The Fever [Paperback]

Wallace Shawn (Author), Wallace Shawn (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: January 1998

Celebrated actor and playwright, Wallace Shawn, also the author of My Dinner With Andre, offers a powerful work of the imagination in which the narrator's visit to a beautiful country is marred by political struggles which force him to review the presumptions of a "liberal" existence in the face of harsh, murderous reality. This eventually leads him to question his own existence

--This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.

Editorial Reviews

From Publishers Weekly

The narrator is having a mid-life crisis. He's shaking and vomiting in a hotel in a strange Third World country, contemplating the plight of the poor and the oppressed around the globe. As his annoying interior monologue unfolds, he becomes increasingly nauseated by the ignorance and complacency of his own moneyed existence, although he's not quite ready to give up the perks of privilege--luxury hotels, fine restaurants, glamorous theater events--in order that others might be able to feed their hungry children. The speaker wonders how he and his friends could be "decorating their lives and their world as if they were having a permanent party" while citizens in countries under totalitarian rule are being tortured and killed, yet he is unable to shake the contempt he feels for the impoverished. At the end of this pointless book, Shawn states that the considerable efforts of concerned parents, artists and politicians "do not change the life of the poor," a conclusion that the narrator conveniently employs to alleviate his guilt long enough to allow him a decent night's rest. This work was the basis for a dramatic monologue performed in New York City. Shawn is a playwright and actor.
Copyright 1991 Reed Business Information, Inc. --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.

From Library Journal

Shawn is one of those actors we always recognize but rarely can name. He has appeared in many fine films, including Woody Allen's Manhattan and Radio Days , but is probably best remembered as the balding, squeaky-voiced intellectual in My Dinner with Andre . Shawn is also a playwright who has achieved some success off-Broadway. The Fever , which he is now performing, is a dramatic monolog in which a nameless and genderless voice attempts to deal with a guilt resulting from an anachronistic form of liberalism. The voice cannot bear being both liberal and a member of the so-called oppressing class. The result is a thin, shallow whine that might work well performed by an actor of Shawn's accomplishments but which fails in written form because the reader has read it all before.
- Vincent D. Balitas, Allentown Coll., Center Valley, Pa.
Copyright 1991 Reed Business Information, Inc. --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.

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Product Details

• Paperback: 72 pages
• Publisher: Dramatists Play Service, Inc. (January 1998)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0822203987
• ISBN-13: 978-0822203988
• Product Dimensions: 7.5 x 5.1 x 0.2 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1.6 ounces (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 4.7 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (3 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #213,737 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

More About the Author

"Full of what you might call conversation starters: tricky propositions about morality... politics, privilege, runaway nationalist fantasies, collective guilt, and art as a force for change (or not)... It's a treat to hear him speak his curious mind."--O The Oprah Magazine

"Wallace Shawn's essays are both powerful and riveting. How rare to encounter someone willing to question the assumptions of class and the disparity of wealth that grows wider every year in this country. To have such a gentle and incisive soul willing to say what others may be afraid to is considerably refreshing."--Michael Moore

"Wallace Shawn's career as a playwright has been uncompromisingly devoted to proving that theater is an ideal medium for exploring difficult matters of great consequence. The qualities that make his dramatic work so challenging, sensual, mind-and-soul expanding, so indispensible, are equally in evidence in the marvelous political and theatrical essays collected here."--Tony Kushner

"Wallace Shawn writes in a style which is deceptively simple, profoundly thoughtful, fiercely honest. His vocabulary is pungent, his wit delightful, his ideas provocative."--Howard Zinn

WITH A BOLD and broad-ranging set of essays, Wallace Shawn takes us on a revelatory journey through high art, war, culture, politics, and privilege. With his distinctive humor and insight, Shawn invites us to look at the world with new eyes, the better to understand and change it.

WALLACE SHAWN is an Obie Award-winning playwright and a noted stage and screen actor. His plays The Designated Mourner and The Fever have recently been produced as films, and his translation of Threepenny Opera was recently performed on Broadway. He is co-author of My Dinner with Andre and the author of The Fever and Aunt Dan and Lemon, among other works. His friends call him Wally.

"I've written plays and a few screenplays, in each one of which a person who isn't me speaks, and then another person who isn't me replies, and then a third one enters or the first one speaks again, and so it goes until the end of the piece. I've even worked as a professional actor, speaking out loud as if I were someone not myself.

Every once in a while, though, I like to take a break from fantasy land, and I go off to the place called Reality for a brief vacation. It's happened a dozen or so times in the course of my life. I've looked at the world from my own point of view, and I've written these essays. I've written essays about reality, the world, and I've even written a few essays about the dream-world of 'art' in which I normally dwell. In a bold mood I've brooded once or twice on the question, Where do the dreams go, and what do they do, in the world of the real?"--From Essays by Wallace Shawn

You can preview the book at Harper's, where an excerpt, "Is Sex Interesting?," of Essays has been published.

Wallace Shawn will be available for select interviews with national media September-October. To request an interview or review copy of Essays, please contact Sarah Macaraeg [e-mail], 773-583-7884 (office), or 312-315-8476 (cell). Select Advance Reader's copies

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

2 of 2 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars An outstanding piece of political fiction and philosophy., May 15, 1997

By A Customer

This review is from: The Fever (Paperback)

This brisk read is one of the most provocative pieces of short fiction that I've read. The narrator gradually strips away the varnish of deceit and self-deception that have come to define his day-to-day existence and meaning of his life. As he does so, he begins to see with gut-wrenching clarity his economic, social and political relationships with friends, family, nation, and the world. Intended as one person play for small groups, this monologue reads as well as it is experienced theatrically.

1 of 1 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars Not ok., November 9, 2004

By 

Aco - See all my reviews

This review is from: The Fever (Paperback)

I have just finished The Fever. I feel guilt, and awe. I am smitten by the images of wealth I know and images of suffering and poverty I know. What are these sights? Has my original reaction, when I first saw them changed? Do I know how life works? Where are my ideals?
This is a silent walk out of the theatre. That is, assuming I ever saw The Fever performed. Knowing Wallace Shawn as an actor I figure a flurry of humorous and bizarre moments would sustain my attention, because of his distinct personality, whether they were called for or not. But then a weight of truth and alienation. The Fever is not funny. But it is vividly alive, and if you think everything is okay, then it is dead. With The Fever, nothing is okay.
A necessary piece of moving socio-political theatre.

2 of 3 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars actions, not feelings, May 15, 2000

By A Customer

This review is from: The Fever (Paperback)

Well, I'll add my praise to the other two reviews of this wonderful little book. It's hard to characterize The Fever - I guess it's a long short story, all told from the point of view of an affluent American who, for various reasons, finds himself alone, and physically and mentally very unwell, in a small unstable 3rd World country. What Shawn's done is rather like what Peter Singer did in a recent essay in the NYTimes - he has taken the one of the hoariest of moral problems -- distributive injustice -- and breathed new life into it. Both Singer and Shawn seem to accomplish this by returning to a rather simple, almost naive approach to the guilt of affluence and tranquillity in a world of scarcity and terror. Both insist that we must end our narcissistic attention to our precious feelings and instead subject our actions in the world to a clear and unforgiving critique, a critique that will ideally lead to a new and enlightened set of actions based upon humility and generosity. Perhaps this comment makes The Fever sound like a hectoring sermon -- it's anything but. The prose is fast, funny, quirky, and provocative. I keep coming back to this book...