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Book Reviews 439 of this old chestnut?), suggesting that what we see in Pinter's drama is the impossibility of verification, "the foiling of the audience's will to verify, to resolve, to label the meaning the play produces." She adds, "But to foil verification is to allow for the apparently verifiable; Pinter must give the impression of a stable reality while positing the suggestion of an unstable quicksand. lbrough comedy he achieves this stability." One would be more readily inclined to agree if Diamond's inventory of comic instances weren'( somewhat suspect. Is it true that "the comedy in The Room arises from the fact that no character consistently verifies the perception of another"? Does Bert's "fast entrance" (sic: Pinter's stage direction merely reads "Enter Bert") near the end of The Room "transfonn the scene into ludicrous farce"? Is Pinter exploiting "the structure of comic inversion" in A Slight Ache when he has the Matchseller (whom Diamond calls a "beggar") change places with Edward? Is Edward's "genteel sadism," as Diamond labels his scalding and "blinding" of the wasp, really "comic in itself" and does it "establish his personality as a comic poser"? A good number of Diamond's fanciful readings are quite comical in their own right. To describe Pimer as laying "bare the conventions of family life in poHte society" is witty when one considers that the polite ' society in question is Max the butcher's brood in The Homecoming. ]fit weren't for the deadpan prose in which for instance Rose in The Room is described as "plagued by perceptual discontinuities," one might suspect a wag behind the foHowing: "American films on organized crime began in the 1930s, and despite imerruptions from World War II and occasional censorship, British audiences became acquainted with all manners of thugs." What makes the book as a whole rather puzzling is that its author offers keen and occasionally brilUant observations (The Homecoming has not had a more illuminating critic than Diamond) in the midst ofthe deepest muddles. What weakens Pinter's Comic Play most is the special pleading on behalfof a critical scheme that constantly threatens to collapse under the weight of its own inclusiveness. VOLKER STRUNK, YORK UNIVERSITY PAUL F. BUSCHENHOFEN. Switzerland's Dramatists in the Shadow of Frisch and Diirrenmatt: The Quest/or a Theatrical Traditioll. Berne: Peter Lang Verlag 1984. pp. 361. SFR 64.90. In this study the author poses the questions: why hasn't there been any Gerrnan.speaking Swiss dramatic tradition of note since the Refonnation; what conditions were conducive to the emergence of Max Frisch and Friedrich Dtirrenmatt as internationally acc1aimed dramatists after World War ll; and how has the prominence of these two playwrights affected younger generations of GeITl1an-speaking Swiss dramatists. He speculates that although there had been a lively tradition of open-air Volkstheater until World War n. a peculiar configuration of circumstances may welJ have inhibited the creation of drama in Switzerland. On one level, there has been the tension between 440 Book Reviews the official written language, German, and the Swiss-German dialect spoken there. This discrepancy between the written and oral medium may not be conducive to the writing of spoken dialogue. On another level, Swiss political attitudes, Le. their politics of compromise, gentleman's agreements, and tolerant co-existence rather than debate, oppositional rhetoric. or argument do not lead to thinking in dramatic patterns. In addition to this, Switzerland's position of neutrality and isolationism, dating back to their defeat at Marignano in 1515. has left the Swiss relatively unscathed by wars, international crises, or revolutions but it has also deprived Swiss dramatists of source material for historical or nationalistic dramas. (Many Swiss dramatists have drawn their subject matter - suuggles against the Hapsburgs, Tell, Winckelried, Zwingli - from events prior to 1515). Finally, prior to World War II, Swiss literature was measured by German standards by which their drama was found inferior. That is not to say that there was no drama beyond the Volkstheater: the author cites works by Rudolf Jakob Humm, Max Gertsch, Marcel Gero, Max Hansen, Helmut Schilling, Arnold Schilling, Arnold Schwengeler, Jakob BOhrer, and Albert Steffen to prove the contrary, but...

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