Long Day's Journey Into Night (Laurence Olivier)
Michael
version of Eugene O'Neill's Long Day's Journey Into Night with Laurence
Olivier on Dvd. I don't know if i am qualified to have an opinion on either
Oliver or O'Neill, but i must say the play itself seemed rather simple to
me: 4 people hanging around the living room talking about the past, and
gradually we come to the realisation that they all have some defects: the
father is a hack actor, the youngest son has tuberculosis, the oldest son is
a jealous drunk and the mother, the most dramatic character, is a morphine
addict who walks about like a ghost thinking of better times. They argue a
bit, talk about their memories and come to terms with each other. They drink
a lot of whisky and get all melancholic. Although i have heard Ibsen was an
inspiration for for this middle class drwaing room drama, i could not detect
any social criticism of any kind in it. It was all about the psychology.
Anyway, now I can at least claim to have seen something really cultural:)
Michael
we have revealed some sort of psychology or internal dynamics within the
family which does not seem have any immediate solution, although we don't
get any answers to the problems raised. I haven't seen the movie version: is
it good?
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Mark
What's your IQ? 78?
David Oberman
>Anyway, now I can at least claim to have seen something really cultural:)
And now back to your regularly scheduled programming.
<wink>
calvin
> Yes and i should add that there is a sense of doom in the play. At the end
> we have revealed some sort of psychology or internal dynamics within the
> family which does not seem have any immediate solution, although we don't
> get any answers to the problems raised. I haven't seen the movie version: is
> it good?
Don't miss the Sidney Lumet version, with Katharine Hepburn,
Ralph Richardson, Jason Robards, and Dean Stockwell. (1962)
Michael
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Jim Beaver
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This play was ripped from O'Neill's own heart. It is a condensation of his
own family's history, and he intended no social criticism. It was said of
O'Neill that the power of his work comes in part from his passionate,
soul-deep need to express his own story. The expression itself was the most
important thing to him. He often spoke of his preference that his plays not
even be performed, as the writing of them was sufficient for him. And he
burned many of his manuscripts before his death. He ordered that LONG DAY'S
JOURNEY, "written in tears and blood and pity," not be produced until 25
years after his death. (Had his widow acceded to that wish, neither the
brilliant Lumet version nor the Olivier National Theatre production would
exist now.) LONG DAY'S JOURNEY INTO NIGHT is, in my estimation, the
greatest play ever written by an American.
Jim Beaver
Michael
sick with tuberculosis, like the mother and the writer son in the play?
Also, I deliberately tried to keep my comments slightly low-brow because I
know O'Neill is sacret, so to speak. When i said the play was "simple", i
only refered to the setting, which is pretty straight foreward: the living
room. There are few chararcters, only four (and the servant). There isn't
much outward action either like in a Shakespeare or Bernard Shaw play. So,
it is simple in that sense. I am just getting to know the O'Neill plays
properly, so I will try to understand more as i go along. Next up for me:
The Iceman Cometh with . . . Lee Marvin, i think it was.
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David Oberman
>Does that mean that his mother was a drug addict and that he himself was
>sick with tuberculosis, like the mother and the writer son in the play?
Google. Plus, you might want to watch the American Masters show on
O'Neill. It's a year or two old.
>Also, I deliberately tried to keep my comments slightly low-brow because I
>know O'Neill is sacret, so to speak.
His standing as #1 American playwright is pretty secure, inside &
outside the academy. But he wasn't sacred to everyone: See Mary
McCarthy's "Theater Chronicles." She was ultimately wrong, of course,
but she offered superb insights on her Road to Wrong (which is a sign
of a great critic).
calvin
Just curious, did you consider her right or wrong
when she skewered J.D. Salinger. I have her
piece somewhere. I believe her ultimate point
was that it was impossible for Salinger ever to
justify Seymour's suicide. I remember she said,
either in the article or in an interview, that
somebody had to do it.
Tom Sutpen
> > His standing as #1 American playwright is pretty secure, inside &
> > outside the academy. But he wasn't sacred to everyone: See Mary
> > McCarthy's "Theater Chronicles." She was ultimately wrong, of course,
> > but she offered superb insights on her Road to Wrong (which is a sign
> > of a great critic).
>
> Just curious, did you consider her right or wrong
> when she skewered J.D. Salinger. I have her
> piece somewhere. I believe her ultimate point
> was that it was impossible for Salinger ever to
> justify Seymour's suicide. I remember she said,
> either in the article or in an interview, that
> somebody had to do it.
