Eugene O'NeillRezensionen

#555 in our old book database. Not rated.

#415 in our old book database. Not rated.

Tragic, just like I was looking for, but I'm just not into romantic tragedies.

"Cuando en 1940 el dramaturgo Eugene O’Neill perdió a su perro Blemie, decidió escribir este breve texto con el fin de encontrar consuelo para él y su esposa. En forma de testamento y últimas voluntades, O’Neill imagina los recuerdos y pensamientos de su fiel amigo en sus últimos días, desde los que ve venir la muerte con dignidad y serenidad, solo preocupado por cómo afectará a sus amos".

O'Neill's brilliance and his place as America's foremost playwright locks into place, if it hadn't already, with this third volume of plays from the last decade of his writing life. Three of the plays presented here (The Iceman Cometh, Long Day's Journey Into Night, and A Moon for the Misbegotten) are utter masterpieces, works of art so powerful that they rank among the great accomplishments in English letters. Two other plays (Ah, Wilderness! and A Touch of the Poet) are great plays. A third (More Stately Mansions) is the one great failure of O'Neill's career, I believe, an endless epic back-and-forth set of soulful arguments that could have been (and sometimes was) better played in an infinitely shorter play. But it's my belief that no American playwright has ever come within miles of capturing O'Neill's ability to see the pain at the heart of human beings and to encapsulate so perfectly the pity which the lost heart yearns for and requires.

It's good at first, but by Act 3 all the themes have been developed and the rest of the play is simply digging in further to the already-established ruts.

This might be a play that really suffers in the reading as opposed to the performance.

I don't know why I was surprised by the abject misery. Themes a little dated, but a good read.

I don't think I would have liked this play 20 years ago, but I really enjoyed it. The skill and ideas are amazing. I don't think the story was the greatest, but enough to keep me interested in what what going to happen. I can see why this work is so revered.

slice of life one acts that don't follow modern guidelines, but I like them

high-brow soap opera

من الكتب اللي ضيعتهن وندمت عليهن ..

Perkins es el hijo de un granjero Eben, que sólo espera el día en que puede heredar las tierras de su padre, un tiránico viudo. Pero cuando éste vuelve a casarse y anuncia que dejará sus posesiones a su nueva esposa, estallan las pasiones más encontradas a lo largo de una noche llena de furia y deseo entre Eben y su nueva madrastra.

$15. Softcover Later Printing Drama; In this play, written in 1940 and released in 1956 after his death, Eugene O'Neil turns to the loneliest and most entangled of subjects. (176 Pgs.) Covers and book very good.

این دومین نمایشنامه‌ای بود که از اونیل می‌خوندم و متأسفانه به دلم ننشست. می‌دونم اونیل نمایشنامه‌نویس قهاریه و زبردسته و غیره اما من نه امپراتور جونز رو دوست داشتم نه این نمایشنامه رو. البته بیشترش برمی‌گرده به سلایق من. مثلاً من دوست دارم نمایشنامه صحنه‌های محدود و مکان‌های کم‌تعدادی داشته باشه... در واقع به نظرم چیزی که نمایشنامه و فیلمنامه رو از رمان و سریال جدا می‌کنه موجز بودنش در تمام سطوحه و تا جایی که تو این دوتا دیدم اونیل هر صحنه‌اش تو یه مکان جدید اتفاق می‌افته. چیز دیگه‌ای که به سلیقه‌ی من خوش نمیاد اینه که اثر حرفش رو اقلاً در یکی از سطوح فریاد بزنه مخصوصاً در بحث‌های سیاسی و فلسفی. مطمئناً لایه‌های زیرین دیگه‌ای از لحاظ جامعه‌شناسی داره اما من از رک بودن اثر خوشم نمیاد.
شاید از اونیل باز هم چیزی بخونم و شاید زمان دیگه‌ای از اونیل خوشم بیاد.

Re-read this recently, for probably the first time since the 80s. At first it's okay, set in a flophouse populated by the same types one encounters day-drinking at dive bars, though the slang is painfully of its time. Then the moralizing starts, and it gets to be real boring real quick. The twist ending is telegraphed far in advance, and doesn't really add anything to the story or the characters.

One of those plays that peaks at the title.

Emperor Jones is predictable, Anna Christie was okay nothing special, The Hairy Ape was good.

A lovely gem of a book! A Library Thing friend sent this to me, and I am so glad she did! One very special dog, called Blemie, was nearing the end of life. O'Neill writes with depth of feeling for the many years his lovely border collie was loved and quite capable of loving in return.

The illustrations by Adrienne Yorinks are nestled inside a stunning quilt. Each 25 illustration is beautifully rendered.

O'Neill gives a beautiful telling of life with Blemie, and then the stark realization that time with Blemie is growing shorter. It is Blemie's time to be free of pain. And, the pain created by the loss is sincerely heartfelt.

Highly recommended.

Four and 1/2 Stars.

4/20/22

Story as Old as Time

Universally themed dramas retain their force and impact years after they first appear as they reflect the core emotions and thinking of each generation that see and read them. These themes reach across time and nationalities because they tackle what seem to be intractable issues. Such is the case with Eugene O’Neill’s nearly one hundred year old play The Hairy Ape. In modern terms, readers and audiences can focus in four important aspects of the play reflecting issues we struggle with today: the one percent vs. everybody else (top deck vs. stokehold), the meaningfulness of work (the pride of Yank), the expression of masculinity (Yank’s strength), and our place in the world (Yank’s existential quandary).

The play opens in the stokehole of an ocean liner, where workmen feed the furnace while they banter crudely among themselves. In particular one, Yank, talks about this strength and the fact that he and his companions are what power the ship, the force, if you will, that moves the world. Yank is confident, strong, prideful, and superior to those around him.

