The man behind the famous West Side Story, Arthur Laurents, is an American novelist, playwright, stage director, librettist, and screenwriter. Laurents came from a Jewish family and was born in New York City. He began writing scripts for radio in 1945 and wrote the play titled Home of the Brave – a drama that was set during the Second World War.
The Way We Were and The Turning Point are two of his novels of which became successful films. He also wrote the screenplays for Alfred Hitchcock, The Snake Pit, Rope and Anastacia.
In the year 2000, he published a memoir titled Original Story By. Laurents revealed that he’s a homosexual and had relationships with Tom Hatcher and Farley Granger.
With this information about the author, it can be judged that Laurents is a postmodern man because of his embrace to freedom and no absolute truth – not even God, not even human reason. His concept of “no control” is a proof of it. He sets the standard of what is true and what is not. What is reality from what is not. Therefore, his being homosexual defines who he is, but does not meddle with what the society dictates – if there is, in a postmodern one. In other words, he has his own world but does not necessarily fit and coincide with the rest.
