Uncle Sam Presents: A Memoir of the Federal Theatre 1935-1939 by Tony Buttitta and Barry Witham, and: An American Odyssey: Elia Kazan and American Culture by Thomas H. Pauly (review)

274 Book Reviews and its perversion in the "masochism" of a Shlink or an Edward. But the ingrained problematic quality in this attitude, the inherent paradox in this line of thought, the question (which is obviously important in Im Dickicht der Stiidte) of whether pain or suffering does not lose its very nature by being affirmed, with the result that the unmastered complexity of experience becomes greater than ever, is hardly developed at all. In fact, one detects in the thought of Speirs's book a strong tendency to focus on the play Im Dickicht. It is in the discussion of this play that Brecht's raising of the question of "the inadequacies of language" is mentioned, but, inexplicably, without any develop­ ment of the idea of language as itself, by nature, an attempt to master experience. It is in reference to this play that Speirs suggests the idea of mastery as a function of the formal artistic situation, rather than as an attitude exemplified directly by characters; but again, the connection with the general theme of mastery is not fully developed. Rather than follow his thought where it leads him, Speirs adheres rigidly to his scheme, and so, especially in the chapter onIm Dickicht, manages to treat the ideas that really matter as if they were mere remarks, arising from a summary of the text and not aspiring much higher. Occasionally the book becomes bad, for example in its attempt to demonstrate "the lack of any serious socially critical intent in The Threepenny Opera." The only pieces of evidence offered in support of this particular argument, as far as I can see, are the play's humor and the songs' "ambiguous ... moral attitude." And while it is true that humor and moral ambiguity are excluded from certain state-sanctioned publications in Moscow and East Berlin, the suggestion that a responsible socialist commitment necessarily excludes these qualities is quite astonishing, precisely from someone who knows Brecht. The book is sometimes bad, and never as good as it could have been, but the author's mind is not bad at all. What we have here- as all too often in literary studies- is good basic thought not prosecuted far enough to include a clear perspective on the question of its own adequate form and method. BENJAMIN BENNETT, UNIVERSITY OF VIRGINIA TONY BUTIITTA AND BARRY WITHAM. Uncle Sam Presents: A Memoir of the Federal Theatre 1935-1939. Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press 1982. Pp. xv, 249, illustrated. $20. THOMAS H. PAULY. An American Odyssey: Elia Kazan and American Culture. Philadelphia: Temple University Press 1983. Pp. viii, 282, illustrated. $29.95. Both the Federal Theatre Project and the directing career of Elia Kazan carne into being at approximately the same moment in history. The Federal Theatre was created by an act of Congress on June 30, 1935, only a year after Dimitroff, Kazan's and Art Smith's antifascist agitprop, played to enthusiastic audiences at New York's Civic Repertory Theatre. Sharing more than just the coincidence of time, Kazan and the Federal Theatre breathed in the decade's heady atmosphere of experimentation and social commitment. The Group Theatre was remaking the Method into an American institution, workers' Book Reviews 275 theatres and improv troupes were galvanizing popular concern for democracy and civil liberties, and artists with brilliant futures were rehearsing the themes and techniques which were to serve them in later years. But perhaps the greatest legacy of American theatre in the thirties was, as Arthur Miller once wrote, a strong sense of community among distinctively disposed theatregoers. Whereas the Federal Theatre spoke easily to elitists and pedestrians, intellectuals and entertainment seekers alike, Kazan was to wage a constant battle on Broadway and in Hollywood to please both audience types. In his book on Uncle Sam's only flirtation with a nationally subsidized theatre, Tony Buttitta cites the discovery of a "nationwide audience" as the Federal Theatre's crowning achievement. Blessed with a foreword by Malcolm Cowley, an introduction by Harold Clurman, and the satiric sketches of Project cartoonist Don Freeman, Uncle Sam Presents is an outgrowth of the authorized history begun by Buttitta in 1937 but shelved then in favor of...