SOURCE: "The Effects of Staten Island on a Pulitzer Prize-Winning Playwright," in Theater Week, Vol. 2, No. 37, 24 April 1989, pp. 16-21.

In the following excerpt, Raymond examines Zindel's life and literary career and highlights the autobiographical details in Amulets against the Dragon Forces.

"I was really born to be a playwright," says Paul Zindel. Like Chris, the 16-year-old protagonist of Amulets Against the Dragon Forces, his new play which recently opened at Circle Rep, the young Zindel would make up stories using marionettes and statuettes. During his lonely childhood on Staten Island in the '40s, and as a mature playwright, author and screenwriter today, he realized "die thing that keeps me alive is storytelling. That's how I problem-solve. When I looked back, I was happy to see I was making a little stage on which I was doing everything that a playwright would be doing. Here was somebody who...