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Eugene O'Neill's autobiographical play Long Day's Journey into Night is regarded as his finest work. First published by Yale University Press in 1956, it won the Pulitzer Prize in 1957 and has since sold more than one million copies. This edition, which includes a new foreword by Harold Bloom, coincides with a new production of the play starring Brian Dennehy, which opens in Chicago in January 2002 and in New York in April.Amazon.com Review
This work is interesting enough for its history. Completed in 1940,Long Day's Journey Into Night is an autobiographical play EugeneO'Neill wrote that--because of the highly personal writing about hisfamily--was not to be released until 25 years after his death, which occurredin 1953. But since O'Neill's immediate family had died in the early 1920s,his wife allowed publication of the play in 1956. Besides the history alone,the play is fascinating in its own right. It tells of the"Tyrones"--a fictional name for what is clearly the O'Neills.Theirs is not a happy tale: The youngest son (Edmond) is sent to a sanitariumto recover from tuberculosis; he despises his father for sending him; hismother is wrecked by narcotics; and his older brother by drink. In real-lifethese factors conspired to turn O'Neill into who he was--a tormentedindividual and a brilliant playwright. ... Read more

Customer Reviews (67)

Grim, but is a classic.
Eugene at his best. A must read for anyone interested in the theater. I suggest you read it slowly.

Boring unless you' r an actor.
Boring as hell!
Heard about this great work by O'Neill for years and finally got to read it.Maybe this makes a decent play.Maybe if you sit and watch you can
enjoy the performances and emotions, etc.
But reading is bruatally boring.
On and on and on....
Maybe I am conditiioned by TV and movies for getting to the point a
lot faster.

As Good As It Gets
I had a friend once tell me that he had just read this play and had decided it was overrated. From that point on, I never considered anything he had to say very important. He had pretty much revealed his inner workings and I saw him for the ignoramus he is. I have read this play numerous times, seen play versions with Ralph Richardson and Jack Lemmon playing James Tyrone. It's a beautiful play, a funny play, a play that works one over, and leaves one feeling totally satisfied. If you never really understood the idea of catharsis, watch or read this play. I don't see the play as having flaws, although a well-known dramaturg once told me he thought the play needed cutting. Personally, I think the play needs nothing. Cutting would turn it into another play, not the magnificent work it is. The "fat," as for as I'm concerned, is as important to it as duck fat is to a delicious confit. Still, there must be those who could like to turn it into a two-act, so the audience can get home by 10:00 to watch reruns of "The Golden Girls." If it were cut, the play would not be able to work its magic of making one feel that one has been through a long evening with the characters. These idiot editors would trim a Haiku if you let them. This play is just about as good as it gets in the modern theater we are taught to love.

Great play, not for light reading
Eugene O'Neill's classic play, "Long Day's Journey into Night," is an autobiographical work that makes you feel immense pity for his family life.It's a great read, and wonderful to analyze!Just don't think that this will be a playful romp through the theater.O'Neill tackles a lot of heavy issues in this play and it can be difficult to read.

Living death in the middle class
Starting in the 1600s, America was known as the place to make it big, where one could make a decent and happy living if one just worked hard.Whether contrasted to the chaos of Revolutionary France, the abject urban poverty of Dickens' England, the abject rural poverty of Ireland, the militarization of German society or the civil strife of Russia; America was heaven on Earth, a place where one could live the life they wanted.This image gradually wore away by the early 1900's, and this disillusionment was captured in work after work of American literature.The Great Gatsby unveiled the decay of the super-rich, The Grapes of Wrath showed the pitfalls of the rural farmer, Sinclair's "The Jungle" revealed the horrors of industrialized society, and To Kill a Mockingbird forced us to confront the horror of Jim Crowe laws.But no work so fully and so subtly attacked the everyday failings and desperation of middle class America until this short classic by Eugene O'Neill.This story has no true protagonist or antagonist.Instead, it examines one middle-class family, the Tyrones, over the course of one day.The Tyrones live in their own house, and are financially independent.The parents are middle-aged.The husband is past his prime earning years, and his wife, Mary, is addicted to snuff.One son is an alcoholic womanizer, and the other is frail and probably a nervous wreck.Nobody is in danger of starvation or eviction, but the family as a whole has problems, with depression probably being universal.Everyone has personal failings that weigh on their souls, and each day is a struggle to get through without damaging relationships with each other.Hence the title of the book, a long day's journey into night.Night probably means death here, as noone in the family is going to die soon.The journey is the time they have to spend with each other and put up with each other.This fate, this tragedy probably afflicts more people around the world than any other, and that is to have to live with your failings and those of your loved ones.This book was published at the end of O'Neill's career, and is supposed to represent his family.Regardless of its intention, this is a great book, and of the few American classics that anyone around the world can understand. ... Read more

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Contained within this volume are some of the best of O'Neill's early one-act plays, which foreshadowed the longer plays that have given this dramatist his most enduring fame. "Beyond the Horizon" was the first of O'Neill's three Pulitzer Prize-winning plays. It follows the disappointed dreams of two brothers on their family farm. "The Emperor Jones" is an expressionistic transformation of a black man named Brutus Jones. In fleeing from his rebelling subjects in the West Indies, Jones is taken back to his racial past and undergoes a night of personal destruction. In "Anna Christie," we find a drama focusing on the relationship of a young woman and her sailor father, who has not seen her for twenty years. As their story unfolds, Anna's troubled romantic past comes to light, and the hardships of women during that time period become as apparent as the power of forgiveness and love. In the final play in this collection, "The Hairy Ape," a ship's fireman becomes disillusioned concerning the work he performs in a society that is quickly industrializing and taking a heavy human toll. ... Read more

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These three plays exemplify Eugene O'Neil's ability to explore the limits of the human predicament, even as he sounds the depths of his audiences' hearts. ... Read more

Customer Reviews (8)

Three Plays: Desire Under The Elms, Strange Interlude, Mourning Becomes Electra by Eugene O'Neill
Only needed one play, but am delighted to have all three.
The book arrived in very good condition and - as usual - in a most timely manner.
THANKS!

penchant for drama
Eugene O'Neil is the man.These plays are pretty dramatic.I would recommend reading just as my teacher in 8th did to me.

