Cult of the Superman

by Eric Bentley

Second edition, revised and reset, published by the Beacon Press in 1957. First edition published in the United States by the J.B. Lippincott Company, 1944. Published in Great Britain as The Cult of the Superman by Robert Hale. Ltd., 1947

277 pages, Hardcover

First published January 1, 1957

About the author

Eric Russell Bentley was a British-born American theater critic, playwright, singer, editor, and translator whose work shaped twentieth-century theatrical discourse. Educated at University College, Oxford, and Yale University, where he earned his doctorate, he later taught at Black Mountain College and Columbia University and served as theatre critic for The New Republic. Known for his incisive and uncompromising criticism, he became one of the foremost English-language authorities on Bertolt Brecht, translating, editing, and performing Brecht’s work and recording landmark albums of Brecht songs. Bentley was also an accomplished playwright, with Are You Now Or Have You Ever Been, drawn from Un-American Activities Committee hearings, becoming his most produced play. He appeared for decades as a cabaret performer and was inducted into the American Theatre Hall of Fame. An advocate for artistic and political freedom, he publicly opposed the Vietnam War and later spoke openly about his homosexuality and its influence on his work.

Reviews

[Glenn · Rating 4 out of 5]

I picked this up off the corridor--an old book--for a trip to Finland and found it fascinating for its reflections on society's focus on the Hero in the cultural context of Euro history but worth focusing on for our 2018 situation. A read for the scholarly inclined. Good for those who see themselves as elitists.