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Edward Albee: A Singular Journey
by
Mel Gussow
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?
Paperback, 448 pages
Published
October 1st 2000
by Applause Books
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Mel Gussow's abilities as a journalist and his personal friendship with Edward Albee allow him to make this the definitive biography of a great American playwright. I came to read this as I prepared for attending a performance of The Goat or Who is Sylvia?. The theater company had recommended this as the best biography they had found.
Chronicling the life of someone who has become an icon of the American theater is difficult, but Mel Gussow is able to combine the personal, literary, a...more
Chronicling the life of someone who has become an icon of the American theater is difficult, but Mel Gussow is able to combine the personal, literary, a...more
With all due respect to Tennessee Williams, Arthur Miller, Lillian Hellman and William Inge, Edward Albee is the most important American playwright to emerge since Eugene O'Neill. I don't say best because "best" is too subjective a term to be applied to the arts. Albee is important because of the influence his work has had on playwrights such as Arthur Kopit, Sam Shepard, John Guare and David Mamet. Mel Gussow has produced an indelible portrait of this artist. One revels in Albee's cur...more
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Gussow does an excellent job of making his enigmatic subject knowable, human and in some cases noble. This informed and richly detailed bio is compulsively readable without being gossipy. The biographer takes a respectful, even-handed tone and his real-life encounters with Albee lend the book color and credibility. The author only lost me when he rehashed Albee's recurrent themes, offered his (not Albee's) theories on where a play might have come from or speculated on 'roads not taken' ("...more
Good, wonderful detailed story of his life....but so much information that I couldn't get through the whole thing, just skimmed a few chapters on periods that I wasn't too interested in...
First class biography on a fascinating subject, complete with in depth analysis on most of Albee's major works leading up to and including "The Play About The Baby." Wish it had been published a few years later to include "The Goat," but of course that's not a fault of the book itself. The fact that the author has a personal relationship with the subject stretching back 4 decades or so helps immensely. Great, complex portrait. I would be interested to see how this measures up...more
still engrossing. Just finished section on Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf - loved it. Can't believe it was censored (1963) in some countries and lambasted for "Language!"
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