Desire Under the Elms
Its the only play i read in the book.It was an interesting read.The dialect is sometimes hard to understand, only a few words though.
The play is fast moving and interesting.The scandalous Eben-???(dont want to ruin it for you) relationship is unexpected and dramatic.Perhaps too dramatic, in a rome and juliet complex.

mourning becomes elektra
Oneill, death death death, this is rereleased in vintage 1958,
mourning becomes electra , strange interlude, required reading
for all playwrights of our era.

THREE MASTERPIECES
Each of the three plays in this volume are beautiful in their own way, with a poignant message that you'll be the better for hearing. O'Neill's genius is breathtaking and sometimes I wonder how he does it. Out of all his plays, there's not a stinker in the bunch. ... Read more

Customer Reviews (2)

Young Playwrights, Awake and Sing!
It isn't clear who would be apt to read this volume of early plays by O'Neill. These days, drama departments seem to assign new plays by unknown playwrights, as though the professors were in the pay of the publishers. Why order books by dead writers? These plays, however, are much more useful, I should think, for the aspiring playwright because they are exercises of a young dramatic master in his early stage of apprenticeship. He is learning his craft and writing his way to mastery. They are marvelous models of an immature writer. They are not perfect specimens, not intimidating masterworks, but slight, flawed works that any playwright might feel inspired by. They are awkward, rough, even stale, but each seeks to perform a dramatic task. O'Neill was very conscious of what he sought to do. These are not entertainments. Read them, learn from them, learn not to write this badly, and you'll be on your way.

The development of a writer
This is a tremendous source work, providing a sequential study of O'Neill's development as a dramatist.While not all of the plays are particularly successful, they reveal themes and settings that would providethe foundation for the later O'Neill masterworks.And there are manywonderful early dramas, such as the four S.S. Glencairn plays, his firstbroadway success "Beyond the Horizon," and the daring "AnnaChristie," all of which tested and expanded the dramatic form inAmerica.A wonderful collection! ... Read more

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eeeeeeeeeeeee ... Read more

Customer Reviews (3)

always sneering at someone else
I enjoy this collection of plays from Mr Eugene O'Neill (1888-1953).He is considered the first dramatist from the US and is also the first to be awarded the Nobel Prize for Literature.First, I must write that this edition from the LIBRARY OF AMERICA is beautiful.It has a sewn binding, flexible yet strong binding boards covered with a closely woven, rayon cloth and a ribbon bookmark attached to the spine.This volume covers the period 1932-43, marking Mr O'Neill's most well-known work.My favourites are A LONG DAY'S JOURNEY INTO NIGHT and THE ICEMAN COMETH.I also enjoy the the Irish flavour of A TOUCH OF the POET.ALDJIN is auto-biographical, as is also A MOON FOR THE MISBEGOTTEN.ALDJIN benefits from an eye-witness perspective which makes the characters extremely poignant.I feel an eery shiver as I read the drama, knowing the playwright's life.Like his character Edmund, Mr O'Neill left Princeton after his first year; went to sea, searched for gold in South America and haunted the waterfront bars in Buenos Aires, Liverpool and New York.He drank heavily.The other characters reflect his life also.His father was a successful actor who played but one role, the Count of Monte Cristo, and never became a more serious actor.His mother used morphine and his older brother was an alchoholic.All three died between 1920-23.This play is such a vivid "photograph" it sometimes is painfull for me to read, but at the same time a great reward.If you are interested in dramatists from the US, or in gritty, realistic plays about characters on the the margins of society, this collection will be interesting to you.

America's greatest plywright at his best!
This collection of work gives the reader O'Neill, America's greatest playwright, at his most powerful.The two earlier collections are likewise great, but this third one contains his two strongest works:"TheIceman Cometh" and "Long Day's Journey Into Night."

In"The Iceman Cometh," O'Neill creates a world of happy derelicts. They spend their nights and days in Harry Hope's saloon, living throughtoday by drinking and believing in the "pipe dreams" of tomorrow. That is until Hickey comes to town.He forces them, for the first time,to look honestly at their lives.This dose of reality has devestatingaffects on the patrons of Harry's.

Also included is O'Neill'smasterpiece, "Long Day's Journey Into Night."This play, notpublished or produced in his lifetime, painfully tells the story of his owndysfunctional family.The play's action is one calendar day, but O'Neill,through dialogue, takes the reader back to the origins of their problems. The emotions displayed, which include guilt, envy, pain, cynicism, andlove, tears the family apart, while strangely holding them together.Eventhough the emotions run high, O'Neill does it without employingsentimentality.He is honest without becoming melodramatic.A rareaccomplish in literature.A more emotionally rendering work would be hardto find.

These two works are not the only jems the collection contains. "A Moon for the Misbegotten," now running on Broadway, continuesthe story of his brother, Jamie, who appears in "Long Day's Journey .. .""Ah, Wilderness!" is a fine coming of age story.

The others also bare the mark of O'Neill's genius.The stories, set inthe first half of the twentieth century, are as true today as they werewhen written.They've persevered and have proven timeless.His characterslive with the reader long after the work is finished.And many are wellworth a second visit.

