Portraying the Self: Sean O’Casey and the Art of Autobiography by Michael Kenneally (review)

132 LETTERS IN CANADA 1988 But the added emphasis upon historical detail is not the central point. In the play between present and past (and sometimes future, as in Back to Methuselah), and between ideas of progress and decline, Wisenthal elaborates a theory of Shaw's use of a 'double-perspective' in his plays. This manipulation of perspective is clear, for instance, in a play such as Saint Joan: Ifwe look at Joan from the point ofview of the declining Middle Ages, then she appears as a necessary and progressive force in history. This is the main perspective within Saint Joan, but the play is written for a twentieth-century audience, and from our point of view Joan represents the forces that are now the established ones in our society. This interpretation has the advantage of making structural sense of the epilogue to that play. In the final chapter, 'Shavian History and Shavian Drama,' Wisenthal makes a number of tantalizing suggestions that do not receive extended examination. He remarks, for instance, that 'there are many explanations for Shaw's switch from novelist to dramatist, and some of them are related to his attitudes towards history.' This chapter also shows the mark of contemporary historical theory, particularly that of Hayden White. FollowingWhite's notion of 'emplotment' in historical writing, Wisenthal analyses the 'encounter between genres' in Shaw's work to suggest that the 'tragic' and 'comic' view are both contained in such plays as Saint Joan and Major Barbara. Genre is, in this view, dependent upon the double perspective. Wisenthal's work is learned and impeccably clear throughout , certain to prove useful to scholars engaged in the re-evalution of Shavian drama. (HEIDI J. HOLDER) Michael Kenneally. Portraying the Self: Sean O'Casey and the Art of Autobiography Colin Smythe/Barnes and Noble. xv, 268. $32.5° As Michael Kenneally admits, a'Casey's six-volume set of autobiographies is 'inordinately long.' But it is futile to imagine a'Casey as a more concise and normative autobiographer. The excess is essential to a man and writer who were as inseparable, Camerado, as any man and writer have ever been. a'Casey wrote his way out of poverty and ignominy into selfhood, dignity, and a tolerable social existence. And writing, more even than making plays, was his - often anguished - emotional release, his spiritual exercise, and a source but not quite the end of value. Kenneally does much to mitigate some of the negative effects of a'Casey's garrulousness with his careful structural analyses, disclosing a deliberation that a'Casey himself often obscures. In particular, the HUMANITIES 133 chapters in which Kenneally analyses O'Casey's principles of organization and his narrative strategies are among the most illuminating studies of the autobiographies so far produced and do much to clarify one's view of the original. As its subtitle says, this book is very much concerned with 'the art of autobiography' and with this particular example of that art, Kenneally arguing that the six volumes are indeed a single coherent work. He does not, however, have much truck with Sean O'Casey the man and this, though understandable, makes for a rather severe critical approach to autobiography. The two most obvious ways in which this study of O'Casey's autobiographies might have been more concerned with their subject are the psychological and historical. With respect to the first, O'Casey is an autobiographer who seems to cry out to the reader with the utmost ~1d"O"onlln11~no~~ fnr llnrtpr~t::ln('Hn(7 nf hi~ (7TipV()l1~ hllTt~· who~p anP"PT ........."".........O""..........."'-.......... L_.............._.... _......__............_....._......·0 _ ................. 0---· - --:.... ----- -:....; . - ---.:... - ----0--; admiration, resentment, and forgiveness seem to be expressed without reserve; for whom the likes of Shaw and Yeats had an obvious self-projective psychological importance; for whom the immense influences (and rather similar ones?) of mother and wife seem to be artlessly expressed; and for whom, above all, writing ('litera scripta,' in John jordan's words) had a well-nigh magic potency. Kenneally'S emphasis on the deliberation of O'Casey's art rigorously excludes any assessment of such apparent revelations of the self-portraitist's psychology...