Then from above deck Mildred, daughter of the Steel Trust tycoon, who has just told her aunt of her interest in social work, descends into the stokehold. Upon seeing the men and Yank, she calls them and him filthy beasts, Yank a hairy ape, and faints. Afterwards, Yank rages and seems to be battling with the incident as an existential experience.

Three weeks later, after returning to the New York port, Yank still struggles with his encounter with Mildred and his anger. On Fifth Avenue, he accosts churchgoers, punching one of them. He lands in jail for 30 days, there encountering prisoners who tell him about the Industrial Workers of the World (Wobblies). Upon release, he seeks them out, but they reject him because of his violent proclamations, especially his wish to blow up the Steel Trust run by Mildred’s father.

Next, he visits the zoo, where he encounters a caged ape, explains that they are seen as one and the same. He releases the ape. The ape attacks him and tosses him in the cage. Before dying, Yank utters these words: “He got me, aw right. I'm trou. Even him didn't tink I belonged.”

Not only does The Hairy Ape demonstrate there’s nothing much new in 21st angst, but stripped of its setting, reimagined in our own lives, it mirrors and explains the frustration felt by many today. It’s a story that’s been retold many times since and some might say acted out in the politics of our day.

Story as Old as Time

Universally themed dramas retain their force and impact years after they first appear as they reflect the core emotions and thinking of each generation that see and read them. These themes reach across time and nationalities because they tackle what seem to be intractable issues. Such is the case with Eugene O’Neill’s nearly one hundred year old play The Hairy Ape. In modern terms, readers and audiences can focus in four important aspects of the play reflecting issues we struggle with today: the one percent vs. everybody else (top deck vs. stokehold), the meaningfulness of work (the pride of Yank), the expression of masculinity (Yank’s strength), and our place in the world (Yank’s existential quandary).

The play opens in the stokehole of an ocean liner, where workmen feed the furnace while they banter crudely among themselves. In particular one, Yank, talks about this strength and the fact that he and his companions are what power the ship, the force, if you will, that moves the world. Yank is confident, strong, prideful, and superior to those around him.

Then from above deck Mildred, daughter of the Steel Trust tycoon, who has just told her aunt of her interest in social work, descends into the stokehold. Upon seeing the men and Yank, she calls them and him filthy beasts, Yank a hairy ape, and faints. Afterwards, Yank rages and seems to be battling with the incident as an existential experience.

Three weeks later, after returning to the New York port, Yank still struggles with his encounter with Mildred and his anger. On Fifth Avenue, he accosts churchgoers, punching one of them. He lands in jail for 30 days, there encountering prisoners who tell him about the Industrial Workers of the World (Wobblies). Upon release, he seeks them out, but they reject him because of his violent proclamations, especially his wish to blow up the Steel Trust run by Mildred’s father.

Next, he visits the zoo, where he encounters a caged ape, explains that they are seen as one and the same. He releases the ape. The ape attacks him and tosses him in the cage. Before dying, Yank utters these words: “He got me, aw right. I'm trou. Even him didn't tink I belonged.”

Not only does The Hairy Ape demonstrate there’s nothing much new in 21st angst, but stripped of its setting, reimagined in our own lives, it mirrors and explains the frustration felt by many today. It’s a story that’s been retold many times since and some might say acted out in the politics of our day.

Ahhh. Quite the excellent read. I love the way O'Neal develops this--how we slowly but surely grow accustomed to the alcoholism, the morphine addiction, the yelling and the crying and the arguing, as if we ourselves are slowly trying to tolerate this family's horribly tragic flaws.

young stepmother destroys family

La novela y la poesía estadounidenses tienen el trauma de no sentirse superiores a sus paralelas europeas. Así pues, fuera de la grandeza épica del "Moby Dick" o el prístino canto a la juventud originado en Whitman, toda esa literatura es allí muy "best seller", de consumo, olvidable y al final prescindible.
Pero ojo, otra cosa muy diferente es el teatro. Acaso sea por su feroz competencia con el cine o por la influencia de éste desde una etapa muy temprana de su génesis, que la cantidad de dramaturgos y obras que le han surgido en el siglo XX no tienen competencia en Occidente si no retrocedemos hasta el barroco europeo. Eugene O'Neill es uno de los exponentes máximos de este florecimiento de la dramaturgia norteamericana, y esta obra ha sido llevada al cine ya, al menos que yo sepa, dos veces.

O’Neill, Eugene. Ah, Wilderness! 1933.
When I think of Eugene O’Neill, I remember dark, Freudian plays about dysfunctional families and broken dreams. But Ah, Wilderness! is a nostalgic little romantic comedy that I was surprised to learn was the inspiration for the Andy Hardy series of teen comedies with Mickey Rooney. It is Happy Days for folks living through the Great Depression. Set on the fourth of July in 1906, it presents an idealized middle-class family in a Currier and Ives New England town. Richard is graduating from high school with revolutionary ideas from reading the scandalous works of George Bernard Shaw, Algernon Charles Swinburne, and Omar Khayyam. Will his girl ever allow him to kiss her? Will he go off to Yale and become a doctor or a lawyer? Richard’s adolescent posturing is hard to take, but we put up with it because his good-humored father (played in a 1934 movie by Lionel Barrymore) treats it with condescending humor. It is as if O’Neill is forgiving himself for his foolish teenage dreams.

Could easily go 5 stars. Don't feel I can offer anything that any of thousands before me have not. Powerful, dark, and I think it must be true that there is something familiar for each of us, here. I wonder whether that is uniquely American, or simply part of the human condition? Took me a lifetime to get to this and surprised, given my background in American Lit.