*****
I don't think that was *the* point of McCarthy's Salinger bashing;
more that Salinger seemed increasingly less capable of justifying
*anything* about the Glass family in terms of the world outside the
page. The phrase she used, I recall, was "a terrible Narcissus pool".
Those stories drove a lot of readers up the wall and back again (me
being one); not just the Mary McCarthys and Alfred Kazins and John
Updikes of the world (although when you consider the otherworldly
preoccupations of his subsequent output, Updike should have kept his
mouth shut about Salinger). Maybe when he croaks and we get a flotilla
of 'New' Glass family stories that begin to reveal the horror at their
center (a rumored Glass family *novel* is reportedly entitled 'The
Fall of the House of Glass'), then we can look at them in an entirely
different light, and Salinger's name will once again ascend something
other than predominently white high school reading lists. Until
then . . . fergetit!
Tom Sutpen
Jim Beaver
> Does that mean that his mother was a drug addict and that he himself was
> sick with tuberculosis, like the mother and the writer son in the play?
> Also, I deliberately tried to keep my comments slightly low-brow because I
> know O'Neill is sacret, so to speak. When i said the play was "simple", i
> only refered to the setting, which is pretty straight foreward: the living
> room. There are few chararcters, only four (and the servant). There isn't
> much outward action either like in a Shakespeare or Bernard Shaw play. So,
> it is simple in that sense. I am just getting to know the O'Neill plays
> properly, so I will try to understand more as i go along. Next up for me:
> The Iceman Cometh with . . . Lee Marvin, i think it was.
Yes, everything in LONG DAY'S JOURNEY is true except for the family name and
the condensation of events and timeline. Oh, and Eugene O'Neill named his
character Edmund after his brother who died in infancy, and named the dead
brother in the play Eugene.
Jim Beaver
David Oberman
>Just curious, did you consider her right or wrong
>when she skewered J.D. Salinger.
I don't remember reading that.
calvin
> On Oct 12, 11:51 pm, calvin <cri...@windstream.net> wrote:
I read the Glass stories multiple times (except 'Hapworth 16, 1924')
and loved them. But of course I was white, and only a few years out
of high school. The very idea that writing has to appeal to all
ethnic
groops is outrageous, IMO, and is taking PC to a terrible extreme.
Do you require that all books written by non-whites be appreciated
by whites, to be legitimate? Didn't think so.
Tom Sutpen
> > Those stories drove a lot of readers up the wall and back again (me
> > being one); not just the Mary McCarthys and Alfred Kazins and John
> > Updikes of the world (although when you consider the otherworldly
> > preoccupations of his subsequent output, Updike should have kept his
> > mouth shut about Salinger). Maybe when he croaks and we get a flotilla
> > of 'New' Glass family stories that begin to reveal the horror at their
> > center (a rumored Glass family *novel* is reportedly entitled 'The
> > Fall of the House of Glass'), then we can look at them in an entirely
> > different light, and Salinger's name will once again ascend something
> > other than predominently white high school reading lists. Until
> > then . . . fergetit!
>
> I read the Glass stories multiple times (except 'Hapworth 16, 1924')
> and loved them.
*****
All I see in those stories (a term I'm using advisedly in reference to
these works) is an already insular sensibility disappearing as far
into itself as any writer has dared to go; culminating in the absolute
dementia of his 30,000+ word head-scratcher, 'Hapworth 16, 1924' (I'm
not surprised to hear you haven't read that thing multiple times. I'd
be shocked to hear of anyone reading it *twice*). That, of course,
doesn't mean I won't be the first in line when all that heretofore
unpublished junk surfaces (when *is* that old buzzard gonna give up
the ghost, anyways?!).
By the way, I've developed a theory on 'Hapworth' and J.D. Salinger's
novella-length short stories of the 1950s that, if I do say so myself,
is worthy of Thomas Pynchon. But I won't burden this newsgroup with
it.
> But of course I was white, and only a few years out
> of high school. The very idea that writing has to appeal to all
> ethnic
> groops is outrageous, IMO, and is taking PC to a terrible extreme.
> Do you require that all books written by non-whites be appreciated
> by whites, to be legitimate? Didn't think so.
*****
Oh, calm yourself. That wasn't my point and you know it. I was merely
pointing out the captive audience where one finds 'Catcher in the Rye'
read these days.
