Portland Public Library

Eugene O'Neill, a life in four acts, Robert M. Dowling

eng

Includes bibliographical references and index

individual biography

illustrations

index present

non fiction

Eugene O'Neill

bibliography

875644418

Robert M. Dowling

a life in four acts

."A major new biography of the Nobel Prize-winning playwright whose brilliantly original plays revolutionized American theater"--Publisher informationThis extraordinary new biography fully captures the intimacies of Eugene O'Neill's tumultuous life and the profound impact of his work on American drama. Robert M. Dowling innovatively recounts O'Neill's life in four acts, thus highlighting how the stories he told for the stage interweave with his actual life stories. Each episode also uncovers how O'Neill's work was utterly intertwined with, and galvanized by, the culture and history of his time. Much is new in this extensively researched book: connections between O'Neill's plays and his political and philosophical worldview; insights into his Irish upbringing and lifelong torment over losing faith in God; his vital role in African American cultural history; unpublished photographs, including a unique offstage picture of him with his lover Louise Bryant; new evidence of O'Neill's desire to become a novelist and what this reveals about his unique dramatic voice; and a startling revelation about the release of Long Day's Journey Into Night in defiance of his explicit instructions. This biography is also the first to discuss O'Neill's lost play Exorcism (a single copy of which was only recently recovered), a dramatization of his own suicide attempt. Written with lively informality yet a scholar's strict accuracy, Eugene O'Neill: A Life in Four Acts is a biography that America's foremost playwright richly deserves"--, Provided by publisher

Prologue: The Irish luck kid, 1916 -- Introduction: "Life is a tragedy-- hurrah!" -- The ghosts at the stage door : The treasures of Monte Cristo ; School days of an apostate ; Anarchist in the tropics ; Exorcism in New York ; Return to Monte Cristo ; The (love) sick apprentice ; It takes a village -- "To be an artist or nothing" : Washed ashore at land's end ; Below Washington Square ; "Turn back the universe" ; "The town is yours" ; Civilization unmasked ; The theatre F(r)eud -- "The Broadway show shop" : Prometheus unbound ; Draining bitter cups ; Note to the Ku Klux Klan ; "God's hard, not easy" ; The novelist behind the mask ; "Old Doc" at Loon Lodge ; The soliloquy is dead! Long live-- what? -- Full fathom five : Uncharted seas ; L'Aeschylus du Plessis ; The Prodigal returns ; "The game isn't worth the candle" ; Pandora's box ; The tyranny of time ; Silence's end ; "There's a lot to be said for being dead" -- Postscript: Journey into light -- Appendix. Selected chronology of works (date completed)