What do you think?
Rate this book
Eugene O'Neill's Long Day's Journey into Night
Collects ten critical essays on O'Neill's play, arranged in chronological order of their original publication, and includes a timeline of his life and works.
- GenresPlays
150 pages, Hardcover
First published January 1, 2000
1 person is currently reading
43 people want to read
About the author
Harold Bloom
1,717 books2,022 followersHarold Bloom was an American literary critic and the Sterling Professor of Humanities at Yale University. In 2017, Bloom was called "probably the most famous literary critic in the English-speaking world." After publishing his first book in 1959, Bloom wrote more than 50 books, including over 40 books of literary criticism, several books discussing religion, and one novel. He edited hundreds of anthologies concerning numerous literary and philosophical figures for the Chelsea House publishing firm. Bloom's books have been translated into more than 40 languages. He was elected to the American Philosophical Society in 1995.
Bloom was a defender of the traditional Western canon at a time when literature departments were focusing on what he derided as the "school of resentment" (multiculturalists, feminists, Marxists, and others). He was educated at Yale University, the University of Cambridge, and Cornell University.
Bloom was a defender of the traditional Western canon at a time when literature departments were focusing on what he derided as the "school of resentment" (multiculturalists, feminists, Marxists, and others). He was educated at Yale University, the University of Cambridge, and Cornell University.
Ratings & Reviews
Friends & Following
Create a free account to discover what your friends think of this book!
Community Reviews
Displaying 1 of 1 review
October 17, 2018
For me, the critical interpretations of C. W. E. Bigsby are the most insightful: O'Neill's characters are reactive. Contrary to America's notion of American religion as self-reliance, O'Neill's characters are negative: The real self has been lost in "dream, drunkenness, death." The only hope is in the integration of the dualities, yet they intellectualize self-acceptance in theories, neurotic solutions without a real self--nothing but "mist and fog."
Unitive transcendence is impossible in the face of their drives toward escape and self-destruction. The endless struggle between conflicting self-concepts is an enduring trap. Falling for the expectations, each has abdicated the real self from its personal authority. Alone and frustrated these characters are lost: self-contemptuousness leading to self-destruction, deriving comfort from self-deception.
"Nothing would have happened had they not been capable of submitting themselves to each other, of undergoing the agony not only for self-disclosure but of listening to the disclosures of other. No one walks out and slams the door. They bear it out to the end--and the end is not bitter."
Unitive transcendence is impossible in the face of their drives toward escape and self-destruction. The endless struggle between conflicting self-concepts is an enduring trap. Falling for the expectations, each has abdicated the real self from its personal authority. Alone and frustrated these characters are lost: self-contemptuousness leading to self-destruction, deriving comfort from self-deception.
"Nothing would have happened had they not been capable of submitting themselves to each other, of undergoing the agony not only for self-disclosure but of listening to the disclosures of other. No one walks out and slams the door. They bear it out to the end--and the end is not bitter."
Displaying 1 of 1 review