BestAmerican Play Ever Written
Long Day's Journey Into Night is O'Neill's autobiographical dichotomization of his dysfunctional family. I also happens to be one of the best plays ever written. One would not expect the author to be impartial toward his past or his family: he is either strongly libelous or fondly empathetic. What O'Neill accomplishes is a Golden Mean, it is written with so much integrity, so much compasion and with so much devastating truth that it becomes one of the most emotionally- challenging literary works one is ever likely to read. The four Tyrones' characterization is as broadly affecting as life itself: Jamie, a cynic ruined by dissipation; Mary, one of the best tragic heroines ever created; Edmund, O'Neill's tortured alter-ego; James, an epitomy of the Irish-American presence in USand their blind faith and peculiraly ambivalent optimism. The play is in four acts and it is brillintly crafted; it has all the urgency of a social outcry and all the emotional strength of an epic. O'Neill wrote," Godgrant me sympathy for the haunted Tyrones." He does sympathize with these people, of course, but he is also soberly realistic: his heroes will forever remain thwarted by the vicious circle of their multi-faceted inadequacy. ... Read more

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Six classic plays by Eugene O'Neill with an active table of contents.

Works include:
Abortion
Anna Christie
The Emperor Jones
The First Man
The Hairy Ape
The Straw
... Read more

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Anna Christie is presented here in a high quality paperback edition. This popular classic work by Eugene O'Neill is in the English language. If you enjoy the works of Eugene O'Neill then we highly recommend this publication for your book collection. ... Read more

Customer Reviews (5)

Modern Theater
O'Neill's play is an excellent piece of modern theater, combining themes of naturalism and adding the discontinuity of modern life. Anna Christie is a character dangling in a corrupt world, subject to fate in any form: the devil sea, God, mysogyny and double standards, and her own whims. A great read!

Anna Christie -- That Devil Sea
I read this play a few weeks ago and I must say it's fantastic. Of course there are some parts that are disappointing, but Eugene O'Neill draws the characters in such a way that you cannot help but relate to them.

Anna is so strong, so independent, so conflicted, and so human! Even if some people don't like the ending, I think it makes sense the way it is.

Great read, short play, and I think I like it better than Long Day's Journey Into Night, although it's usually regarded as O'Neill's best work.

O'Neill's first momentous play and its unforgettable heroine
With the 1921 production of "Anna Christie," O'Neill's skills as a dramatist finally reached maturity. Entirely revamped from an earlier play ("Chris Christophersen"), this four-act drama depicts a headstrong young woman, Anna, who renounces her life as a prostitute and tracks down the father who abandoned her as a child. Enamored of his new charge and unaware of her past, Christopherson (O'Neill changed the spelling for this version) tries to pamper and protect the daughter he had neglected during her formative years.

Yet Chistopherson has issues of his own: now a captain of a coastal coal barge, he, too, has lived a seafaring live of loose morals and social irresponsibility. Believing that the vigorous demands and easy temptations of a sailor's career have ruined his own life, he has abandoned the sea for good. Confronted with a daughter who initially enjoys life on the ocean, he swears to keep her both from its influence and from the men who make their living from it--with predictable results.

When Anna falls in love with Mat, a stoker for a steamer, she finds herself torn between her father's expectations and her lover's demands, and she discovers that both men, like the clients from her previous life, are buffoonish cads and patronizing bullies. The third act, which depicts the inevitable three-side confrontation between Anna and her two "protectors," is one of the most skillfully scripted clashes in American theater.

The final act, alas, succumbs to a conventional melodramatic mawkishness. Yet overall the play is saved by the faithful rendering of sailor's speech, the emotional depth of its characters, and the (for its time) forward-looking presentation of social ills.

Anna is one of the U.S. theater's most memorable characters
"Anna Christie," the play by the great U.S. writer Eugene O'Neill, won the Pulitzer Prize for the 1921-22 theater season. All these decades later, the play still packs an emotional punch. "Anna Christie" focuses on three characters: Anna, who has had a traumatic life in the United States; her father Chris, a Swedish merchant seaman; and Mat Burke, an Irish stoker who takes an interest in Anna. The play takes place in New York City and on Chris's barge.

"Anna Christie" is a compelling study of gender roles and expectations, ethnic conflict in the U.S., family ties and disruptions, the call of the seafaring life, and fatalism versus the embrace of free will. Particularly interesting is O'Neill's representation of various types of vernacular speech. Overall, a classic American play that deserves an ongoing reading audience.

Anna Christie
Amazing!!!The characters were wonderfully acted out and the relationship between father and daughter was such a gripping story. ... Read more

Product Description
Stricken with guilt and grief when his father, mother, and brother died in quick succession, young playwright Eugene O'Neill mourned deeply for two decades. This enlightening critical biography presents a remarkable new understanding of the playwright's life, work, and slow grieving. Stephen A. Black argues that O'Neill's writing was a form of self-psychoanalysis and that his plays reflect his psychological and artistic growth. Selected by Choice as an outstanding academic title for 2000 ... Read more

Customer Reviews (2)

O'Neill's long day's journey on Black's couch.
It has been nearly fifty years since Eugene O'Neill's death.Much hasbeen written about him since that time.In his new biography, StephenBlack insightfully analyzes the Pulitzer and Nobel Prize winning dramatistand his work.Black is an English professor with training as apsychoanalytic therapist.The "thesis" of his biography, Blackwrites, "is that O'Neill spent most of his writing life inmourning" (p. xvi).O'Neill, he contends, used playwriting as a meansof self-therapy.

