Daniel Okrent

This is just the end of our relationship.

But in that letter, which he represents to his oldest friend as the accurate version of the letter that he had sent in 1978, she doesn't say, I regret giving birth to you.

She says, the only guilt I have is giving birth to you.

And there's a mile of distance between guilt and regret.

Oh, that's interesting.

I go the opposite direction.

I like your first version better.

I don't see any evidence that she felt that she had unleashed a monster on the world, even in her bitterest expressions to him.

Well, in fact, it is about his mother in a way.

She was a socialite.

She liked to be around famous people.

And she liked to eat nearly, not every day, but certainly every week at the 21 Club, where all the stylish people of the era would go.

And she would go with friends who were in show business or not.

These were the ladies who lunched.

They were the subject of that song, and they were the object of his distaste.

I don't think that Sondheim was aiming at anybody else but his mother, but he was thinking of this group of women when he wrote that coruscating, acidic, and hilarious song.

Well, he was direct with them.

I think that Oscar, as he must be known, Oscar was the most important male figure in his life.

Oscar dies when Sondheim is just about 30.

But for those 30 years, there was no one he was closer with and no one for whom he had more regard.