Edward Albee: A Singular Journey (Applause Books) - Softcover

Gussow, Mel

Softcover

ISBN 10: 1557834474 ISBN 13: 9781557834478

Publisher: Applause, 2000

Synopsis

Mel Gussow's critically-acclaimed biography of the three-time Pulitzer Prize-winning playwright (Seascape, A Delicate Balance, The Zoo Story), who first electrified the American theatre scene in the 1960s with his groundbreaking The Zoo Story followed by the legendary Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf?

About this title

Review:

With his off-Broadway success The Zoo Story in 1960 and the Broadway smash Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf? in 1962, Edward Albee announced himself as his generation's great American playwright. He had an unhappy childhood as the adopted son of wealthy suburbanites with no interest in his feelings or talents, and later immersed himself in the flourishing (but still closeted) New York gay scene of the 1950s. These seminal experiences gave Albee a sardonic, essentially bleak view of human relations that suited the questioning spirit of the '60s, as did his plays' absurdist tone and often experimental techniques. Alcoholism and bad reviews plagued him through much of the 1970s and '80s, but he emerged triumphant and sober in 1994 with the play Three Tall Women, which marked his mature understanding of his mother's life and won him a third Pulitzer Prize. Mel Gussow observed much of this personal and professional journey as a theater critic and an acquaintance; his book is a traditional biography based on research and interviews--with colleagues and friends as well as Albee himself--that also judiciously uses the author's firsthand experiences. (A section about the playwright's drunken rudeness at a dinner party and subsequent apologetic letter to Gussow is particularly revealing.) Gussow limns his subject's life with candor, but without prurience, and lucidly conveys Albee's importance in the American theater. --Wendy Smith

About the Author:

Melvyn H. Gussow was an American theater critic, movie critic, and author who wrote for The New York Times for 35 years.

About this edition

• Publisher: Applause
• Publication date: 2000
• ISBN 10: 1557834474
• ISBN 13: 9781557834478
• Binding: Paperback
• Number of pages: 466