When Marsha Norman adapted Robert James Waller’s “The Bridges of Madison County” for Broadway, she says the biggest challenge in making it a musical was creating a context for the novel’s love affair, “so you didn’t end up with these two people singing all night.” Then again, most of us wouldn’t mind if those people — Kelli O’Hara and Steven Pasquale — did sing all night. Alas, “Bridges” closes today, but Norman has something else to look forward to: Oprah Winfrey’s expressed interest in performing Norman’s Pulitzer-winning drama “ ’night Mother,” opposite none other than Audra McDonald. “I’m instructed to say there isn’t anything signed yet, but I think it could be astonishing,” Norman says.
Here are four books this playwright loves.
The Flamethrowers
by Rachel Kushner
This is about an artist who loves speed. She’s in the East Village crowd of the ’60s and heads out on her Moto Valera motorbike from Nevada to Utah and the salt flats. A girl artist motorcyclist seems the free-est spirit in the world! There are sentences in this book, you can’t believe how beautiful they are.
The Interestings
by Meg Wolitzer
Meg and I have been friends a long time. It’s nice to have a friend who writes, but not in the theater! This book is about artists who meet at summer camp, and their relationships continue the rest of their lives. One of the six is more famous than the others, but that doesn’t spare him from the slings and arrows of fortune. I wanted this book to go on and on.
The Orphan Master’s Son
by Adam Johnson
Breathtaking! It’s about a young man in North Korea, where people disappear — you can be taken away in the middle of the night and find yourself chained in a coal mine, while someone else has taken your place in your previous life. It’s at once grim and fantastic.
Steve Jobs
by Walter Isaacson
I went from my Selectric typewriter to an Apple computer, so I loved the history of the product and Jobs’ personal intervention. I loved that he didn’t get a license plate for his Mercedes because he didn’t want people to know he was driving it, so Mercedes kept sending him cars. I don’t think I could have worked for him, but the beauty of these products are beyond measure.