John Lithgow on the Controversial Authors Roald Dahl and J. K. Rowling

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The caller play “Giant,” connected Broadway, dramatizes the ungraded astir Roald Dahl, the beloved children’s-book writer who, successful the nineteen-eighties, began making antisemitic statements and invoking stereotypes astir Jewish influence. John Lithgow portrays Dahl arsenic helium faces disconnected against his American publisher, who presses him to retract his comments. The events that the amusement focusses connected took spot much than forty years ago, but they couldn’t beryllium much applicable today, arsenic antisemitism surges during a warfare successful the Middle East. Lithgow joins David Remnick to sermon the question of whether to abstracted the creation from the artist—and astir his ain hesitation regarding his relation arsenic the wizard Dumbledore successful HBO’s caller “Harry Potter” series, due to the fact that of J. K. Rowling’s past of anti-trans statements.

Further reading:

• “ ‘Giant’ Takes connected Roald Dahl and His Antisemitism,” by John Lahr

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