Black's 543-page biography is filled with interestinginformation about his subject's troubled life.We learn, for instance,O'Neill was born in a hotel room in 1888, and died in a hotel room in 1953. In between, he lived "a life of earthly and psychic wandering"(p. 43).At the time of his birth, O'Neill's mother became addicted tomorphine, for which he blamed himself.As a mother, Ella O'Neill was"lonely" and "inadequate" (pp. 48, 51).O'Neill'sfather, an actor, was "revered," though "distant" (p.47).O'Neill's estranged daughter, Oona, married Charlie Chaplin when shewas 17.Chaplin was 54, and two month's younger than O'Neill.We learnthat O'Neill's life was plagued with, among other things (and the list islong), illness, depression, alcoholism, family tension, unhappy marriages,and one devastating death after another.Truly, it is a wonder O'Neillever found his way through the obstacles in his life to write four PulitzerPrize winning plays, and to win the Nobel Prize in literature in1936.

Black's book also contains plenty of perceptive commentary aboutO'Neill's plays.It ends with an impressive bibliography.Although Ioccasionally found O'Neill spending too much time on Black's couch in thispsychoanalytical biography, this is nevertheless a worthwhile book foranyone interested in the playwright or his writing.

G. Merritt

outstanding psychoanalytic interpretation
Stephen A. Black has assembled an extraordinary range of materials to provide the first comprehensive psychoanalysis of O'Neill. Others have offered fragmentary perspectives, or analyses based on a little reading inpsychoanalytic theory, but Black brings his experience as a trained analyst(as well as a literary scholar) to a through review of the historicaldocuments. It must have been harrowing work for him, but we all stand tobenefit from his having gone into the very mouth of a hellish psyche.(Hmmm... not so sure about that metaphor.) Anyway, it's a terrific book. ... Read more

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Sheaffer's two-volume biography of American platwright Eugene O'Neill-the second volume of which won a Pulitzer Prize-makes use of previously unknown documents and numerous interviews to present an insightful look at O'Neill's troubled life. ... Read more

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Kessinger Publishing is the place to find hundreds of thousands of rare and hard-to-find books with something of interest for everyone! ... Read more

Customer Reviews (8)

review for Ah, Wilderness!
The book itself was very old and written in a lot. The binding was taped to hold the paper inside the cover. It was not a good quality book but I was still able to read it.

About the Heritage Edition
This review is for the 1972 Heritage Press edition.

An exuberant design in red, white, and blue.

An oversized book with two and three-color printing throughout. Painted, full page illustrations by Shannon Stirnweis.

Red slipcase, quarter-cloth bound in two blues, red, and white with the circular fireworks design on the front and back covers.

161 pp with a Walter Kerr introduction.

About the Heritage Press Edition in Slipcase
This review is for the 1972 Heritage Press edition.

An exuberant design in red, white, and blue.

An oversized book with two and three-color printing throughout. Painted, full page illustrations by Shannon Stirnweis.

Red slipcase, quarter-cloth bound in two blues, red, and white with the circular fireworks design on the front and back covers.

161 pp with a Walter Kerr introduction.

About the Heritage Edition
This review is for the 1972 Heritage Press edition.

An exuberant design in red, white, and blue.

An oversized book with two and three-color printing throughout. Painted, full page illustrations by Shannon Stirnweis.

Red slipcase, quarter-cloth bound in two blues, red, and white with the circular fireworks design on the front and back covers.

161 pp with a Walter Kerr introduction.

About This Book
This review is for the 1972 Heritage Press edition.

An exuberant design in red, white, and blue.

An oversized book with two and three-color printing throughout. Painted, full page illustrations by Shannon Stirnweis.

Red slipcase, quarter-cloth bound in two blues, red, and white with the circular fireworks design on the front and back covers.

161 pp with a Walter Kerr introduction. ... Read more

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Edited by Travis Bogard ... Read more

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This volume of specially commissioned essays contains studies of O'Neill's life, his intellectual and creative forebears, and his relation to the theatrical world of his creative period, 1916-1942. Also included are descriptions of the O'Neill canon and its production history on stage and screen, and a series of essays on "special topics" related to the playwright. One of the essays speaks for those who are critical of O'Neill's work, and the volume concludes with an essay on O'Neill criticism containing a select bibliography of full-length studies of the playwright's work. ... Read more

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Customer Reviews (25)

A visit to Hope's alcoholic private hell-hole
I saw an excellent documentary about O'Neill's life that painted a dark picture of a bitter, depressed man who was also a gifted dramatist. The film pointed to this as being one of his two great masterpieces.It was not far into the play that I began to disagree. Doesn't a masterpiece have to present something other than misery, depravity, and total cynicism to the world?Can a play portray human life as a nasty, ugly, booze-soaked joke and still be a great play?Maybe it can - if the characters and story are compelling enough - but I am not sure they are.

The story centers around a combination flophouse/saloon in downtown New York City in 1912, a place packed with losers and has-beens drowning themselves in cheap booze. Apparently it is based on a real place that O'Neill spent some time in as a young man.This dump is presided over by a former low-level politico named Harry Hope, and it provides a haven for this sordid bunch. Several of them are flotsam from the Leftist movements, one is Black and a former gambling house operator, there are a couple of old officers from the Boer War, etc.All are awaiting the arrival of saviour-like Hickey, a charismatic traveling salesman who buys drinks for the house and shows everyone a good time. Each character clings to some sort of false hope that they will regain what they once had.

