TWO PLAYS

Two Plays is the title of a new book by Gerald F. Sweeney. Featured are two full-length dramas: one called Divine Privilege set in Paris in the 1920's among expatriate American writers; the other A Porcelain to Mend concerns American journalists during the Chinese Revolution.

The explosion of modern culture following the atrocities of World War I centered in Paris where Art (Picasso), Music (Stravinsky) and Literature (James Joyce) blossomed with the aid of American authors like Fitzgerald, Hemingway, Stein and Dos Passos. Divine Privilege follows the writers of the American community through the creative outburst of 1920's Paris.

A Porcelain to Mend concerns the question of who lost China to the Communists. Following the lives of three American journalists, the drama distills the essence of how and why China failed to establish a democratic state, seen through the lives of several China Hands' journalists who shaped/warped American thinking.