The Vital Lie: Reality and Illusion in Modern Drama by Anthony S. Abbott (review)

Book Reviews 443 the medium illuminate the message and the message illuminate the medium ... .. (p. 174)· JAMES FISHER, WABASH COLLEGE ANTIIONY S. ABBon. The Vital Lie: Reality and IJ/usion in Modem Drama. Tuscaloosa: University of Alabama Press 1989. pp. 239· $27.95. Drawing upon Ernest Becker's The Denial ofDeath and Ibsen's The Wild Duck. Abbott indicates that in the course of his teaching he came to believe that' 'the reality~illusion theme was the dominant theme in modem drama," and that he ,. wanted to look at its beginnings in Ibsen and then trace its development over the hundred years or so to the present time" (pp. ix-x). He seeks to explain the popularity of the theme and its evolution, particularly "whether the vision of reality presented by Albee, Pinter, and Genet is fundamentally different from that of Ibsen, Strindberg, and Shaw" (p. x). The text is divided into three sections: " The Hegelians" (Ibsen, Strindberg, Chekhov, Shaw, and Synge); "Lost and Found" (pirandello, Brecht, Eliot, O'Neill, Miller, and Williams); and "Absurdism and After" (Beckett, Ionesco, Albee, Pinter, and Genet). Given the vast scope of this study, Abbott devotes, necessarily, only a few paragraphs to the major plays of each dramatist. Unfortunately, however, Abbott's superficial readings and simplistic argument lend the impression that one is perusing lecture notes from a senior survey course in modem drama. Abbott's text offers an accessible but not epipbanic consideration of his theme. One of the problems with this text is Abbott's mixed sense of audience. He indicates that his book is directed toward " students and teachers of modem drama," and for such a population it may indeed be useful. A more explicit application of his thesis in the initial chapters would, however, aid both novice and experienced readers, for he does not always identify the particular ' 'vital lie' , infoming the main characters of the plays he discusses, especially in the early chapters ofhis book.Moreover, since his survey can but skim the surface of many significant and complex plays, Abbott should have compared and contrasted them more frequently and in greater depth. This text will offer the experienced scholar little more than a •'starting point"; but it may a1so encourage some curious assumptions in those less familiar with the works considered. Abbott's critical methodology, close reading focussed on a theme, is certainly a valid approach. But unlike the better New Critics, Abbott ignores historical and cultural context, and despite his pretensions to modest goals, he makes sweeping, unsubstantiated (often untenable) assertions, e.g., "Ofall our playwrights. Arthur Miller and Tennessee Williams speak to us most fully and most honestly of ourselves as Americans" (p. 130); "Fear of the unlived life is not only a central motif in modem drama, but in all o/modern literature" (p. 5); " The theme of 'belonging' is picked up ... as the central issue of The Hairy Ape" (p. I IS). Such ex cathedra interpretation could drive even the most traditional of us to (shudder) deconstruction. 444 Book Reviews Abbott is at his best presenting a focussed overview of the career of a single playwright. His most incisive chapters are those on Pirandello, Ionesco, Synge, and Shaw, whom he usefully contrasts with Moliere; he uses his theme to define Shaw's heroes with admirablec1arity. Abbott's weakest work is on Ibsen, where his readings are often self-evident or eccentric.•'The real point of A Do//'s HOllse," he infonns us. "is that Torvald must change if Nora is to come back to him. That is the 'greatest miracle' to which Nora refers as she departs" (p. 13). Certainly, few sophisticated readers would require such explication. Abbott also asserts that Nora is "forced into exile" (p. 12), when it seems essential to realize that Nora elects exile; hers is an active choice, not a passive acceptance. And with respect to Hedda Gabler, Abbott speculates that' 'a union between [Hedda and Lovborgj would have been 'lOnny, but rich and vital" (p. 17), which discounts Hedda's destructive nature. Underlying Abbott's thesis is the assumption that "a vital lie enables a man to feel that he is a hero. a somebody" (p. xi). Implicit...