Hot Irons by Howard Brenton, and: Letters I by Edward Bond, and: Letters II by Edward Bond (review)

Book Reviews suggests an ambivalent masochistic experience of pleasure-in-frustration as a key to Williams's most characteristic artistic effects. This is analyzed in four main areas: locales that playoffrealism against nonrealism (as in Camino Real); characters that are presented as "subjects" (Le., still in process) rather than "selves" (fixed essences that can be objectified); an androgynous eroticism of both male and female bodies, so that an audience experiences both desire and frustration (an "inherently masochistic strategy "), which cheats them of catharsis; and an appeal to a "southern" ambience that is less a geographical area than a feeling of emotional displacement. With analyses of this originality and sophistication, and scholarship as detailed and sound as thal by Crandell and Leverich, the Williams revival is off to a flying start. As .Tennessee himself would say: "Avanti!" NOTE The'volume could have benefitted from more rigorous copy ~diting: "flaunting" is used for "flouting" (659), "fortuitously" is used instead of "fortunately", and "violation " appears instead of "volition" (757). BRIAN PARKER, TRINITY COLLEGE, UNIVERSITY OF TORONTO HOWARD BRENTON. Hot Irons. London: Nick Hem Books, 1995. Pp. ix, 272. $39.95. EDWARD BONO. Letters I. Selected and edited by Ian Stuart. Contemporary Theatre Studies, Vol. 5. ChUf, Switzerland, Philadelphia: Harwood Academic Publishers, '994. Pp. ,67. $44·00; $20.00 (PB). EDWARD BOND. Letters II. Selected and edited by Ian Stuart. Contemporary Theatre Studies. Vol. 2. Luxembourg: Harwood Academic Publishers, '995, Pp. xvi, 237. $62.00; $24.00 (PB). These two books represent "adjacent" writing in the work of England's two most powerful and gifted political writers, Both Howard Brenton and Edward Bond are primarily playwrights (although both have published poetry and Brenton, a novel). Thus, these books are mainly characterized by their reflective qualities and the glimpsed personalities of these authors, serving as a kind of gloss on their plays, which in contrast appear more objective and impersonal. Hot Irons is a miscellany of diaries, essays, lectures, and journalism collected and published by Nick Hem, who published Brenton's first novel, Diving for Pearls, and who has had a long personal association with Brenton. The book ranges widely over discussions of politics and current events (vivid reportage of a delegation to Beirut in July 1982, or an account of artists' reactions the day Margaret Thatcher resigned), travel diaries from three historically and personally critical moments (the Soviet Union 526 Book Reviews in 1989 to research Moscow Gold, Australia in 1986 to research a film that never got made, and on the road in Britain in 1982, perfonning a one-man version of The Romans in Britain to raise money for its defense fund), and occasional pieces such as an essay on Brecht to accompany the adaptation of Conversations ill Exile for (Yale) Theater, or the T.R. Heno Memorial Lecture delivered at Cambridge in 1994. The capaciousness of topics and styles marks Brenton's lively, indeed, insatiable mind. Along with an intellectual's thirst for knowledge and analysis, his prose is laced with humor and an almost self-deprecatory frankness. One of the best essays in the volume is his review of the Pompidou Centre's 1989 exhibition abOut the Situationist International. Brenton is writing about his own history, in that he was affected by the Situationists and, as he describes, tried to work with two of their techniques, "detournement" in Christie in Love and "derive" in H.l.D. (Hess Is Dead). He provides an informed background to the Situationists and their relationship with the volatile politics of 1968, and also a discussion of their art, ranging from painting and artifacts to their slogans and philosophy. This account is embedded in Brenton's own ways of seeing the exhibit and his customary references to his own past and to the Parisian present: Where are the present students, the heirs of the enrages of 1968? They are packed into cinemas watching old Jacques Cousteau underwater movies, the current, inexplicable Paris fashion. Meanwhile the Government can't even get a log~ together to celebrate the bicentenary of the fust French Revolution. What have they come up with? A seagull, wilh red, white and blue wings. A seagull? Yup! lean-Paul Sanre, did you see...