When I think of Milan Kundera, who died yesterday at 94, I am suddenly in my early twenties again, newly arrived in New York City and working at the Classic Bookshop at 48th Street and Sixth Avenue, where I fell under the influence of a coworker and friend I have frequently, and with great affection, described as a “crazed jazz musician.” Among other things Peter introduced me to many novelists, including Kundera, whose works THE BOOK OF LAUGHTER AND FORGETTING and THE UNBEARABLE LIGHTNESS OF BEING changed my life. When you have spent your life writing, you look back sometimes at chance friendships and influences and books read when you were young and start to see that their inspiration and (hopefully) influence have popped up all through your own work. It’s a realization of great good luck and gratitude. Among many amazingly true things, Mr. Kundera said this: “It seems to me that all over the world people nowadays prefer to judge rather than to understand, to answer rather than to ask, so that the voice of the novel can hardly be heard over the noisy foolishness of human certainties.” Yes. Rest in peace.
Richard Willett
Richard Willett is the author of the plays Triptych, Random Harvest, The Flid Show, and Tiny Bubbles, presented off-off-Broadway and across the country. Honors include an Edward Albee Foundation Fellowship and a Tennessee Williams Scholarship. His play 9/10 premiered off-off-Broadway in September 2024 and won four Broadway World Awards including Best Play; Grief at High Tide (first prize, Capital Rep Next Act! New Play Summit) premiered at Vivid Stage in Summit, NJ, in October 2024; and A Terminal Event (Julie Harris Award winner and Woodward/Newman finalist) premiered in 2022 at the Victory Theatre in Burbank, with Stage Raw naming it one of the best L.A. plays that year. Richard is developing a one-woman show about Ingrid Bergman with actress Annemette Andersen and director Henning Hegland, premiering in 2025 in Iceland. He was a finalist last year for the Dramatists Guild National Fellows Program and as an optioned, working screenwriter has twice been in the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences’ Nicholl Top 50 and a finalist for the Sundance Labs. He was also a finalist for the Cynosure Diversity Screenwriting Awards, the Stage 32 Diverse Voices Springboard, and won the Lonely Seal Film Festival award for the best script with a disabled lead. His novel A Friend of Dorothy’s, set during the height of the AIDS crisis in New York City in the late 1980s, was in June 2025.