"Love and Admiration and Respect" : The O'Neill - Commins Correspondence ed. by Dorothy Commins (review)

Book Reviews DOROTHY COMMINS, ed. "Love and Admiration and Respect": The O'Neill - Commins Correspondence. Durham, N.C.: Duke University Press 1986. Pp. xxi, 248, $32.50. This is the second col1ection of Eugene O'Neill's letters to be published. In 1982 Travis Bogard and Jackson Bryer brought out the playwright's correspondence with Kenneth Macgowan. The same editors are preparing a general selection of O'Neill's letters; together with Richard Ludwig. they lend experienced scholarly hands to Dorothy Commins for her volume of correspondence between her husband and O'Neill. Saxe Commins, one of two or three outstanding American literary editors of this century, could name among "his" authors Faulkner, Audeo, SincJairLewis, Robinson Jeffers, Isak Dinesen, Adlai Stevenson and Franklin Roosevelt. He probably met O'Neill in the winter of 1915-1916 when both aspiring playwrights were friendly with the group that became The Provincetown Players. O'Neill had known Commins's aunt, Emma Goldman, almost a decade earlier. A medical student when he flrst met O'Neill, Commins changed to dentistry because of a family emergency and practised several years in Rochester. O'Neill's chronic dental problems led to periodic trips to Rochester for treatment and felJowship. In 1927 Commins married. and with the encouragement of his wife, a concert pianist, resigned his practise and resumed his literary interests. The couple went to Paris where Dorothy Commins furthered her piano studies and Saxe wrote and entered the transatlantic literary world. They reached Paris shortly after O'Neill went to the south ofFrance, fleeing publicity about his separation from Agnes Boulton and elopement with Carlotta Monterey. Commins was soon busy running errands for Eugene and Carlotta, and typing the manuscripts of Dynamo. Discussing the play (as he had discussed earlier O'Neill plays he read in manuscript) Saxe apparently decided his genius lay in helping other writers. When the Comminses returned to New York, O'Neill helped Commins get an editorial job with Covici-Friede; Commins moved in 1931 to O'Neill's publisher, Livcright. 118 Book Reviews There, and after 1933 at Random House, Commins guarded O'Neill's interests with intelligence and absolute loyalty for the remainder of his life. The story of Saxe Commins's life and career has been told in Dorothy Commins's What Is an Editor? Saxe Commins at Work (1978), which incorporates Commins's private memoir of his friendship with O'Neill. Parts of the memoir are reprinted in the new book; the reprinting is justified because the memoir is now placed in the context of 242 letters: nearly all those written by Eugene, and about halfthose written by Carlotta to Saxe and Dorothy Commins, together with Saxe's surviving letters to the O'Neills. The letters pennit one to feel as well as understand the pleasures and pressuresof the triangular friendship. The tone of Eugene's letters to Saxe, and Saxe's to Eugene, changes hardly at allover the decades. Both men had gifts for friendship. Latc in his life, O'Neill once called Saxe "My brother." Carlotta, who entered Eugene's life after the playwright had known Saxe more than a decade, and did so in the midst of scandalous headlines, was in a different and much more difficult situation than either man. In the beginning, Carlotta's letters to Saxe seem effusively and insincerely affectionate - even ifone does not know from other sources how her fear and distrust of her husband's old friends led her to speak contemptuously ofSaxe. About 1932 the tone of her letters to the Comminses seems to relax a little. By this time she and Eugene have married, and their relationship has acquired such stability as it has in the best of their times. The best of times ends about 1944- 45. Travis Bogard seems to me correct when he observes in his useful introduction that the O'Neills organize their marriage almost entirely around Eugene's work. Carlotta dedicates herself to anything she believes will help her husband's genius fulfill itself. At his request she makes herself his muse and makes being his muse her prime vocation. When the tremor makes it impossible for O'NeilJ to continue writing...