The Long Life of Fiddler on the Roof
Alisa Solomon is the author most recently of the new book Wonder of Wonders: A Cultural History of Fiddler on the Roof. She also has written Re-Dressing the Canon: Essays on Theatre and Gender and edited several books including Wrestling with Zion and The Queerest Art. She teaches at Columbia University's Graduate School of Journalism and lives in New York City.
Q: Why did you decide to write Wonder of Wonders?
A: First, because the Tevye stories, and their incarnation as Fiddler on the Roof, had such a huge impact and seeped into the culture so deeply that they can really tell us a lot about how culture works in society and how collective memory is created, and a lot about the Jewish experience in the United States and beyond, and some of the universal themes that the stories .
Why personally was I drawn to it? It...