In Hack Writer, Dan Sklar's writing is the plain speaking language of Walt Whitman. It is what Henry David Thoreau would call the poetry of "healthy speech." The themes are strictly middle-class and as direct as a green Buick. The poems are easy to get at--real and personal because everything is personal. The stories are the sensitive stuff of American literature. The plays are in the absurd tradition of the Marx Brothers--George S. Kaufman. Hack Writer is a bright house filled with music. It is the fact that our happiness will be dreams.