The dialogue is old New Yorkese, tough street lingo - that in itself is interesting, and it is too bad this was not written as a dark comedy of some kind.But O'Neill wants to rip the pretty wrapping off of life and reveal it in its true ugliness.Hickey shows up, and says he has found a way to be free from his illusions, and he no longer needs to drink. In the second half of the play, he goes about forcing the other characters to confront their weaknesses and to try to get moving again.Towards the end we see that Hickey doesn't have the answers at all - he is as crazy as any of them, just more charming.

Despite its dramatic power, this is a cynical, nihilistic piece of writing - and long too.If that is your pleasure, then drink up.But I tend to agree with the character Larry, who at one point says, "For the love of Christ will you leave me in peace! . . . You vomit your own soul like a drink of nickel rotgut that won't stay down! To hell with you!"

The Iceman Cometh
Since I haven't started reading it yet, there's not much to say about it except by reputation and the title is appropos to my being snowed in right now. I'll RE-review it.

Great play, awful cover on this edition....
I am a cinema person, but I do love Eugene O'Neill's work, mainly because there has been 3 film adaptations of his work, and all 3 have been marvelous.This is arguably his greatest play, a marathon of sadness, despair, and disillusionment.I loved how a reviewer said that this play couldn't be written today, as people think we're so cool and cynical that there is no earnestness and sincerity anymore.I agree with that to some degree, but after 20 years or so of smug detachment (similar to the Larry Slade character, who has placed himself, like he says, in philosophical detachment, content to watch the cannibals do their death dance, even though Larry still feels something), we might be in line for some real sincerity.I hope.Is that just a pipe dream?

I have to object, though, to the cover.It has a cute little ice truck on it, giving an erroneous impression that this play is about Mr. Ice and his cute little truck.Hopefully, all those who buy this play will know what they are in for.It isn't a cute tale about an iceman, for sure.It's one of the greatest American plays ever written.

Unfulfilled Pipe Dreams
[Cue music]
You wanna go where people know,
people are all the same,
You wanna go where everybody knows your name . . .
[Music fades]

O'Neil's play, "The Iceman Cometh" is a 1912 version of "Cheers", that is if Sam was a bitter old agoraphobic, Norm and Cliff were disgraced military officers, Carla and Rebecca were prostitutes, Woody was a pimp, Frasier was a disenchanted former anarchist, and the bar was a dark, destitute hellhole in the slums of Manhattan where drunks go to wallow in their own self-pity.Ok, perhaps it's the antithesis of "Cheers".However, O'Neil performs a brilliant job in delivering a potent tale of a cast of characters and their broken dreams and hopes.

Throughout the play, O'Neil explores the idea of "pipe dreams" and their role in providing hope to an otherwise miserable life.Although these pipe dreams will never be fulfilled and the dreamers know it, it at least provides some rationale for their existence.The drunks are most happy when deluding themselves into believing their pipe dreams.Only when they are forced to confront these and break their own dreams are they at their most miserable and depressed.Indeed, the one who forces the patrons of the bar to confront their pipe dreams, Hickey, is the most hated and reviled, for he forces them to strip bare their lives and realize their own cesspool of existence.

The theme of death pervades throughout the play.Larry, the grand philosopher, is the one who preaches the most about death.Yet, he still hangs on to life, albeit by drowning his sorrows in cheap whiskey.When Hickey comes, he attempts to deliver the patrons from their miserable lives to achieve a fleeting resurrection, yet his efforts are futile, as the patrons soon return to their zombie-like drunken stupor. Hickey, who himself has a dark secret, is viewed as the Grim Reaper.The bar, itself, is referred to as a morgue and mausoleum, and for good measure, as the drunks there are dead inside and merely waiting to die.
"The Iceman Cometh" is a depressing look at the wasted lives of alcoholics and their miserable pipe dreams.And although it is set nearly a century ago, the same issues prevail today.This is a great little play to read and dissect.

Depressing in a good way
Being a person who doesn't read a ton of plays, I enjoyed Iceman very much. Focusing around a bar full of broken dreams and dreamers in Manhattan, O'Neill's dark classic tells a story that is really present in most people - that of living off of dreams but never following them with actions.

Interestingly, though, the story goes without resolution in a clear way, allowing the readers (or viewers) to decide for themselves whether the characters "pipe dreams," and their own, are worth persuing, or simply worth dreaming about.

Perhaps the most interesting part of this play is the cast or characters. Ranging from war veterans to anarchists to travelling salesmen, an eclectic cast to find in the same room at any time, it is fascinating to watch each and every characters sets of values completely break on from act I to act IV. This is particularly relevent in regards to the anarchist tramp, Hugo, and his desire to drink wine under the willow trees. ... Read more

Product Description
Purchase of this book includes free trial access to www.million-books.com where you can read more than a million books for free.This is an OCR edition with typos.Excerpt from book:are pretending an interest which is belied by the absent-minded expressions on their faces.The Captain—(Chuckling.] And that mission woman, she hails me on the dock as I was acomin' ashore, and she says—with her silly face all screwed up serious as judgment—"Captain," she says, "would you be so kind as to tell me where the sea-gulls sleeps at nights ? " Blow me if them warn't her exact words! [He slaps the table with the palm of his hands and laughs loudly. The others force smiles.] Ain't that just like a fool woman's question? And I looks at her serious as I could, " Ma'm," says I, " I couldn't rightly answer that question. I ain't never seed a sea-gull in his bunk yet. The next time I hears one snorin'," I says, " I'll make a note of where he's turned in, and write you a letter 'bout it." And then she calls me a fool real spiteful and tacks away from me quick. [He laughs again uproariously.] So I got rid of her that way. [The others smile but immediately relapse into expressions of gloom again. ]Mrs. Mayo—[Absent-mindedly—feeling that slie has to say something.] But when it comes to that, where do sea-gulls sleep, Dick?Scott—[Slapping the table.] Ho! Ho! Listen to her, James. 'Nother one! Well, if that don't beat all hell—'scuse me for cussin', Kate.Mayo—[With a twinkle in his eyes.] They unhitch their wings, Katey, and spreads 'em out on a wave for a bed.Scott—And then they tells the fish to whistle to 'em when it's time to turn out. Ho! Ho!Mbs. Mayo—[With a forced smile.] You men folks are too smart to live, aren't you? [She resumes her knitting. Mayo pretends to read his paper; Andkew stares at the floor.]Scott—[Looks from one to the other of them with a puzzled air. Finally he is unable to bear the thick silence a minute longer, and blurts out:] Y... ... Read more

