Elmer Rice: A Playwright's Vision of America by Anthony F. R. Palmieri (review)

Book Reviews unfortunately destroyed, he contemplated plays on: Benedict Arnold, Thomas Jefferson , the Civil Wax Draft Riots, a runaway slave, among others. In world history. he considered: Atlantis; a Hfe of Aeschylus; Shih Huang Ti, a second-century Chinese emperor; Saint Paul; Prester John; Philip11- Don Juan ofAustria; the twentieth-century Italian anarchist Malatesta; and others. The Shih Huang Ti, Philip II, and Malatesta ideas were actuaHy elaborated considerably, as the Notebooks show. He contemplated dramatizing one novel, Zola's Germinal. O'Neill's most extraordinary fonna1 conception was what he called a "Pyramid Form Play," which would move upward in three stages: beginning in realism; moving up to poetry. symbolism and masks, thence to "music, pantomime - great marionettes Fates "; and then, finally, back to realism. The marionette idea stayed with him, and his initial idea for the eight plays of "By Way of Obit," of which only Hughie was completed, was to use in them life·size marionettes. As for the completed plays, the Notebooks offer stretches of minimum interest eighteen pages on the agonized process, from 1927 to 1933, of the evolution of the unfortunate Days Without End; of moderate interest - the respective developments of Mourning Becomes Electra and LazarusLaughed; and ofgreat interest - the genesis and elaboration of The Iceman and Long Day's Journey. Of greatest interest is Long Day's Journey. What the MS. material underlines, and what the editor emphasizes, is that Mary Tyrone is both the key figure in the play and the most ambiguous character - she can in fact be played on stage either as delicate victim or as aggressive harridan on the basis of the final text. There is some evidence too that O'Neill was inclined to be more charitable to his family in the final version of the play than in some of the earlier ones. But exigencies of space prevent any further comment on these interesting matters. The editor is to be congratulated on her heroic and evidently victorious wrestle with O'Neill's tiny, progressively more illegible scrawl. The introduction is fun and clear, although it could have been more coherently organized, and there is some repetition between the introduction and the body of the text. All in all, it is a very valuable addition to the O'Neill canon. JOHN HENRY RALEIGH, UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA, BERKELEY ANTHONY F. R. PALMIERI. Elmer Rice: A Playwright's Vision ofAmerica. Rutherford, N.J.: Fairleigh Dickinson University Press 1980. Pp. xiv, 226. $19.50. Professor Palmieri's objective in this volume is simply stated: to prove that Elmer Rice's plays are worth reading. He attempts to do this by discussing every available play that Rice wrote and by pleading Rice's case with the fervor of a convert. Consequently, the demands he places upon himself are frequently overwhelming, and he is reduced to asserting - as he must many times in his defense - that the critics were wrong. Perhaps. But Palmieri does not supply convincing argument or evidence to the contrary. Throughout a long career. Rice wrote thirty-five plays that were produced. Not all are worth reading, although two or three must remain in any survey of America's developing dramatic literature. Rice's contribution to American drama and theatre, however, is well worth the exhibited enthusiasm of Palmieri, whose presentation, even jf overly and unnecessarily apologetic, is a refreshing reminder of one playwright's Book Reviews remarkable ability to write over a period of fifty years for adeveloping theatre and appeal with some measure of success to generations that endured two wars, an economic depression, social upheaval and varying periods ofprosperity. That is an achievement to be celebrated. As Palmieri says, "Rice deserves more attention" (p. 193). Part ofPalmieri's success in writing this study resides in his own conviction that Rice viewed American society as he does. He praises Rice's avant-garde views in Home ofthe Free (1917) with an impassioned declaration: "Today, as never before. parents defer to their children, seek to emulate them and even encourage them to disregard traditional moral values." He apprec'iates the repeated themes in Rice's plays: materialistic America, "the pernicious aspects of American life" (p. 114), and the way...