Eugene O'Neill's Last Plays: Separating Art from Autobiography [Hardcover]

Doris Alexander (Author)

Book Description

ISBN-10: 0820327093 | ISBN-13: 978-0820327099 | Publication Date: May 16, 2005

This study draws on new and unprecedented research concerning the lives of Eugene O’Neill, his family, and his circle. It corrects and expands the biographical record on O’Neill, sharpens our understanding of his art, and distinguishes the man and his life more clearly than ever from the creations that were inspired by, and drew on, that life.

In his final creative years, 1939 to 1943, O’Neill wrote The Iceman Cometh, Long Day’s Journey into Night, and A Moon for the Misbegotten. Because these plays are so intense, intimate, and evocative of the friends and family members who influenced O’Neill’s artistic development, biographers and critics have long--and mistakenly--regarded them as accurate sources for insights into the playwright’s early years.

Drawing upon interviews and a staggering amount of archival research into multiple generations of the O’Neill family, Alexander sets the historical record straight by documenting the actual people and situations on which characters and scenes in O’Neill’s last plays are based. Included in her study are such topics as the playwright’s attempted suicide, his tuberculosis, and his relationship with his parents. By revealing the distinctions between O’Neill’s life and his art, Alexander’s findings make possible greater insight into the artistry that shaped these final plays and brought them to life.

Editorial Reviews

Review

"The crowning pinnacle of Doris Alexander’s four decades as a major O’Neill scholar. Her voice, which speaks to both young and old, and to both neophyte and aficionado, remains sterling. Here is an essential work on O’Neill and his dramaturgy, and how could we have lived so long without it!"--Frederick C. Wilkins, founder of the Eugene O’Neill Review

"A superb book. Alexander offers a rare example of prodigious learning, original research, and imaginative reconstruction of a complex and fascinating creative process."--Norman Fruman, Professor Emeritus of English, University of Minnesota

"[Eugene O'Neill's Last Plays] is welcome because it foregrounds the necessity of reassessing the ways in which biography-in particular about O'Neill-is considered and canonized. . . . Provides persuasive insights . . . Alexander's study provides a window . . . into O'Neill's last, great plays."--Theatre Journal

About the Author

Doris Alexander is a professor emerita of English at the City University of New York. She lives in Venice, Italy. Alexander’s books include The Tempering of Eugene O’Neill and Eugene O’Neill’s Creative Struggle.

Product Details

• Hardcover: 264 pages
• Publisher: University of Georgia Press (May 16, 2005)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0820327093
• ISBN-13: 978-0820327099
• Product Dimensions: 9.3 x 6.4 x 0.9 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1.1 pounds (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 5.0 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (1 customer review)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #961,236 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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2 of 2 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars the last phase of O'Neill's creative life, July 5, 2005

By 

Henry Berry "Henry Berry" (Southport, CT) - See all my reviews
(TOP 1000 REVIEWER)    (REAL NAME)   

This review is from: Eugene O'Neill's Last Plays: Separating Art from Autobiography (Hardcover)

In comparing the "facts of the plays with the documentary evidence of the historical record, [this work] offers what is really a first study in biography based on knowledge of what in a work are the fact's of [O'Neill's] life and what are not." As psychologically incisive and true-to-life as O'Neill's last plays were, with their richly-drawn, identifiable, flawed, characters, they were particularly susceptible to biographical interpretations and such points of view by critics and even scholars. Among the mixed biographical and literary topics concerning this major American playwright Alexander brings clarity to from poring over material lately uncovered and rereadings of some known material are O'Neill's suicide attempt, his illness of tuberculosis, and his relationship with his parents. Alexander, professor emerita of English at CUNY, gives only passing conjecture on why such "myths" arose in the first place or persisted on the basis of nonexistent, scant, or clearly contradictory evidence. The reasons for such errors or misguided interpretations of O'Neill's late plays--no doubt growing out of an awe and mystique surrounding O'Neill as a deeply impressive, preternaturally gifted playwright--is an absorbing topic on its own--but beyond the interest or scope of Alexander here. The author focuses on how such errors came to be, and on clearing them up. In this, she brings much clarity, and sometimes definitiveness, to mistakenly held views and some outright fictions of both O'Neill's life and his late plays, all without lowering this playwright's stature.