Customer Reviews (4)

Melodrama and bathos swamp several otherwise powerful scenes
The first O'Neill play performed on Broadway (in 1920), "Beyond the Horizon" is actually the fifth full-length drama in O'Neill's career as a playwright. ("Bread and Butter,""Servitude," "The Personal Equation," and "Now I Ask You" all were completed before 1916, although none of them were performed during O'Neill's lifetime.)

A commercial success and winner of a Pulitzer Prize (the first of four for O'Neill), "Beyond the Horizon" is somewhat jarring to the modern ear in both theatric arrangement and thematic development; it shows a still-green O'Neill struggling to convey his characters' emotional depth and psychological torments in the not-quite-convincing framework of a melodramatic plot.

The problems start in the very first act, when Robert Mayo, a youth inclined to poetry and a life of idleness, is preparing to leave for an apprenticeship at sea with his uncle. In the matter of a few pages, Robert confesses his love for his brother Andrew's childhood sweetheart, Ruth;he casts aside the plans for his voyage and decides to live as a farmer--an occupation he despises; the love-struck couple agree to be married forthwith; and Andrew, in bitterness, assumes Robert's position on the ship and leaves the very next morning for a journey of several years. All in a evening's work. This abbreviated soap opera suffers from a lack of any attempt at dramatic preparation or character development; Ruth, in particular, pretty much walks onto the stage and ecstatically accepts Robert's out-of-the-blue marriage proposal. As O'Neill was to learn later in his career, it takes a much longer play to set up this sort of scenario.

Fortunately, the rest of the play is much better; it focuses on the deterioration of Robert and Ruth's hasty marriage, with Ruth regretting her decision and pining for Andrew's infrequent visits. In these two acts, O'Neill avoids impulsive, life-changing choices and more effectively shows slice-of-life scenes: Ruth's fights with her mother and her indolent husband, Andrew's exultant although brief return, the near-bankruptcy of the farm, and Robert's declining health. Although the play closes with a sentimentality bordering on bathos, these two acts herald the first triumph of one of America's great dramatists.

Provincial and predictable early work
BEYOND THE HORIZON was Eugene O'Neill's first full-length play. The tale of two siblings who take off on very different and unexpected paths in life, the play explores how fate and our own decisions can doom our lives. Robert and Andrew Mayo have grown up on a farm somewhere in the United States. Robert is the dreamer and intellectual of the two, a lifetime of frailty preventing him from working as a farmer, and he dreams of seeing the world and living in places beyond the small confines of his family's farm. Andrew, however, is a man of purely practical concerns who is happily following in his father's footsteps and taking care of the farm. As the play opens, Robert has just been offered as change to go to see with his merchant seaman uncle, an opportunity that would fulfill his wanderlust. However, a woman creates a conflict between the brothers and Andrew takes the trip while Robert stays on the farm. From here, the play opens to show how one's best-laid plans can be dashed by the unexpected, as both brothers lead lives of despair.

While BEYOND THE HORIZON won O'Neill the first of his four Pulitzer Prizes, it doesn't survive the test of time very well. He insists on spelling out everything for the audience, resulting in some of the most ridiculous and just plain unrealistic dialogue I have ever seen. Readers who grew up in the tradition left by Samuel Beckett and Harold Pinter will also find O'Neill's lengthly set design annoying, as in some parts he spends up to two pages laying out each and every detail instead of leaving it up to the director as is done nowadays. Finally, BEYOND THE HORIZON is rather provincial and has none of the refinement that readers today will have become used to. American theatre at this time lacked any figure to make it matter on the world stage, and while O'Neill was to become this figure with his later plays, this work shows him still very immature.

I believe BEYOND THE HORIZON is a work worth reading only if one has a particular interest in the evolution of American theatre or the works of Eugene O'Neill in general. Its poor writing makes it quite unentertaining.

A brilliantly emotional tragedy
Beyond the Horizon was O'Neill's first major full-length play and its release is considered a significant turning point in the history of American theater.Its main characters are two twentysomething brothers,Rob and Andy, who have both spent their lives on the family farm and havequite opposite dispositions: Andy is excruciatingly practical and hopes forlittle more in life than to take over the farm and make it successful;whereas Rob is something of a bookish dreamer who hopes to see what life islike "beyond the horizon."He gets this opportunity when hisuncle invites him to come along on a three year trip to South America andAsia, but the night before their departure, a woman with whom both Rob andAndy are in love professes her love for Rob, causing Rob to stay behind tomarry her while Andy, unable to bear the idea of living alongside the newcouple, takes Rob's place on the trip.The bulk of the play deals with thelong-term consequences of this one night in which the brothers ignoredtheir callings in life.

