Bertolt Brecht

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A new critical biography of the influential playwright, writer, poet and activist, Bertolt Brecht (1898 - 1956). Known for his experimental, modernist Epic Theatre and its 'alienation effect', Brecht sought to break down the division between high art and popular culture. The Threepenny Opera, his collaboration with composer Kurt Weill, was a milestone in musical theatre, and plays like Mother Courage and Galileo changed the course of modern drama and aesthetic theory. Philip Glahn looks at Brecht's life and works through his plays and stories, poems and political essays in order to illustrate how they trace a lifelong attempt to relate to specific social, economic and political circumstances.

Reviews

Through skillful integration of biographical details and conceptual framing, Glahn succeeds in constructing a complex picture of Brecht that is neither adulatory nor condemning but situated within a specific historical reality. In the process, Brechts ghost is given a chance to compete in contemporary iterations of debates he was once central to. * Brooklyn Rail *
Though Bertoldt Brecht is classified as a biography, such a label obscures, in part, all of what Glahn has accomplished with it. More than just an exposition on events of Brechts life, the book is also a subtle, discerning intertwining of biographical moments, erudite commentary on Brechts artistic expressions, and elucidation of and engagement with Brechts philosophical concerns . . . this is one of the best entry points into Brecht, biographically, historically, thematically and artistically. Glahn has demonstrated a singular ability to capture the essential elements of what Benjamin called the complex phenomenon which is Brecht, in all his intricacies, in a penetrating and pithy fashion. It is a fantastic incursion into Brecht as a man, Brecht as a social and aesthetic thinker and Brecht as a revolutionary. * Anthony Squiers, Marx and Philosophy Review of Books *
Everything Brecht wrote plays, dialogues, and poetry was his attempt to clarify the inner contradictions not only of the capitalism and fascism of his times, but also of the communism that was always disappointing his deepest hopes. In a book that makes Brechts struggle to reveal these hidden contradictions its central theme, Glahn issues, by implication, a call to arms to todays artists who are faced with a world that seems to defy attempts to treat the global crisis with an art that is rarely more than notes on local angst. * Richard Foreman, Bomb Magazine *

Author Bio

Philip Glahn is Associate Professor of Critical Studies and Aesthetics at Temple University, Philadelphia, and a contributor to Afterimage, Art Journal, The Brooklyn Rail and Public.