Essays on Modern American Drama: Williams, Miller, Albee, and Shepard ed. by Dorothy Parker (review)

Book Reviews 127 language, and the playwright's preoccupation, in the latcr plays, with the "power struggle between father and son" (p. 67). Hart seems most comfortable and provocative in the "Realism Revisited" chapter in which she tackles Curse of the Starving Class. Buried Child, True West, Foolfor Love, and A Lie Oflh~ Mind. Here she discusses the familial tensions, the psychohistories, the male protagonists, and the combative relationships between fathers and sons. Importantly, she argues that the playwright's naturalism inthe later plays is not a"retreat to out-worn conventions and tired traditions. In his own way. Shepard has given new Life to the inherited structures ofthe past in much the same way that Ibsen injected truth and substance into the lifeless conventions of the well-made play" (p. 66). Since 1964. when Cowboys and The Rock Garden opened at Theatre Genesis in New York City, Shepard has written over forty plays. Two decades and numerous accolades la~er. he moved, almost by stealth, from an obscure writ~r to one of the exemplary contemporary dramatists. Since he won a Pulitzer Prize for Buried Child in 1979, Shepard's reputation has steadily grown. Robert Mazzocco in his 1985 essay in The New York Review of Books calls Shepard "the dominant American playwright of his generation." Part of his popularity, Hart concedes, stems from his acting in such Hollywood films as Frmlces, The Right Stuff, Country, and an adaptation of Fool For Love. His mass-public reputation only increased when he graced the cover of Newsweek in 1985, and co-wrote with Bob Dylan the title song for Dylan's album, Knocked Out LQaded in 1986. An intensely private ~an, Shepard has suddenly become one of the most public dramatists. For all his diverse talents, however, Shepard's greatest achievement lies with the plays. As Hart concludes, "Perhaps the lure of the screen has captured Shepard at last, but the soul of the playwright rests securely in the work ofSam Shepard, on stage or screen" (p. 140). Of all the books to have (suddenly) appeared on Shepard - one thinks of, among others, Doris Auerbach's Sam Shepard, Arthur Kopil, and the OJf-Brpadway Theater, Ron Mottram's Inner Landscapes: The Theater of Sam Shepard, Carol Rosen's Sam Shepard as well as C.W.E. Bigsby's excellent chapter on Shepard in A Critical Introduction to Twentieth-Century American Drama:BeyondBroadway, Vol.3, and the collection of critical essays edited by Bonnie Marranca, American Dreams: The Imagination o/Sam Shepard - Hart's is in many ways tbe most satisfying contribution. In its analytical rigor and perceptive content, Sam Shepard's Metaphorical Slages is a scholarly tribute to Shepanl's genius that scholars will necessarily, and profitably, consult. MATTHEW C. ROUDANE, GEORGIA STATE UNIVERSITY DOROTHY PARKER. ed. Essays on Modern American Drama: Williams, Miller. Albee, and Shepard. Toronto: University of Toronto Press 1987. pp. 218. $28·50; $13.50 (PB). The first issue of Modem Drama appeared from the University afKansas in May 1958. 128 Book Reviews For at least two decades anthologists have been mining its riches; now. it seems, the journal will be displaying them itself. I infer that Dorothy Parker's Essays on Modern American Drama is the first ofa series despite the fact that its brief introduction says no more about editorial intention and the raison d' eire of the volume than that "it seems appropriate that some of the major articles ... should begin to be anthologized, and that one of the fIrst areas to be collected should be American drama" (xi). The anthology gathers some of Modern Drama's most distinguished pieces on America's four most important playwrights since Eugene O'Neill, although, again, the introduction does not make it clear why the grand daddy of these four Americans should himself remain unrepresented. One can easily think ofgood reasons for omitting O'Neill (including the material available, the difficulty of selection, temporal decisions, the availability of space, the specific purposes of the volume, and so on); I wish only that Parker's reasons were made explicit in her introductory remarks. While she admirably and succinctly accounts for choosing Tennessee Williams, Arthur Miller, Edward Albee...