As is often the case in O'Neill's plays, thepremise is fairly simple and unoriginal and the development of the plot isrelatively predictable, but the intensity with which the characters aredeveloped is excellent and truly memorable.We see in Rob the same sort offutile hope that O'Neill would develop so well some years later in TheIceman Cometh, and the despair of the other characters is quite moving.At times, the pathos in the play can almost be over-the-top (and I imaginethat in live performances this might be something that the actors have tobe all the more careful to avoid), but O'Neill manages to avoid going intothe realm of melodrama and create very real, touching characters.

O'Neill would, of course, go on to write many other deeply emotional plays,a number of which are still better known than this one.Beyond the Horizonshows us many of the talents for which O'Neill is now universallyrecognized, and the almost-universal acclaim that it received upon its 1920premiere seems equally apt today.

Extremely thought provoking
Beyond the Horizon is the story of 2 very close brothers, Robert and Andrew, who choose opposite paths in life. Each unfortunately, chooses a path better suited for the other.The deeper meaning in this play is whathappens to a man's soul when he doesn't follow his dreams. ... Read more

Product Description
Eugene O'Neill's tale of Ephraim Cabot, greedy and hard like the stone walls that surround his farm, the family patriarch brings home his new young bride, Abbie. His grown sons dissaprove; one leaves but the other stays to fight for the family fortune. What follows is a tragedy of epic proportions.

A L.A. Theatre Works full-cast performance featuring: Paul Adelstein, Orson Bean, Amy Brenneman, Dwier Brown, Maurice Chasse and Charlie Kimball. ... Read more

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Desire Enjoyment
The first time I saw the movie of this title was more than a decade ago. The book and the movie are outstanding, nothing like human nature to make agreat story. ... Read more

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Customer Reviews (11)

Far too long, but it has some great characters
This play is a touching and unconventional love story.It is far too long - O'Neill could have condensed Act Two into two lines of dialogue ("I have discovered X at the bar, and we should respond by doing Y." "OK.") and merged it into Act Three.Instead, Act Two is an interminable dialogue in which one character repeatedly makes reference to something he doesn't want to say, then his daughter pries it out of him, when it was obvious to the reader all along.It showcases a little of the relationship between the two characters, and there's a bit of a payoff for it at the end, but overall it does more harm than good.

Ultimately, this is a surprisingly good play, with clever dialogue and some noir-style plot twists.Everyone has secrets and lies, everyone is playing a careful game, but each one is lovable in his/her own way.There are some bizarre Oedipal aspects of the main love story, but the love as a whole comes across as something true and beautiful and not often seen in U.S. fiction.

Excellent drama by the master!
"A Moon for the Misbegotten" is an excellent drama written by a master playwright. However, it might be helpful to people reading a review to note that any play you read in book form is very different than the experience of seeing the play enacted.

Actors bring a tremendous energy to the roles they play, and this energy is a large part of what people experience when they go to a theater or see a movie. Reading the words that the actors use is a very different experience. This is not to say that the experience of reading a play is of low value; reading a screenplay or script can add tremendously to the enjoyment of a piece. But no one should expect a quiet read under your favorite lamp with a cup of tea by your elbow to be anything like watching a play performed by good actors.

That being said, I highly recommend this book as a companion to any filmed or live production of the play. While reading, someone might wonder, "Why does this sound so ... stilted (or weird, or unnatural)? Why does it seem so different from the production I saw (in high school, on TV, at the theater, etc.)?" The answer is important to understand: you're reading a kind of road map that leads to drama, emotion, and insight. The map is not the journey, but it certainly helps the journey.

My only "criticism" of the play is the title, which I find a little too vague for the flesh-and-blood setting of the drama. The thoughts, intentions, dialog, and actions one encounters in "Moon for the Misbegotten" are gritty, more of a roadhouse than a lecture hall or a poetry convention! Alliteration is nice, but if it obscures the story even one bit, it only serves itself and perhaps makes the writer seem clever, not brilliant.

A Moon for the Misbegotten
I ordered three books for my son for school.All arrived promptly and in the condittion I had been told they were in.I'm very happy.

Liked it a lot!
O'Neill takes the emotion of sadness and is able to examine its many shades very well. He does this brilliantly in 'Long day's journe...' and 'A Moon for...'. Its a view of how each strain manifests itself and what precedes and succeeds it for different individuals.

'A Moon for...' has this in many forms including the sexual banter between Josie and James, which shows social and human pathos and hypocrisy (or lack thereof) very well.

Its not a cheerful play but it is very good because each note of sadness is appropriately tinged with humor or pathos or a combination of both.

Alcohol, blackmail, regrets, and loss--and in the center of it all, an unlikely couple
O'Neill's "last" play, written and revised several times concurrently with his other four late plays, never made it to Broadway during his lifetime. After a lukewarmly received tour through the Midwest, O'Neill became dissatisfied with the production, in part because he was increasingly in poor health and also because he was never happy with the play to begin with. He finally gave up on the work, and published it with a curt, apologetic prefatory note, saying "I cannot presently give it the attention required for appropriate presentation."

In spite of its inauspicious beginnings, many consider it his greatest work. I reserve that laurel for "Long Day's Journey," but of all O'Neill's works, this one reads as well on the page as it looks on the stage. Its lead character, James Tyrone, is a thinly disguised version of O'Neill's brother, who drank himself to death in a sanatorium the year after their mother died. O'Neill resurrects his brother for the theater and throws him drunkenly into the arms of an impossible match: Josie Hogan, the daughter of a tenant living on land he inherited. She is, perhaps, O'Neill's most fully fleshed female lead--literally and figuratively. Strong-willed and strong-armed, she simultaneously flaunts and scorns her reputation as a "terrible wanton woman" (an image that is more invented than real), but it is immediately obvious that her true love is Tyrone himself.

