BEYOND THE HORIZON AND THE EMPEROR JONES (Bantam Classic) Review

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BEYOND THE HORIZON AND THE EMPEROR JONES (Bantam Classic) ReviewEugene O'Neill (1888-1953) is generally considered the greatest American playwright of the 20th Century. Today casual readers and playgoers are most likely to know his work through two plays written in the early 1940s: the celebrated The Iceman Cometh and the Pulitzer Prize-winning Long Day's Journey Into Night. But the great bulk of O'Neill's work was done between about 1914 and 1933--and although the power of his later work is undeniable, it was actually his earlier work that led to his 1936 Nobel Prize for Literature.
BEYOND THE HORIZON was the first full-length O'Neill drama to reach the stage, opening first as a matinee-only show in February 1920. Notices were extremely good, and the show quickly moved to a regular-schedule venue, where it enjoyed considerable critical and popular support and became the first of four O'Neill scripts to win the Pulitzer Prize.
The story concerns two farming brothers. Robert is physically delicate, something of a dreamer, and longs to visit distant lands "beyond the horizon;" Andrew, robust and outgoing, is content to remain on the farm. When Robert receives the opportunity to take a long ocean voyage that may restore his health, he jumps at the chance--but fate intervenes in the form of Andrew's girlfriend Ruth, whom Robert secretly loves. Ruth confesses to Robert that she prefers him, and so the brothers switch plans and destinies: Robert will remain on the farm with Ruth; Andrew will go "beyond the horizon." But the decision proves costly. Robert remains unsuited to farm life, his marriage turns sour, and Andrew's return sparks unpleasant personal revelations that lead to tragedy.
At the time it debuted, critics applauded O'Neill's power--but they also condemned the play's final act, which seemed miscalculated and overwrought, and which failed to reach the note of grand tragedy for which the play strove. This criticism remains as valid today as it did in 1920, and read today the play also seems very much of its time and therefore distinctly dated. It is rarely revived. Still, for all its flaws, BEYOND THE HORIZON has moments of tremendous power, and when compared with other dramas of the era it is easy to see what all the fuss was about. It also begins the sure consolidation of the basic theme that O'Neill will mine for much of his career: the belief that each person is his own prisoner, and that the prison can be escaped in but one way.
THE EMPEROR JONES reached the stage the same year in November, and of the two it is clearly the more significant play and flatly stunned audiences with its unexpected content and style. In this instance, the story concerns "Emperor Jones," an American black man of great physical presence but limited insight. After enduring repressive racism in his own nation, he makes his way to a remote island, where he bluffs his way to the throne--but instead of benefiting from his own experiences and working to create a just society, he recreates the oppression he himself has known.
The play actually begins with Jones facing a rebellion. Jones has anticipated this: with considerable hidden wealth, he will make his escape through the jungle and leave the island by sea. But he has miscalculated. The jungle is strange to him at night, and as he flees his own past rises up in ghostly images before him, leading him to gradually divest himself of all the false grandeur to which he has aspired. In a very real sense, his dash to freedom becomes a descent into a hell he has made for himself--and with each scene the pursuing drums grow louder, driving him on to destruction.
Unlike BEYOND THE HORIZON, THE EMPEROR JONES is frequently revived--but like many O'Neill scripts it is a difficult read. On the page, O'Neill's construction seems mechanical in a way that it does not when you actually see it, and although O'Neill provides a great deal of descriptive stage direction it is extremely difficult to imagine how the show actually plays out before an audience. Given the flaws of BEYOND THE HORIZON and the challenges of THE EMPEROR JONES, I do not really recommend them for the casual reader--but for any one interested in O'Neill BEYOND THE HORIZON is an essential--and for any one interested in 20th Century theatre THE EMPEROR JONES is required reading, pure and simple. I give three stars to the former, five stars to the latter, and split the difference.
GFT, Amazon ReviewerBEYOND THE HORIZON AND THE EMPEROR JONES (Bantam Classic) Overview

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The War of the Worlds (Bantam Classics) Review

