At one point in Adam Rapp’s dense and intense piece of storytelling theatre, Bella Baird, a Yale professor of creative writing, argues that reading a novel is akin to adultery. She calls it a joint act of imagination; the writer inventing a world, the reader immersing themselves in it, the two complicit in a private communion.
The idea resonates because Baird has surrendered herself to fiction with a near sexual dedication. Single and unpropertied, she spends her time hoping to enthuse students about the murderous actions of Raskolnikov in Dostoevsky’s Crime and Punishment and trying not to dwell on the 17 years that have elapsed since publication of her modestly received YA social science-fiction novel, Billy Baird Runs Through a Wall. Her real sex life is confined to the odd one-night stand every couple of years.
