In the face of seemingly relentless American optimism, Eugene O'Neill's plays reveal an America many would like to ignore, a place of seething resentments, aching desires, and family tragedy, where failure and disappointment are the norm and the...
more
In the face of seemingly relentless American optimism, Eugene O'Neill's plays reveal an America many would like to ignore, a place of seething resentments, aching desires, and family tragedy, where failure and disappointment are the norm and the American dream a chimera. Though derided by critics during his lifetime, his works resonated with audiences, won him the Nobel Prize and four Pulitzer, and continue to grip theatergoers today. Now noted historian John Patrick Diggins offers a masterly biography that both traces O'Neill's tumultuous life and explains the forceful ideas that form the hea
Contents; Preface and Acknowledgments; Introduction: Knowers Unknown to Ourselves; 1 · The Misery of the Misbegotten; 2 · The Playwright as Thinker; 3 · Anarchism: The Politics of the "Long Loneliness"; 4 · Beginnings of American History; 5 · "Lust for Possession"; 6 · Possessed and Self-dispossessed; 7 · "Is You a Nigger, Nigger?"; 8 · "The Merest Sham": Women and Marriage; 9 · Religion and the Death of Death; 10 · "The Greek Dream in Tragedy Is the Noblest Ever"; 11 · Waiting for Hickey; Conclusion: The Theater as Temple; Notes; Index;
