Bertolt Brecht: Political Theory and Literary Practice ed. by Betty Nance Weber and Hubert Heinen (review)

Book Reviews 443 this country would share. He takes comfort in the sheer quantity of what television produces in response to mass demand. "For those who run the mass media, even though they might themselves believe that they are manipulators of the public consciousness, are themselves only exponents of that consciousness," And provided there is serious criticism and judicious evaluation of what is offered on the mass media, and the population is educated, from childhood on, to deal with commercials, TV fare, and the phenomena of popular culture, our future citizens "will become able to distinguish between the real and the manufactured event, between the genuine and the synthetic personality, between the true work of art and the spurious hack product." Certainly, the repeated call in these essays for the systematic teaching of the art of watching and interpreting the media makes good practical sense; but the expectation that we may then, sitting in front of the tube, look forward to a development toward mass sophistication and a genuine mass culture is at best an optimistic speculation. If, indeed, the public will get the media it deserves, Esslin puts too high a premium on its capacity for self-improvement. He is at his best when he shares information and insights that come from firsthand experience. The Reinhardt essay sets a high standard; it is a valuabJe contribution to the history ofthe modem theatre. There is a piece on Brecht's Me-li: Buch der Wendullgen (Me-ti's Book o/Twists and Turns in his English version), having to do with Brecht's politics, that deserves to be more widely known. In the Beckett section, the outstanding essay is the one on Beckett's radio and television plays. The essays on Beckett's poems and novels extend a helping hand to the apprentice reader. Finally, Esslin defends the inclusion of his caustic review of Deirdre Bair's "deplorable" Beckett biography; but it seems to be out of place in a volume which professes to be a supplement to his earlier writings on these figures. It is one of the few pieces here in which the reader learns less than he had hoped. As in all such miscellaneous collections, the quality of critical discourse is bound to be uneven. Esslin's self-assessment appears to be just about right: "a fairly serious book on a number of serious topics." ALFRED SCHWARZ, WAYNE STATE UNIVERSITY BETTY NANCE WEBER AND HUBERT HEINEN, eds. Bertolt Brecht: Political Theory and Literary Practice. Athens, Georgia: University of Georgia Press 1980. Pp. 209. Given the subtitle of this little book and the fact that it is the outgrowth of the fourth congress ofthe International Brecht Society, one might have hoped to discover within its pages a serious reconsideration of Brecht's politics and his manifold literary activities. Such a volume would indeed have been welcome, especially with regard to Brecht's poetry and the practical aspects of his aesthetic theories, since very little has been written in English about these subjects. Neither have there been any recent, extended examinations of his drama from the perspective of the postmodem theater. A book of essays on any or a11 of these subjects would demand serious attention. We can rest secure, however, with the knowledge that this volume accomplishes none of the above. Indeed, for anyone particularly interested in the theater, as I assume the readers of this. journal are, Benoit Brecht can be only a disappointment. Not that there are no essays on Brecht's theater here; on the contrary, there are severaL But with the exception of the 444 Book Reviews contributions by Betty Nance Weber, Margareta Deschner and Wolfgang Storch (of which I wish to say more later), the theater essays are little more - and sometimes lessthan homages to a Brecht now become a "classic," an "influence" for both the left and the right, for political and nonpolitical drama and literature. Iring Fetscher, whose essay opens the volume, provides a rather bland outline of Brecht's transition from a bourgeois aesthete to a committed Marxist theoretician and playwright. As we move through these few pages we find little that is new. Fetscher infonns us that Brecht's...