If you really want to hear about it, I would daresay that novel now
reflects the lives of very, very few who read it. For example, how
many kids today in, say, Ames, Iowa, or Oakland, California, or Falls
Church, Virginia, or Kallispell, Montana, or any other time and place
in America outside of Manhattan in 1950 would share Holden Caulfield's
Lady Diana Cooper-esque derision of them dumb baby-dolls who order Tom
Collinses in December (you can almost hear Bertie Wooster somewhere
exclaiming "How perfectly foul!').
I'll betcha in an early draft theres a passage where Holden rips
somebody a new one for not using the proper fork during the main
course.
Tom 'Some people are as bad as servants!' Sutpen
calvin
I was a 21 year old middle Georgian, just graduated from
college when I first read Catcher, not having much of anything
at all in common with Caulfield. Yet that is the only book that
when I finished it, went right back to page one and read it again.
Using Hapworth as an exhibit against Salinger seems unfair.
Anyone can produce a turkey in mid-output. How many
movie directors have done so? The only time I've read it straight
through was when I bought the New Yorker in which it
appeared off the newstand in 1965. But awful as it is, it's
still somewhat useful for browsing, especially for the book
list it contains, as wildly improbable as it was that a seven
year old would have read all that, or even had time to.
The worst thing about Hapworth was that it was the last
thing we would get, and never see the ship righted.
Tom Sutpen
> > I'll betcha in an early draft theres a passage where Holden rips
> > somebody a new one for not using the proper fork during the main
> > course.
>
> > Tom 'Some people are as bad as servants!' Sutpen
>
> I was a 21 year old middle Georgian, just graduated from
> college when I first read Catcher, not having much of anything
> at all in common with Caulfield. Yet that is the only book that
> when I finished it, went right back to page one and read it again.
*****
Yeah, but only 'cause books were scarce in lockup (joke!).
Anywho, I'll bet that was some years ago, when the universe 'Catcher'
inhabited and the real world were in somewhat closer proximity.
Read the thing today and it's as relevant to everyday reality as
'Vanity Fair' . . . or 'Penrod' . . . 'Beowulf', even.
> Using Hapworth as an exhibit against Salinger seems unfair.
> Anyone can produce a turkey in mid-output. How many
> movie directors have done so?
*****
I could point out 'Seymour; an Introduction', which is almost as
insane as 'Hapworth', but why belabor the point.
By the way . . . mid-output?? That was the last thing he published. If
it wasn't in a magazine with its head buried so far up its own
reputation as 'The New Yorker', I would imagine everyone on the
fiction desk started rethinking their committment.
I'd love to see the internal memos on that one; particularly what
queries, if any, went to Salinger himself (I guarantee you the first
one read, in its entirety, "Uhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhh . . . are you okay out
there?").
Talk about tightrope walking!
> The only time I've read it straight
> through was when I bought the New Yorker in which it
> appeared off the newstand in 1965. But awful as it is, it's
> still somewhat useful for browsing, especially for the book
> list it contains, as wildly improbable as it was that a seven
> year old would have read all that, or even had time to.
*****
I won't get too deeply into this, but I say we've yet to learn the
true function of that list.
Remember, this guy was up to his eyeballs in all kinds of ghastly
business during his days with OSS and the CiC (not counting whatever
the hell it was he was doing in Eastern Europe just after the war). My
guess is that, within days of 'Hapworth' appearing on newsstands, the
list was de-coded and countless intelligence operatives throughout the
Soviet bloc lost their lives.
Y'ask me, that story was pure tradecraft.
> The worst thing about Hapworth was that it was the last
> thing we would get, and never see the ship righted.
*****
Ah, don't worry. We'll get more, eventually (I hope we find out to
what extent his reported obsession with 'The Andy Griffith Show'
informed his later writing).
The guy can't hold out forever.
Tom 'Can he?' Sutpen
calvin
I enjoyed your post very much, so there's no need to comment
point by point. Just two things: I called Hapworth mid-output
because that's what it was at the time. I don't think the author
had any notion, until the reviews came in, that it would be his
last living published work.
As for lumping 'Seymour; an Introduction' with Hapworth (almost
as insane, you said), I think there are many thousands of people
who would disagree with you there. I don't know how many
times I've read it, but I'm sure it's at least five times, over the
decades, the first time being years before it was published in
book form.