The Intruder in Modern Drama by Samar Attar (review)

326 Book Reviews The quality of uncertainty that permeates this work is compounded by Olausoo's style of writing. Her sentences are long and ungainly. and she often misuses words: "undefinable" for "undefined"; "tenant" for "teoet." She displays a marked preference for the passive voice, especially when describing critical response, thereby obscuring whose opinion is being dted. Olauson's observation that little has been written on American women playwrights is certainly valid, although she seems unaware of the growing volume of work that doesexist. The American Woman Playwright summarizes a large quantity of historical material that is often unavailable to students, making it a useful addition to an undergraduate library. Beyond this, however, the book is a disappointment. A fascinating and largely unexamined topic remains unexamined here. JANET BROWN, UNIVERSITY OF HARTFORD SAMAR ATIAR. The I"truder in lv/adern Drama. FrankfurtlM, Bern, Cirencester : Peter D. Lang 1981. Pp. 237. Samar Attar states that the general purpose of her book is "to give a comprehensive systematic analysis of the intruder in modern drama from a comparative point of view." More specifically, she lists as aims: to establish the intruder as "a distinct dramatic lype" and a motif of the modern theater, to examine the intruder's function, to interpret a large number of dramas from this "unique perspective," and thereby "to shed new light on the unity" and nature of modern drama since World War 11 (p. 12). The book's strength lies in the basic fulfillment of these goals - the recognition , definition, and interpretation of a new motif. In particular, Samar Attar deserves credit for calling attention to the international scope of the intruder in modern drama. Within the study proper, she documents his presence in twelve plays originating in a variety of Western countries and covering a wide range of theatrical styles and dramatic theories. In the appendices she interprets eleven more "intruder" plays. She defines the characteristics and functions of this figure under four categories: the sexual intruder, the ethical intruder , the social intruder, and the political intruder. She finds the sexual intruder - in Ugo Betti's Crime on Goat Island, Tennessee Williams's Orpheus Descending, and Harold Pinter's The Homecoming - to be an "outcast or vagabond" (p. 22) of great physical beauty and creativity. By becoming sexually involved with some or all of those intruded upon, he raises questions about the validity of traditional values about love and family relationships. The ethical intruder - in Brecht's The Good Woman of Setz.uan, DUrrenmatt's The Visit. and Arden's Serjeant Murgrave's Dance - is an aloof character who, nevertheless, coerces those intruded upon into making free choices about moral conduct. The social intruder is an outsider who seeks acceptance or inclusion by the community intruded upon. In Pinter's The Caretaker, Bond's Saved, and Arden's Live Like Pigs, he reveals the disunity within the various Book Reviews 327 communities and identifies some of its causes. The political intruder, operating on a larger scale, concerns himself with the institution of economic and political practices that affect nations. He presents himself - in Frisch's The Firebugs, Ioneseo's The Killer, and Gombrowicz's Operetla - as an anonymous and mysterious agent. Within these basic patterns of similarity, Attar carefuHy delineates the differences among these characters, the communities they threaten, and the effects of their intrusions. The overall implications Attar draws from this intruder motif are discerning and provocative. She sees in these plays the description of a vague fear within the middle-class citizen of "secret, anonymous forces working to undermine" his community, his rights, and his identity, thus creating "social. political. and economic disaster" (p. 178). Since the plays all end in social self-destruction, stalemate, or solutions outside existing values. Attar concludes that they reflect the inability of society to analyze and cure its own defects. The weaknesses in Attar's book are relatively minor but, nevertheless. distracting . First, the book reiterates itself unnecessarily. Ideas are stated and restated at the beginnings and endings of chapters with a fullness that exceeds the demands of clarity. Second, Attar's comments on alternate approaches to these plays are consistently negative. Her own analyses of the dramas...