Daniel Okrent

Write what you think.

And those were the lessons that Sondheim cherished for the rest of his life.

Right.

And Sondheim's glad for that.

The same thing shows up when he's at college at Williams, when he's studying music with the composer Milton Babbitt.

He wants the criticism.

He relishes the criticism.

But that happened only in the intimacy of personal or professional relationships.

Criticism from the outside

Most creative people, certainly most creative people in the theater that I know, are very wary of, leery of, and displeased by critics, but not to the degree that Stephen Sondheim was.

He despised critics.

I think he gave it a shot.

I think it wasn't that he made a valiant effort to do it.

But let's see if this is a possibility.

And he did not come out publicly, really, for the middles to late 70s.

Not that anybody was asking that much in those days.

Certainly all the people who knew him, they knew he was gay.

He knew he was gay.

He did not think it was a defining aspect of his life.

He didn't want to be, as it were, typecasted.