The Strands Entwined: A New Direction in American Drama by Samuel J. Bernstein (review)

322 Book Reviews What follows are six loosely connected essays on Rice's The Adding Machine, Odets's Golden Boy, O'Neill's The Iceman Cometh, Miner's Death of a Salesman, Williams's The Glass Menagerie, and Albee's Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf? These essays do not vary much in tone or quality. The plays are "read" thoroughly, and American passions for such things as conformity, money, success, and "personal attractiveness" are identified, and the "face of illusion" is intermittently explored - but to what end? The essays offer no new insights into these plays or playwrights; the sociological and cultural observations are either commonplace: or else, one suspects, simply guesswork. The readings of Odets's Golden Boy or Miller's Death of a Salesman might be entirely satisfactory as undergraduate lectures on the pJays, but hardly warrant publication as part of a book. GERALD D. PARKER, UN1VERSITY OF WESTERN ONTARIO SAMUEL J . BERNSTEIN. The Strands Entwined: A New Direction in American Drama. Boston: Northeastern University Press 1980. Pp. xii, 171. Samuel J. Bernstein's The Strands Entwined: A New Direction in American Drama presents the thesis that "the mingling of two important strains in our national dramaturgy ... has resulted in a true and new harmony. These two strains are the realistic-naturalistic, the traditionally dominant orientation of American drama, and the European Absurdist" (p. vii). This is a promising thesis. Indeed, it provides the framework for a loom on which a master craftsman could have woven together the large strands of realism and absurdism , and created intricate designs out of the tiny threads of individual playwrights and plays. The loom could easily have accommodated the threads Bernstein entwines - David Rabe's Slicks and Bones, John Guare's The House 0/ Blue Leaves, Ed Bullins's The Taking of Miss Janie, Robert Anderson's Double Solitaire and Edward Albee's Seascape - and many others from the colorful fabric of contemporary American theater. Unfortunately. Bernstein seems to have decided that the proper tool for this intricate task is a buzz saw. Slicing rapidly through all apparent difficulties, Bernstein leaves a heap of mangled supports and unraveled fiber behind him. One can only hope tbal some diligent craftsman will return to the scene, rebuild the loom, and weave the fabric with patience and precision. Bernstein mishandles his thesis in several basic ways. First, he fails to define adequately his essential terms - realism and absurdism - or to provide a coherent view of the traditions behind them. Second, he endorses a theatrical aesthetic which undermines his critical approach. Third, he shows little insight into individual dramatists. Fourth - and this may be the main impression a reader will derive from the book - he writes a frequently ungrammatical prose which would render The Strands Entwined nearly unreadable even without the first three inadequacies. The problem of definition leads Bernstein into assertions which at times border on the ludicrous. At times, he seems to identify "realism" entirely with Book Reviews 323 Ibsen and "absurdism" with the ideas of Martin Esslin. But terms - particularly isms - proliferate. "Surrealism," "expressionism," "existentialism," "fantasy," and "tragedy" accrue to the absurdist strand, while "social protest" and "the well-made play" att3;ch themselves to the realist strand. On some occasions Bernstein employs these terms as synonyms, but on others he uses them as poles of new "oppositions." These equivocations lead him to claim that Anderson's Double Solitaire is "experimental" simply because it is not a "well-made play." Grasping for proof of this experimentalism (which seems, in context, to be identified with absurdism), Bernstein asserts: "More experimental than the actual structure is the subject itself; Anderson's exploration of love and marriage is unique in its depth and honesty" (p. 104). The only way to " make sense of sllch a statement is to assume that The Strands Entwined is itself an absurdist statement revealing the emptiness of academic discourse. Similarly ludicrous is Bernstein's claim that Albee's Seascape is "second only to Double Solitaire in being the most realistic" (p. 131) of the plays he discusses . Albee's philosophical treatise concerns a human couple interacting with two talking sea lizards. Somehow Bernstein's definitions clear the way for this...