Yesterday, a copy arrived of ‘Mike Nichols: A Life’ by Mark Harris.  Mark Harris is Tony Kushner’s husband, I discovered.

I’ve been looking forward to this biography since I first got wind of it.  The last thing I read was ‘A Very Stable Genius’.   Enough doom.

I was introduced to Mike Nichols by my friend Tony (not Kushner…) in high school in the early Sixties by way of the LP (‘vinyl’…) recording ‘An Evening with Mike Nichols and Elaine May’.

Interestingly enough, at about the same time, Tony also introduced me via vinyl* to the original Broadway production of Edward Albee’s ‘Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf?’, which would of course eventually become the first film Mike Nichols directed.

(*Phonograph record audio recordings of plays, I might as well be talking about papyrus.)

The last time I saw this Tony, years ago, after not having seen him for years, I mentioned how grateful I was for his many introductions in our teens of ‘matters’ of theater and music.  He seemed… bemused.

I have a real lack of talent for absorbing that people move on.

Here is a link to an excerpt of ‘Mike Nichols: A Life’.