David Rabe: A Stage History and A Primary and Secondary Bibliography by Philip C. Kolin (review)

Book Reviews be the most unsentimental major playwright America has produced" (pp. 11 - 12). About her adaptation ofJean Anouilh's The Lark: "There is no play in which Hellman put more ofherself. It was acry ofconscience: 'But what lam] wiJI not denounce. What I have done I wiH nol deny.' Joan maintains" (p. 357). "She could Dot resist pointing out to her Harvard class that reviewers seemed to miss that she had named Lily in Toys in the Attic after herself. Alexandra in The Little Foxesparticularly the movie version - is a very accurate portrait of the self-righteous, obnoxiously innocent adolescent that Hellman portrays in An Unfinished Woman" (p. 4(9). .... . if she could not match the grandeur of Eugene O'Neill's output, there was no one else to whom she could be compared except the later generation of Arthur Miller and Tennessee Williams" (p. 418). The book contains annoying typos and errors in grammar and spelling (e.g., sparce for sparse); and in one of the many photographs in the book the persons are partially misidentified, and in another one person is not identified at all, though her identity is obvious. But on the whole this is an admirably thorough and, as I said at the beginning, authoritative book which should be read - and read with enjoyment - by all specialists in modern drama and by many others as well. THOMAS P. ADLER, PURDUE UNIVERSITY PHILIP C. KOLIN, David Robe: A Stage History and A Primary and Secondary Bibliography. New York and London: Garland 1988. Pp. xii, 273. $35.00. For over twenty yearsI David Rabe has been one of the most highly acclaimed playwrights of the American theatre, his powerful, often violent dramas arousing intense (if not always complimentary) responses from his audiences. Among the shocks to which the student of his drama is subject is that Philip Kolin's Stage History is the first book-length study on Rabe. Perhaps this is because Rabe is always a few years ahead of his audience: he explores our myths before most of us are wil1ing to admit their existence. Long before Vietnam veterans were considered fashionable (or even apt) subjects f,?r drama, Rabe exposed the depth and intricacy of their conflicts. As he commented in 1972, "When] first came home [from Vietnam) ... I found that not just my family but nobody wanted to hear about what actually happened over there. People were only interested in the debate on the war, not the war itself,-or any evidence ofiL" Similarly, Rabe's ascription of American indiffer~nce to ethics and ideals to a stupor induced physically by drugs and spiriIually by television long preceded public awareness of this newfound vacuity. The first portion of the Stage History consists of a hundred-page critical overview of Rabe's life and dramatic career. This essay is unusually comprehensive and detailed, Book Reviews 457 considering that the book is not intended to be an exhaustive critical bibliography like Ellman's or Bate's. I.nitial1y, one might question Kolin's devoting thirty pages (over 25% of his tex.t) to Rabe's high school and college literary efforts and his work for the New Havel! Register. But it soon becomes apparent that this material is in no way extraneous. Kolin convincingly argues that evident in these early pieces are details of dramatic action and patterns ofsubject matter, use oflanguage, and characterization that become essential components in Rabe's more mature work. "Walls of Darkness," for example, a short story published in the Loras Academy slUdent newspaper, "contains significant references to dreams, betrayals, and barriers," themes familiar to Rabe's audience. This story also features a blinded hero who anticipates David, the blinded veteran of Sticks and Bones. Of still greater interest is the discussion of Rabe's newspaper work, which Kolin believes influenced him far more than his stint at Bread Loaf; Rabe, according to Kolin, "found the writer's workshop at the journalist's desk." In addition to summarizing Rabe's articles and reviews, Kolin discusses their stylistic similarities with the dramas. He examines the use ofmetaphor. personification, dialogue , and multiple points of view in Rabe's articles on dissension and...