Understanding Tennessee Williams by Alice Griffin (review)

Book Reviews 237 history of his plays and other writings, and their critical reception. Lane explains the major topics that appear throughout lonesco's career - the struggle with language, hatred of authority, and defense of the individual- and testifies to the value of his theater as a source of memorable experiences. The introduction then goes over in some detail the major topics, and plots three phases to laneseo's career: the anti-theater of the early plays such as The Bald Soprano; the more coherent and humanized project of The Chairs and the Berenger cycle; and the later dream work which includes A Hell of a Mess! and Journeys Among the Dead. The rest of the book then follows the design laid out in the introduction. It moves chronologically through the three phases. and in each phase discusses the applicable topics. This sort of structure logically organizes the book and makes it easy to follow. II works especially well for the reader who is looking for an introductory reading on a particular play or group of plays. However, it does become repetitious for someone who is reading cover to cover. The book has several excellent features which I would like to highlight. One is Lane's commitment to ground Ionesco in his own explanatory writings: the numerous articles, speeches, and essays that he has produced throughout his career. In addition, Lane always provides a perfonnance history for each play, including the important initial reception. On the down side, the book does not place lonesco in much of an historical , culturaJ, or philosophical context. Except for references to Beckett, there are few remarks about his contemporaries or contemporary theater practice, and little indication of his effect on other playwrights or writers. One chapter, however, makes a noteworthy exception to this general rule. "Jonesco and the Critics: Improvisation" begins by outlining the debate that went on between the playwright and the critics Jean-Jacques Gautier, Roland Barthes, and Bernard Dort in the mid-I950S, and describes fonesco's theatrical response, /mprovisation, as "a biting salire of Marxist and structuralist theories of literary and dramatic criticism" (90). The rest of the Chapter deals with "The London Controversy," a similar polemic carried ~n between Ionesco and the British critic Kenneth Tynan. This is the best chapter in the book. It not only places Ionesco within a context that illustrates his importance to literary history, but shows just how controversial, creative, and threatening he can be. Understanding Eugene IOllesco is a good contribution to the series. Besides its value to students, the book is definitely useful to teachers who are not experts on fonesco but want to include him in a course. EUZABEnl KLAYFR, SOU1lIERN Il.lJNOIS UNIVERSITY AT CARBONDALE AllCE ORlFFlN. Understanding Tennessee Williams. Columbia: University of South Carolina Press '995. Pp. xv, 266. $29·95· Alice Griffin's Ulldersranding Tennessee Williams, the most recent instalment in a growing body of book-length criticism of one of A~erica's signature playwrights, is a Book Reviews very accessible, never pretentious study of the nine play from The Glass Menagerie to The Night a/the Iguana - those which established and secured Williams's place in the American literary canon - that gives the Williams newcomer a competent introduction to a potentially difficult and certainly complex subject. By analyzing "language, characters , themes, dramatic effects, and staging," Griffin attempts to "call attention to Williams's unique gift for heightened dialogue, which is convincing as speech and at the same time poetic" (xii). However, given that her book is part of Matthew Bruccoli 's Understanding Contemporary American Literature series - which provides, in his words, "guides or companions for students as well as good nonacademic readers" (ix) - seasoned Williams scholars might want to give this book a miss. Griffin opens her study with the traditional Williams literary biography, replete with semi-apocryphal stories (which both Williams himself and indiscriminate biographers have helped to perpetuate) surrounding his years in college, his sister Rose's prefrontal lobotomy, and his stint at MGM. Griffin then briefly discusses a few of the one-act and full length plays written between the years 1944 and 1961-lhe years that form the locus of her study...