Review: 'Finale: Late Conversation With Stephen Sondheim,' by D.T. Max

D.T. Max seems like the wrong person for the New Yorker to have assigned to profile the late, legendary composer. Max tried to impress Sondheim with a rhyme of his own invention — a false rhyme, which Sondheim famously detested. He met the maestro without reading his two volumes of memoir (Sondheim hands him copies). And, even after they've been talking for a year, he doesn't grasp that Sondheim doesn't write the parts of musicals that aren't songs.

But these transcriptions of five long chats from 2017-19 sing because they're more like gabfests or tutorials than interviews. Sondheim doesn't say anything new (or, as Max had hoped, anything at all about his private life) but he phrases old news in fresh ways that will appeal to fans. For instance, he has often talked about loving perfect rhymes (see above) but, here, Sondheim made clear that wasn't because he was a grouch or a fussbudget but because a rhyme that's both surprising and inevitable delights the listener's ear.

Chris Hewitt is a Star Tribune features writer and critic.

Finale: Late Conversation With Stephen Sondheim

By: D.T. Max.

Publisher: Harper, 240 pages, $20.99.