Edward Albee: An Annotated Bibliography 1968-1977 by Charles Lee Green, and: Tennessee Williams: A Bibliography by Drewey Wayne Gunn (review)

Book Reviews Palmieri presumes to provide the correct interpretation, the last word. One can understand the author's reference to Minority Report - which is readily available to readers - but the flagrant disdain for St. Augustine's dictum concerning the two thieves tempts one to consider Palmieri's work, at times, a long review of Hogan and Durham. A playwright does not work in a vacuum. There is a theatre for which he writes, contemporaries whose works affect him, asociety to which he reacts. Palmieri discusses that society as Rice filters it through his creative imagination, but he shows little knowledge or understanding of the theatre that helped shape Rice or of the efforts of other playwrights with whom his contribution provided an American dramatic literature. As a critical survey of Rice's plays, this book is not the "pathfinding project" the author imagines, but it surely has value and offers the kind of insight that renders an author's work more clearly understood and therefore more appreciated. WALTER 1. MESERVE, INDIANA UNIVERSITY CHARLES LEE GREEN. Edward Albee: An Annotated Bibliography 1968-1977. New York: AMS Press 1980. pp. xv, 150. DREWEY WAYNE GUNN. Tennessee Williams: A Bibliography. Metuchen, N.J. and London: The Scarecrow Press 1980. Pp. xiii, 255. After Eugene O'Neill, Tennessee Wjlliams and Edward Albee rank second and third as the American dramatists about whose works most is written. Thus, every person interested in drama will welcome these ~wo recent bibliographies. As Charles Lee Green explains in the Preface, his book "supplement[s] and complement[sJ the English language section of Richard E. Amacher and Margaret F. Rule's EdwardAlbee at Home andAbroad: A Bibliography[, /958 to June /968J (New York: AMS, 1973)" (p. vii). He explains that, "Without duplicating their work, I have made a compilation of published works by Albee from 1958 to December 1977" (p. vii). There is some duplication, of course, not only of their book, but also of other bibliogM raphies, especially those of Philip (which Green persists in spelling "Phillip") C. Kolin. The bibliography has four divisions: Primary Sources (Manuscripts and Special Collections; Plays; Other Published Works by Albee; Interviews), Secondary Sources (Biography; Criticism), Library Sources Consulted (nine subdivisions), and Appendices (Contributing Authors Index; Play Titles Index). The first two divisions contain 579 numbered bibliographical entries, a few not accompanied by annotations, for reasons that Green explains in the Preface. The second part of the second division, Criticism, comprises almost two·thirds of the book. Green also states in the Preface that his book includes "an appendix containing a list of library resources consulted, contributing authors, and the location of materials on a specific Albee play within the thesis" (p. vii). The list oflibrary resources consulted, however (as indicated earlier), is not a part of the appendix; and he fails to explain to what "thesis" he is referring. Considering the almost 1,000 items in Amacher and Rule's bibliography and those in Kolin's bibliographies published in Seri/(440 items in 6 [Sept. 1969], 16-32, and 304 items in 10 (Spring 1973J. 28-39), one must conclude that the most valuable aspects of Green's book are the c.hronologicallistings and the annotations. The latter will help 586 Book Reviews students and scholars decide whether they wish or need to read a particular article; but, paradoxically, the annotations are also the most disappointing part of the bibliography, because they are marred by faulty parallelisms (e.g., "The play itself, however, is tedious, pretentious and reiterates old themes," item 341), misplaced modifiers ("Psychologically, Jerry can only find 'gratification and love' by sharing his physical pain," item 248), vague pronoun references ("Albee is criticized by Actor's Equity for casting English actors in TA [Tiny Alice]. Albee finds their resentment 'rather silly,'" item 153), numerous mispunctuated sentences ("Positive values, however are reinforced through Grandma who promotes 'courageous realism' as a means of maintaining human dignity," item 222), lack of necessary apostrophes in comparisons ("His existential philosophy is more akin to Albert Camus than Beckett and lonesco," item 208), and an astonishing number of subject-verb disagreements (two in this annotation: "He is labeled 'Freudian' because his study of family relationships resemble...