Clifford Odets: A Research and Production Sourcebook

(Hardback)

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Best known as a revolutionary playwright of the 1930s, Clifford Odets may have reached his zenith when four of his plays were produced on Broadway in 1935: Waiting for Lefty, Till the Day I Die, Awake and Sing!, and Paradise Lost. His plays, however, also show a romantic strain and are at least as much inimate and personal as they are political, often reflecting the isolation and loneliness of individuals in family settings. Never achieving the acclaim of Eugene O'Neill, who came before, or Tennessee Williams and Arthur Miller, who followed, Odets bridged the gap between earlier melodramatic theatre and the mature post-World War II drama on the American stage, creating rich and varied drama well into the 1950s. That his plays continue to be appraised and performed is clearly evident in this detailed and carefully articulated sourcebook. A near-exhaustive resource for both literary and theatrical research materials on Odets's dramatic career, the volume is organized and indexed for quick reference. Included are a biographical essay; critical overview, production history, and plot summary of each dramatic product; annotated primary and secondary bibliographies and information on archival sources; and production credits. Essential for research libraries and theatre collections, the volume will be useful to theatre scholars and practitioners and to anyone interested in the work of this significant modern American playwright.

Reviews

Demastes has produced a quick, easy guide to an extensive amount of published material on Clifford Odets, an individual many regard as the most important playwright of the 1930s. This reference guide is the first in a proposed series from Greenwood Press. If the rest of the series is as well constructed as this volume, researchers and students will save a great deal of time and effort in locating research material. Demastes provides a fairly complete bibliography, a short biographical sketch, play synopses and critical overviews of Odets's dramatic work, production histories, and credits, as well as unpublished archival material and lists of texts/anthologies that have published material by Odets. The year-by-year annotated secondary bibliography is divided into two major sections: "Reviews" and "Articles, Chapters, Sections." A third titled "Book-Length Studies" appears when appropriate. Although carefully constructed, the review section misses the 1984 revival of Awake and Sing, a production that received a critical drubbing by the press. Nonetheless, this book is recommended for upper-division undergraduate libraries, major research universities, and public libraries with large theater holdings in their collections.-Choice
"Demastes has produced a quick, easy guide to an extensive amount of published material on Clifford Odets, an individual many regard as the most important playwright of the 1930s. This reference guide is the first in a proposed series from Greenwood Press. If the rest of the series is as well constructed as this volume, researchers and students will save a great deal of time and effort in locating research material. Demastes provides a fairly complete bibliography, a short biographical sketch, play synopses and critical overviews of Odets's dramatic work, production histories, and credits, as well as unpublished archival material and lists of texts/anthologies that have published material by Odets. The year-by-year annotated secondary bibliography is divided into two major sections: "Reviews" and "Articles, Chapters, Sections." A third titled "Book-Length Studies" appears when appropriate. Although carefully constructed, the review section misses the 1984 revival of Awake and Sing, a production that received a critical drubbing by the press. Nonetheless, this book is recommended for upper-division undergraduate libraries, major research universities, and public libraries with large theater holdings in their collections."-Choice

Author Bio

WILLIAM W. DEMASTES is Associate Professor of English at Louisiana State University. Specializing in modern drama and American literature, he is the author of Beyond Naturalism (Greenwood 1988) and numerous articles in major drama and literary journals. He is the originator of and adviser to Greenwood's series Modern Dramatists Research and Production Sourcebooks, of which Clifford Odets is the first publication.