Mark / Joy

With (from left) Steve Saudek, Sam Anderson, Mark, and David Scheffer.

Mark present day.

Joy in Paree

“Forget inspiration. Forget the right moment. Get your butt into the seat and see what happens.”

That advice has kept playwright and novelist Mark Leib going for the forty-eight years that have passed since graduation. In candid conversation with classmate Joy Horowitz, he talks about the ups and downs that have characterized his pursuit of a literary life.

“Harvard prepared me for success,” Mark says. “It prepared me for adulation.”  What it didn’t prepare him for was the struggles he subsequently faced as a writer. And in this, he echoes  complaints of his fellow writers in Hollywood currently on strike as this copy goes to press.

There have always been struggling artists, Mark concedes, “But there was a possibility of making a good middle-class or even upper-middle-class salary as a playwright in 1950 or 1960 that exists for almost no one (today).”

Listen to this compelling interview to discover Mark’s sources of strength in the face of daunting professional challenges — and the triumph of publishing his first novel at age 70.