Ghost Town

2012版作者序

As the dead rabbi says in Perestroika, hope, when it can't be discovered in certainty, can almost always be located in inderterminacy, and Angels is a hopeful work.

Unfortunately, the passing years have been equally if not more confirming of the plays' aforementioned apocalyptic forebodings, which loom darker and resound more onimously for contemporary audiences and readers.

Angels in Amercia, more than twenty years old, survives, as do I.  I'm utterly and happily in the dark about the longevity of my work, but I hope Angels outlasts me, I hope it will continue to be entertaining and of interest and use to people for years to come.  I hope there will be people for years to come.

I'm writing this introduction the day before America goes to the polls to vote for Mitt Romney or Barack Obama for president.  This is the place from which it seems to me I've always written, perched on the knife's edge of terror and hope.  It's familiar enough, though today the edge is sharper than it's ever been, and the two worlds it divides, one of light, one of darkness, seem respectively more brilliant and more abysmal, more extremely opposed than ever before.

Whatever tomorrow brings, the future--I'm reasonably certain of this--remains indeterminate.

又是六年过去，这段话看来简直比当时的场景更加深切。作者写AiA的时候才31岁啊，太厉害了……