Critical Essay | Critical Essay by Stephen Schwartz

Critical Essay by Stephen Schwartz

SOURCE: "Foo on Fo, an Ignoble Prize Winner," in Wall Street Journal, October 13, 1997.

[Below, Schwartz identifies Fo as undeserving of the Nobel Prize because he has "dedicated his life to the promotion of everything discredited, despicable, and socially destructive in modern culture."]

In an incident reported in The Washington Post, and too good to have been invented, the famous writers at a Library of Congress luncheon last Thursday confessed they knew little or nothing about this year's Nobel laureate in literature, Italian theater performer Dario Fo. But one person recognized his name: Jane Alexander, outgoing head of the National Endowment for the Arts. "A very good choice," trilled America's art commissar. "He's one of our greatest living playwrights."

Excuse me, our? As a former actress, Ms. Alexander must know something about theater, which probably explains why she had heard of him. But how is Mr. Fo, who has...
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