| | The paucity of Rand stage productions is worth noting. With her plays in print and her name so potent commercially, you have to figure producers and directors have looked into them, but few have decided to follow up. Novel-writing and play-writing are two different skills; I can't think offhand of anyone who was a big success at both. Hemingway wrote one play that's just a curiousity. Noel Coward wrote one novel, Pomp and Circumstance, that I enjoyed and that was a bestseller in its day (ca. 1960) but has never come back into print, though several of his plays are classics (and his short stories have been republished). Hugo's plays were historically revolutionary and hugely popular with their audience but embarrassing to read today. La Dame aux Camélias by Dumas is famous for the actresses who've played it (Garbo most notably), but nobody stages it. I think the explanation, in part at least, is that playwrights have to move things along quickly, while novelists are in the habit of taking their time and their readers'.
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