Dramatist in America: Letters of Maxwell Anderson, 1912-1958 ed. by Laurence G. Avery (review)

DRAMATIST IN AMERICA: LETTERS OF MAXWELL ANDERSON, 1912-1958 EDITED BY LAURENCE G. AVERY (Chapel Hill: The University of North Carolina Press, 1977. ix + 366 pages, $20.00.) Laurence G. Avery's Dramatist in America: Letters ofMaxwell Anderson , 1912-1958 is unique in several respects. First, it is the only suchedition of letters by a major American playwrightyet published; and second, it recreates not only the private and public life of one of America's greatest twentiethcentury playwrights, but it also brings alive one ofthe mostexcitingand vital periods of American drama. Included in this edition are Anderson letters, postcards, telegrams, and general correspondence spanning the period from 1912, shortly after his graduation from the University of North Dakota, to 1958, shortly before his death. The letters are arranged chronologically, and they reflect Anderson's theatrical career, his work with theater people, his ideas of the role and development of the American theater, and his conceptions ofhimselfas playwright . Implicit in Anderson's letters are his sense of humor and, at times, his disillusionment over the state of contemporary America. In one letter, for instance, Anderson reveals his despair at a theater and its critics that seemed concerned only about plays with"plenty ofshock or sex, and vapid musicals." Avery's edition includes an excellent introduction, summarizing Anderson 's career; a chronology ofAnderson's life, complete witha bibliography of his works; codes to the description and location of the letters; and an appendix which includes Anderson's previously unpublished statements about his life and work. Each letter is fully,judiciously, and sensitively edited and annotated, allowing the reader to understand each letter alone and in the context of the whole collection. Dramatist in America, then, provides us with a portrait ofone ofthe most important, most opinionated, and most talented of American dramatists. And until a definitive biography is written, Avery's edition stands as the best study of Maxwell Anderson available both to the scholar and the general reader. JEFFREY B. WALKER* •JEFFREY B. WALKER has published in Seventeenth-Century News, held ACLS and NEH grants, and is a member of the Committee for Bibliography for American Literature. He is completing a biography of Benjamin Church, the eighteenth-century American poet, and is preparing an edition of eighteenth-century American poetry. ROCKY MOUNTAIN REVIEW93 ...