter in theater all those years ago, and in retracing his path, discovers that the story he must finally understand is his own.
At once an ode to theater, its joys and its disappointments, and an evocative meditation on family – both the one we inherit and the one we try, however imperfectly, to build for ourselves – Papering the House is the moving memoir of the boy who ran away to the theater, and the man who had to find his way back to the world beyond the footlights.
In 1980, Frank Rich joined the New York Times as a second-string drama critic, a dream job by any account – thrusting him into the heart of the theater world he had set his sights on since age seven. A child of divorce, growing up in Washington, DC, Frank found refuge early in Broadway cast albums, weekly issues of Variety, and the city’s touring house, the National Theater. He bought standing room tickets for every show he could afford, and secured a job as a ticket taker, trading the emotional turbulence of his mother’s second marriage for an imagined family, one whose bright lights promised a place he belonged. In the world of the theater, he found a calling. But after having finally made his way to Times Square in adulthood, Frank realized he had lashed himself to the mast of the New York theater scene just as it was starting to lilt amidst economic recession and surging crime rates. Drowning in red ink, and with a lethal epidemic on the horizon, Broadway was in no position to save itself, let alone him. The Times was facing its own crisis, entering its last decade as a print newspaper before being upended by the Internet. Frank, in the center of this rapidly changing cultural world, clung to the edge of a dream that was increasingly out of reach.
Papering the House is Frank’s account of those vibrant but bittersweet years, of the theater he worshipped, and the life he built around it. Vaulting between the rich intimacy of his own memories and the backstage drama of American theater history, Frank brings to life the New York of smoke-filled newsrooms, opening-night intrigue, and towering personalities, including Joe Papp, David Merrick, and Stephen Sondheim. He recounts the controversies he waded into as a critic – and the erosion of criticism in general – alongside the industry’s struggles, including the devastation of AIDS on the theater community. As he navigates fatherhood, divorce, new love, and great loss, Frank begins to understand why he sought shelter in theater all those years ago, and in retracing his path, discovers that the story he must finally understand is his own.
At once an ode to theater, its joys and its disappointments, and an evocative meditation on family – both the one we inherit and the one we try, however imperfectly, to build for ourselves – Papering the House is the moving memoir of the boy who ran away to the theater, and the man who had to find his way back to the world beyond the footlights.
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