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The War of the Worlds (Bantam Classics) ReviewToday H.G. Wells is chiefly recalled by the general public as the author of three seminal science-fiction novels: THE TIME MACHINE, THE INVISIBLE MAN, and most famously THE WAR OF THE WORLDS. But these are only three of the more than one hundred books Wells published in his lifetime, and it is worth recalling that Wells himself was a socio-political and very didactic writer, a determined reformer with distinctly socialist leanings. And his point of view informs everything he wrote--including these three famous novels.
In each case, Wells uses the trappings of science-fiction and popular literature to lure readers into what is essentially a moral lesson. THE TIME MACHINE is essentially a statement on the evils of the English class system. THE INVISIBLE MAN addresses the predicaments of the men and women to whom society turns a blind eye. And THE WAR OF THE WORLDS is a truly savage commentary on British imperialism and colonialism.
This is not to say that it isn't science-fiction--for it most certainly is, and moreover it is science-fiction well grounded in the scientific thinking of its day: intelligent life on Mars was believed to be entirely possible, and Wells forecasts the machinery and weapons that would soon become all too real in World War I. Set in England about the beginning of the 20th Century, the story finds a strange meteor landing near the narrator's home--and from it emerge Martians, who promptly construct gigantic and powerful killing machines and set about wiping the human population of England off the face of the earth. The Martians and their machines are exceptionally well imagined, the story moves at a fast clip, and the writing is strong, concise, and powerful. And to say the book has had tremendous influence is an understatement: we have been deluged with tales of alien invaders (although not necessarily from Mars) ever since.
But there is a great deal more going on here than just an entertaining story. Both the England and Europe of 1898 were imperialistic powers, beating less technologically advanced cultures into submission, colonizing them, and then draining them of their resources. With THE WAR OF THE WORLDS, Wells turns the tables, and imperialistic England finds itself facing the same sort of social, economic, and cultural extermination it has repeatedly visited on others.
The upshot of the whole thing is that Wells ultimately paints the English habit of forced colonization as akin to an invasion by horrific blood-sucking monsters from outer space--and even goes so far as to suggest that if the present trend continues we ourselves may follow an evolutionary path that will bring us to the same level as the Martians: ugly, sluggish creatures that rely on machines and simply drain off what they need from others without any great concern for the consequences. If we find the idea of such creatures horrific, he warns, we'd best look to our own habits. For these monsters are more like us than we may first suppose.
And this, really, is why the novel has survived even in the face of advancing scientific knowledge that renders the idea of an invasion from Mars more than a little foolish. THE WAR OF THE WORLDS is a mirror, and even more than a century later the Martians reflect our own nature to a truly uncomfortable degree. A memorable novel, and strongly recommended--at least to those who have the sense to understand the parable it offers.
--GFT (Amazon.com Reviewer)--The War of the Worlds (Bantam Classics) Overview

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The Sopranos: The Book Review

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The Sopranos: The Book ReviewI got an early copy through Barnes & Noble, and let me tell you: this book is awesome. It is filled with extremely high quality photographs ranging from portraits of the cast members to pictures from the episodes to VERY nice pictures of the interiors of buildings (the Soprano house, the Bada Bing, Nuovo Vesuvio, etc.). It is also filled with a wealth of knowledge, talking about numerous aspects about the show from the look of Jersey (compared to "New Jersey") to the music used on the show to a breakdown of where the Soprano Family gets its income to even the types of nail designs that Carmela and Adriana had over the years. The major cast members all wrote their own essays about their characters, which contain descriptions interspersed with their own insights on their characters. There is also a section devoted to each character highlighting that character's most distinctive trait (such as Paulie's hair, Artie's mustache, etc.) and giving insider secrets about it (ex: Tony Sirico wakes up at 3am every shoot day, uses an entire can of hairspray, and emerges 3 hours later with Paulie's distinctive hairdo). Finally, the book includes an episode guide up through Season 6A to help refresh your memory of the gist of what happened in each episode. All told, this is an incredible book, and as I said, it is extremely high quality, which you can tell right from the front cover. I highly recommend it to anybody who has watched even one episode and enjoyed what they saw.The Sopranos: The Book Overview

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Long Way Back: A Novel Review

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Long Way Back: A Novel ReviewI absolutely loved Long Way Back. Written in a totally original voice, this story of love, loss and ultimately, redemption, is tender and poignant and thoroughly enjoyable. I could completely relate to the characters. I mean, who hasn't questioned their faith after bad things have happened, or wanted to totally reinvent themselves when the old version just didn't seem to be working out anymore? Bottom line: You gotta get this book. Also, a warning--read the last chapters somewhere private...I was in a public place and everyone wondered why I was crying.Long Way Back: A Novel Overview

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Intuition Review

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Intuition Review"Intuition" is science as observed by Jane Austen rather than Michael Crichton. I was mesmerized from page one and cried when I reached the gentle revelation of the last scene. Science has long deserved a literary treatment by a great novelist and Allegra Goodman delivers with her carefully-examined microcosm.
The novel is a character study rather than a whodunit, or more precisely, whodonewhat. The central plot of alleged fraud in the lab provides the dissecting knife to tease apart the complicated relationships among the lab mentors and serfs--postdoctoral researchers and technicians. Goodman absolutely nails the depiction of the claustrophobic, almost cloistered ambience and power structures of a high-powered research institute. She treats all of her characters with fairness and honesty, which is the key to the novel's success. I myself was a neuroscience graduate student at Stanford. Reading "Inutition" brought back those days, adding the gifts of compassion and universal perspective to my hindsight view of many challenging years of study.
"Intuition" is an old-fashioned novel, and I am interested to know if that is why Allegra Goodman chose to set the story in the late 1980's (1987 is my best guess). This was a technologically simpler era of cell biology, the moment just before molecular biology and gene cloning took off. The particular science performed in "Intuition" is secondary. There are no whiz-bang scenes of technological madness. That's the brilliance of the novel: distilling scientific ambition, reward, disappointment and betrayal down to its human essence. "Intuition" is the rare book that will be enjoyed by lab geeks and English lit majors alike.Intuition Overview

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