to refer subtly to scenes in Werfel and Pirandello, whose plays he had never seen or read, Ambrose was swamped. He had no replies ready for those who asked him to discuss his method. It had never occurred to him before that he had selected a "point of view." Why, he had written his stories from the only point of view in which they had come to him, the point of view of the boy listening with wide open ears in the village store or of the boy who had watched them unfold before his very eyes. His play had developed in a similar fashion. He had written down what had happened, so far as he could remember, what his characters had actually said. He had been amazed to discover that his material was assuming dramatic form, shaping itself, without his conscious intention, for the most part in dialogue. He had not intended, in the beginning, to write a play. He had written a play by accident. To these interviewers then, who were bent on probing into his workshop, he was so completely inarticulate, so unsatisfactory in explanation, that their ensuing articles hinted in some instances at mysticism—The New Mystic Realist was the engaging title of one of these—and in others the authors pitilessly derided the playwright's clumsy efforts to maintain secrecy. Ambrose read these papers with growing alarm.
