D. T. Max Will Discuss New Book 'Finale: Late Conversations With Stephen Sondheim' at The Drama Book Shop

The Drama Book Shop will host The New Yorker staff writer D. T. Max who will discuss his new book Finale: Late Conversations with Stephen Sondheim with musical theater historian Laurence Maslon on Tuesday, March 14, at 7:30pm, at 266 West 39 Street.

Longtime New Yorker staff writer and author of The New York Times bestseller Every Love Story Is a Ghost Story, D. T. Max delivers an illuminating and deeply personal collection of interviews with the late Stephen Sondheim, conducted in the last years of the artist's life. Published to coincide with the one-year anniversary of Sondheim's death, Finale: Late Conversations with Stephen Sondheim (Harper; November 22, 2022) reveals the legendary composer-lyricist as he was rarely seen in public.

At the end of Sondheim's life, Max was working on a major magazine profile that would be timed to the eventual premiere of a new Sondheim musical. Following Sondheim's death, The New Yorker published an exclusive online issue featuring excerpts from the interviews Max conducted in those last years. The response was astonishing: The article was widely praised as one of the best interviews with Sondheim (if not the best) ever conducted; Max was hailed for eliciting a candor and vulnerability from the celebrated artist previously unknown to the public.

In Finale, Max brings together his unedited conversations in an unforgettable work of literature and celebration. Finale presents a revered cultural icon-a star who disliked the spotlight-at his most relaxed, thoughtful, sardonic, and engaging, as he talks about work, music, movies, family, New York City, aging, and the creative process. Throughout, Max sets the scenes, shares his impressions of Sondheim during each session, and explains how their unusual relationship evolved over the course of their three-year-long "pas de deux."

A singular portrait of an artist in his twilight, Finale offers remarkable insight into the mind and heart of a genius whose work changed modern American musical theater and popular culture forever.

Publishers Weekly praised the book: "Max mixes his own commentary with the raw and revealing transcripts from his conversations with Stephen Sondheim near the end of the composer's life... Max paints a nuanced and sympathetic portrait of a notoriously private figure, enhanced with his own astute and earnest perspective: 'What a burden Sondheim labored under,' he writes, 'to have so many of us depending on him.' Sondheim's fans shouldn't miss this."

D. T. Max is a staff writer at The New Yorker. He is the author of The Family That Couldn't Sleep: A Medical Mystery and the bestselling Every Love Story Is a Ghost Story: A Life of David Foster Wallace.

Laurence Maslon is a musical theater historian and the host of the NPR radio program, "Broadway to Main Street." His most recent book, I'll Drink to That! Broadway Cocktails is being published in May.