Oh, damn damn damn. Tom Stoppard has left us. Rosencrantz and Guildenstern are Dead was the first play my mother and I read together, and I have her nearly-complete shelf of his plays sitting right in front of me.

We read Jumpers together very soon after acquiring it at City Lights Books, and saw Arcadia together at the American Conservatory Theatre in SF. I did a reading from The Real Thing for a theatre class at Sac State in 1989, and one of my classmates said, "I'm not sure I've ever seen you that impassioned about anything before."

Shakespeare, Shaw, Stoppard, Pinter. These were the four stars I navigated by in my young adulthood. Thank you, Mr Stoppard, for your words and your life. You will be missed so, so much.

I'm sad to admit, that though I did like Shakespeare In Love very much, I'm not familiar with his work otherwise. Much like Mamet(Which I pronounced like the soap for about half my life,) his has been a name I know to know without really understanding a lot behind it because I went to journalism school and learned not to have anyone buy me anything and, wow, are they not--maybe I paid a little too much attention sometimes. ETA: Not that I am dying to be Dollar Store Nuzzi Has A Terrible Accident(They really covered "Hands in New Places" too, I swear.