Eugene O'Neill's America: Desire under Democracy (review)

{ 228 } BOOK REV IEWS Vorlicky’s essay “An American Echo: Suzan-Lori Parks’s The America Play and James Scruggs’s Disposable Men.”In this thoughtful and thought-provoking article , Vorlicky reads Scruggs’s solo performance piece through Parks’s concept of the “echo.”Vorlicky reveals how Scruggs’s piece interrogates the violence enacted on black bodies through history—a violence that still resonates today, as Vorlicky ends by referencing the damage done particularly to black Americans by Hurricane Katrina. Other articles within this collection also speak to how the exigencies of the social and cultural moment can impact reception. Andrea Nouryeh’s “Reflection in a Pool: Mary Zimmerman’s Metamorphosis and a Post-9/11 New York City” suggests that in the aftermath of 9/11, the atmosphere in New York City was particularly conducive to the catharsis, community, and communion offered by Metamorphosis; while Deborah R. Geis’s “Not ‘Very Steven Spielberg ’: Angels in America on Film” argues that the decidedly darker televised filmic revision of the play reflected the chaos and bewilderment of a post-9/11 America. Of note also are the articles that expand the canvas of performance beyond the conventional consideration of theatrical texts. Anne Fletcher studies Mordecai Gorelik’s stage designs not for how they execute the director’s concept but for how they present an activist politics. Andrea Harris observes in the American ballet of the 1930s and 1940s a specific response to the culture of the time and an attempt to constitute a truly American classicism. As to be expected in an anthology of seventeen essays, the works are uneven and the editors could at times have taken a stronger hand in shaping certain pieces. Nonetheless, on the whole this collection pushes forward our sense of the relationship of theatre and performance to the formation and reformation of American identity. —HARRY J. ELAM JR. Stanford University \ Eugene O’Neill’s America: Desire under Democracy. By John Patrick Diggins. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2007. 305 pp. $29.00 cloth. Eugene O’Neill, much like Shakespeare, Shaw, and other theatre giants, has generated a scholarly industry in and of himself. The last five years alone have seen scores of articles, books, and dissertations dedicated, in whole or in part, to de- { 229 } BOOK REV IEWS ciphering his influence upon American drama. This wealth of scholarship imposes a daunting task for any scholar endeavoring to search out some fresh perspective regarding one of America’s most vaunted playwrights. For John Patrick Diggins that fresh perspective consists of a move away from criticism focusing on the psychological/autobiographical aspects of O’Neill’s plays or on O’Neill’s aesthetic innovations. Diggins, who differs from most O’Neill scholars in that he is a political and cultural historian, identifies his study as “an attempt to appreciate O’Neill beyond the aesthetic criteria of dramaturgy or the neurotic symptoms of psychology ” (5). He clarifies that his concern lies not so much with the plays as drama but rather with “their implications for social and political philosophy and intellectual history” (5). For Diggins, O’Neill’s scope stretches beyond that of an aesthetic innovator into the realm of cultural thinker, and it is his political and philosophical perspectives, rather than his dramaturgical skills, that most significantly set O’Neill apart from his peers. After a brief introduction outlining his purpose, Diggins delves fully into his analysis. The book includes eleven chapters exploring O’Neill’s work as it relates to and was influenced by a cornucopia of philosophical perspectives within a particular social context—early-twentieth-century America. In the course of his analysis,in which the author references nearly every produced play in O’Neill’s canon, Diggins attempts to illuminate O’Neill’s views on American society and culture by drawing upon a wide range of pre-twentieth-century philosophical and political thinkers, including Locke, Jefferson, Emerson, and Thoreau, with particular attention to Nietzsche (whose influence on O’Neill has long been recognized) and Schopenhauer. Diggins presents O’Neill’s characters and plots as driven by a desire for material possession, an all-encompassing hallmark of American culture that leads to the compromise of...