Time & Perspective Quote by John Guare

Guare’s line lands like a heckle from the back row: not sorrowful nostalgia, but an accusation aimed at a culture that treats memory as a design flaw. “Amnesia” isn’t a clinical term here; it’s a consumer fantasy, pitched as relief from guilt, complexity, and obligation. The sting is in “most wished-for state” - he’s describing a social preference, not an individual lapse. Forgetting becomes aspiration.

The second sentence tightens the screw. “When did history become a bad word?” is a question that already knows the answer: when history started making demands. When it stopped being pageantry and began functioning as evidence - of injustice, of complicity, of patterns repeating on schedule. Guare, a playwright attuned to the way nations narrate themselves, frames “history” as something newly stigmatized, like an embarrassing relative you don’t invite to dinner. The subtext is that we haven’t lost the past; we’ve hired bouncers to keep it out.

Context matters: Guare came of age in an America that learned how to broadcast trauma (Vietnam, Watergate) and then monetize distraction. By the late 20th century, amnesia isn’t just personal denial; it’s policy, branding, and a survival strategy for institutions. In theatre terms, Guare is railing against bad dramaturgy: a culture that wants plot without backstory, consequences without causes. His irony is that amnesia never actually frees you. It just guarantees you’ll reenact the same scenes, with different costumes and the same lies.