The plot of the play rests on a swindle planned by Josie and her father, who mistakenly believe that Tyrone plans to sell their land to an insufferably pampered blueblood from the neighborhood. Their attempt at conning Tyrone with alcohol and blackmail, which resembles a tawdry version of every outrageous scheme concocted by Lucy Ricardo, quickly misfires as a half-comic caper that brings to all concerned a melancholy (but not exactly tragic) sense of loss and wistfulness.

You can see O'Neill struggling to redeem the brother he loved but never quite understood or forgave. But it is Josie who ultimately wins the audience's affections and sympathy. ... Read more

Product Description
The play tells the story of a brutish, unthinking laborer known as Yank, as he searches for a sense of belonging in a world controlled by the rich. At first Yank feels secure as he stokes the engines of an oceanliner, and is highly confident in his physical power over the ship's engines. However, when the weak but rich daughter of an industrialist in the steel business refers to him as a "filthy beast," Yank undergoes a crisis of identity. He leaves the ship and wanders into Manhattan, only to find he does not belong anywhere—neither with the socialites on Fifth Avenue, nor with the labor organizers on the waterfront. Finally he is reduced to seeking a kindred being in the gorilla in the zoo and dies in the animal's embrace ... Read more

Customer Reviews (1)

The Great American Dramatic Voice of the 20th Century
Most moderns tend to think of Eugene O'Neill (1888-1953) as a great realistic playwright on the basis of such remarkable works as Long Day's Journey Into Night, The Iceman Cometh, and Moon for the Misbegotten.It may therefore come as shock to realize that O'Neill actually won the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1936--long before any of these titles were staged, much less published.

O'Neill began writing poetry at an early age but soon turned to drama.By 1916 he began to make a reputation with The Provincetown Players, and in 1917 had several one acts produced by New York City's Playwright's Theatre.His leap to fame came in 1920 and 1921, when his plays Beyond the Horizon and Anna Christie won back-to-back Pulitzer Prizes.He would reign on the New York stage as the great American playwright of serious drama throughout the 1920s.

But in the early 1930s O'Neill--who struggled against poor health, alcoholism, and a host of private demons--became reclusive and fell silent.By the time of his 1936 Nobel Prize most critics assumed he had written himself out, burned out, that his career was over.NINE PLAYS, with an introduction by Joseph Wood Krutch, was first published by Modern Library in 1941--at which time O'Neill had not offered material for either publication or production for close to a decade.In a very real sense, the public and very likely O'Neill himself considered this volume a "summing up" at the end of a distinguished career.

The titles included in NINE PLAYS were selected by O'Neill himself as representative of his work, and in an extremely brief note he indicates that his selection was based both on personal preference and critical response.The titles collected here are: The Emperor Jones, 1920; The Hairy Ape, 1921; All God's Chillun Got Wings, 1923; Desire Under the Elms, 1924; Marco Millions, 1923-1925; The Great God Brown, 1925; Lazarus Laughed, 1925-1926; Strange Interlude, 1926-1927; and Mourning Becomes Electra, 1929-1931.

The selection is interesting in a number of ways.Although O'Neill first made his reputation with realistic drama, virtually every title included here is "experimental" in some form or fashion.True enough, critics of the era fell over themselves to describe O'Neill's work with various "isms"--expressionism and naturalism among them--but in a general sense the titles here are intensely theatrical in nature, and they all broke with then-popular notions of what a play ought to be like.

The Emperor Jones contains remarkably little dialogue at all.All God's Chillun Got Wings challenges racial notions through a then-shocking tale of a love between a black man and a white woman--a subject truly taboo at the time.Desire Under the Elms seems to be realistic in tone, but in terms of visuals it is anything but.Characters literally put on and take off masks in The Great God Brown and action grinds to a halt while they speak directly to the audience in the lengthy Strange Interlude.And then there is Mourning Becomes Electra, a mixture of symbolism and melodrama that actually requires three nights to perform.

Also interesting is the fact that O'Neill includes two titles that were absolute disasters when they appeared on stage: Marco Millions and Lazarus Laughed, both of which might be described as pageant-like dramas that include choral readings in direct echo of ancient Greek dramatic forms.Clearly, O'Neill did not intend NINE PLAYS to be a sort of literary "greatest hits"--the very popular Beyond the Horizon, Anna Christie, and Ah! Wilderness are conspicuous by their absence--and at the time this volume was first published considered his more experimental work of more significance.

Casual readers will likely find O'Neill a challenge.On the page, his dialogue has an unnatural quality that doesn't exist in actual performance--but at the same time it is often extremely difficult to envision how an O'Neill script plays, how it actually lives when it is "on its feet" in front of an audience.Consequently, I do not really recommend anything by O'Neill to someone who hasn't seen much theatre or who is unaccustomed to reading playscripts.I think such readers will find it too much of leap to be enjoyable.But if you are a play reader or playgoer, you will likely find him a very rewarding experience.

Fortunately, O'Neill began to write seriously once more in the 1940s, and if anything the power of his final works is even greater than those of his earlier ones, with the posthumous 1956 Pulitzer Prize-winning Long Day's Journey Into Night considered his great masterpiece.If you are looking for an overall O'Neill collection with scholarly annotations, you would really do better with the exceptional three volume Library of America collection, which covers virtually every play he wrote from 1913 to 1943--but this less expensive volume would serve as an excellent introduction for those who aren't quite ready to make such a serious financial or academic investment.For no matter how it is published, Eugene O'Neill is still Eugene O'Neill: the great American dramatic voice of the 20th Century.

GFT, Amazon Reviewer ... Read more