Lorraine Hansberry: Soap opera implies melodrama, of course, and melodrama has a classical definition.
Gore Vidal: We got Prohibition out of it, and that was about it.
Hansberry: Exactly. [Laughing] I’ve tried to explain this to people.
Vidal: And we would lose our own soul.
Hansberry: And the responsible artist will.
•••
Vidal: But that was all in the future. Yes, we could do this, we could become dictator of the world.
Hansberry: I think it reflects at this particular moment in our country—as troubled and as depressed as I, for one, am about so much of it—it reflects a new mood.
Vidal: That’s one way of doing it. If you have values.
Hansberry: Always. Always.
Vidal: And this goes on, and on, and on.
•••
Hansberry: I think so.
Vidal: At the end it was in shambles.
Hansberry: If we believe people completely, as drunkards or braggarts or cowards, then we also believe them in their moments of heroic assertion.
Vidal: To have classes in fiction — that really is hopeful, isn’t it.
Hansberry: That’s all you have to care about.