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The other, younger half booed loudly, “in a storm of gleeful abuse.” Stoppard was dragged on stage to receive this mixed accolade, and stood there in a daze, for all the world like Henry James on the first night of his play The American. “The thought flashed across my mind that they thought I was Jewish…” At the time, “bowing inanely into a thousand seats of boos and bravos,” it just seemed weird and hilarious, but then he felt depressed, and “furious that I’d let WOTW represent me as a writer first time out.” He knew this was a false start, not an inglorious ending. Walk was done again in Vienna in 1966 as The Spleen of George Riley. It got a
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