‘Junk’ Mines the Milken Era for Truths That Resonate Now<br />The author of “Junk,” Ayad Akhtar, has cited my book<br />and “The Predators’ Ball,” Connie Bruck’s pathbreaking account of Mr. Milken’s heyday at Drexel Burnham Lambert, as works that influenced his play.<br />Perhaps it has taken the perspective gained over nearly three decades to see what a turning point in American history the late 1980s turned out to be,<br />and how they shaped, as Mr. Akhtar puts it, “the world we inhabit today.”<br />“The 1980s represents a collapse of a collective vision of who we were as Americans,” Mr. Akhtar told me last week when we met to discuss his play.<br />According to Ms. Bruck’s account in “The Predators’ Ball,” Mr. Milken tried to pay her off so she wouldn’t write the book.<br />“The characters in this play are dramatic concoctions,” it reads, “stitched together — at times — with details pulled from history,<br />but these characters are never anything other than fictions.”<br />But make no mistake about it: “Junk” is about as close to reality as theater gets.<br />“Junk,” the riveting reincarnation of the junk bond era now playing at Lincoln Center, “is a fictionalized account<br />suggested by events in the historical public record,” according to an author’s note in the program.<br />I should know: I’m the author of “Den of Thieves,” which chronicled the rise<br />and fall of Michael Milken and his junk bond empire and the cast of characters that whirled around him.
