Edward Albee by Ruby Cohn, and: Edward Albee by Richard E. Amacher, and: Edward Albee: Playwright in Protest by Michael E. Rutenberg (review)

450 MODERN DRAMA February increased when we learn that the author is married to a psychiatrist. An irrational response? This pamphlet consists of an interesting preamble followed by brief analyses of the plays in the light of the preamble from The Room to The Homecoming with the curious omissions of The Tea Party and The Basement. The omission of the former, at least, is curious for not only did it precede The Homecoming but, given Mrs. Gordon's method of attack, would provide her with rewarding evidence. The preamble is excellent. She begins by pointing out that the basic pattern in Pinter (the intrusion 'of a mysterious stranger into an ordinary room where ordinary people pursue their ordinary business results in violence and breakdown ) "begs for symbolic interpretation." But Pinter'S repudiation of such interpretations is supported by his characters, for Pinter, essentially, is dealing with people not patterns, and the disorders of his characters are the product of dail, conflicts not cosmic upheavals or political confrontations. But, underneath this "religion of daily life," there are powerful forces. She reminds us that the intruder is not per se dangerous-it is only the so-called victim's irrational response to him that makes him so (though one could object that Goldberg/McCann are not, for example, the same kind of intruder as, say, the Matchseller). Pinter, then, is not an Absurdist; his Social Protest differs from that of, say, Osborne in being "at once less specific and more inclusive": in short, aiming, as Freud did, at "Civilization and Its Discontents." Pinter's characters, the products of a "ruthless realist," face disorder in themselves, not from the Universe. Thus Mrs. Gordon sees Pinter as trying to realize dramatically Freud's "seething cauldron" which is far from easy considering the limitations drama puts on expositions of the interior self. In the light of this statement she looks at the plays in chronological order, and her leitmotif appears to be emasculation. Castration in The Room and The Birthday Party, seen as building "upon the Freudian interpretation of the Oedipus Myth," set, one might say, the ball rolling. But such a pattern presents difficulties. In The Homecoming, for example, she describes Lenny (a homosexual apparently) when threatened by Max with his stick in Act I as "reduced to a whimpering child" which fits in with the view of him as an "already well-emasculated boy" but not with the text as Pinter wrote it, nor with the several productions I have seen. Lenny is, of course, taunting his father, and like Teddy's kiss and cuddle at the end of the Act neither children are offering their father anything less than scorn or contempt. The real danger of this method, however, can be bluntly summed up in Mrs. Gordon's statement that The Lover is Pinter's least interesting play. Possibly it is from Freud's point of view but on television and in the theatre it is simply stunning . For all the usefulness the interpretation of this book offers it forgets that it is what happens in the theatre that counts. Mrs. Gordon's stratagem has transferred the plays from the stage to the couch and turned Pinter's people into patients. ARNOLD P. HINCHLIFFE University of Manchester EDWARD ALBEE, by Ruby Cohn, University of Minnesota Pamphlets on American Writers No. 77, Minneapolis, 1969. 48 pp. $.95. EDWARD ALBEE, by Richard E. Amacher, Twayne Publishers, Inc. (Twayne United States Authors Series No. 141). New York, 1969, 190 pp. Price not listed. EDWARD ALBEE: PLAYWRIGHT IN PROTEST, by Michael E. Rutenberg, DBS Publications, Inc., New York, 1969, 280 pp. $6.95. 1971 BOOK REVIEWS 451 After a little more than a decade of writing for the theater Edward Albee has come to be widely regarded as the most important contemporary American dramatist ; yet his work is hard to characterize simply, and it presents a number of problems and puzzles. Thus, even in a world full of printed paper, and even though Albee is still young and may be expected to write many more plays, the detailed studies of him that are beginning to appear may perhaps serve worthwhile purposes. None of the three reviewed...