Reviews for Amy Lowell, American Modern

The average rating for Amy Lowell, American Modern based on 2 reviews is 5 stars.

Review # 1 was written on 2016-06-27 00:00:00 Haider Kazim Christopher Herr's well-documented Clifford Odets and American Political Theatre is one text among the Praeger Publishing's series, Lives of the Theatre, designed to provide scholarly introductions to periods in the history of twentieth century theatre. The series explores the theatre through the lives of representative theatrical practitioners. At the heart of Herr's exploration into the work of Odets, are close readings of the plays buttressed by archival research, examinations of the historical context, and an incisive investigation into the life of a man immersed in a period of politically charged theatrical history. Herr engages in an authoritative and detailed exploration. Herr critically surveys Odet's work by first tracing his early anger, beginning with his "spectacular debut in 1935" (1) of Waiting for Lefty (1935), Awake and Sing! (1935), and Paradise Lost (1935). Second, Herr examines Odet's shift in focus with The Big Knife (1949) and third ends with Odets benign mellowness as demonstrated in The Flowering Peach (1954). Moreover, Herr richly analyzes the ways Odets continued to explore such themes as responsibility, the loss of American idealism, the rise of consumer capitalism, the utopian hopes of American leftism, and the rise of popular culture as an expression of the common voice. Additionally, Herr's study meticulously examines how Odet's work complimented and interfaced in the then contemporary polemic within the American conscience. One way Herr does this is by demonstrating how the Depression provided Odets with a cause. A second way is through showing how the playwright's work paralleled and participated in a radical questioning of the entire American ethos. Herr's text begins in familiar territory by charting the crises of the 1930s and the ways in which Odets infused his work with a new moral relevance. Herr offers a fresh, new insight into the artistic temperament of Odets as a dramatist who rejected formalism and who eventually became a committed activist playwright, the likes of which had never before been seen in the American Theatre. Herr's study traces the career of Odets from his birth to Eastern European Jewish immigrants in 1906 to his death in 1963. Along the way he ruminates upon how the Jewish working-class environment inspired much of Odets' work. Herr also discusses the impact of the material conditions in the America of the time, commencing with a shift towards a new spirit of reform at the end of the first decade of the twentieth century, and leading up to the 1929 stock market crash and its effects upon the nation. Herr posits and frequently returns to a discussion centering on ethnic factions in Philadelphia during Odets' formative years. Herr argues these sectarian differences drew Odets toward fighting the establishment and toward a realization that "in a capitalist society, criminals, artists and revolutionists are brothers under the skin" (9). Herr also views how Odets' "Hugoesque sympathy for the weak and downtrodden became a defining characteristic" (13) of his later dramatic works. Concomitantly, Herr argues that Odet's politics developed as a visceral response against the "isolation" (13), and the paucity of a fruitful economy he saw in his own life growing up in the 1920s. As a dramatist and eventually as a member of the Group Theatre, Odets continued to grapple with the challenge of how to affect the moral consciousness of the American body politic. He searched for the answer to how "a politically progressive theatre [could:] reach a large enough audience to survive" (18). For Odets this "pressure to produce a hit that would keep the theatre afloat" (18) was always in collision with the want to create socially efficacious theatre. In the course of five chapters, Herr unevenly offers readers a previously untold history of Odets. In the second chapter on the culture of consumption ("Art and Politics in the Marketplace: Odets, the Group, and America, 1929-1940"), Herr provides a salient discussion of the opposition between art and commerce and how the differences between the two are contested. Here, Herr discusses Odets' themes: the struggles individuals face striking a balance between self desire and the oppositional forces setting people in direct competition against the influences of the marketplace. In the third chapter entitled "'Life Printed on Dollar Bills': The Marketplace in Odet's Group Plays," Herr examines war, economic failure, class struggle, and most critically the disintegration of American utopianism in the 30s. Herr argues that Odets' plays outright (condemn) the systematic denigration of the poor and the outcast. They also delineate the deep utopian visions that drove left-wing politics during the 1930s" (62). Herr's discussion of the ambiguities resident within a culture that compelled people "to expect abundance but never [left:] them satisfied" (63) is fascinating. Central to Herr's argument are the ways in which Odets examines "the Edenic myth" (67) and "the commodit[ies:] most directly tied to human needs (the symbols of production and consumption). Herr explains how the playwright used these symbols "as metaphors deeply connected with the American Dream" (67) in constructing a means by which to examine (through his plays) "both processes in the lives of his characters" (67). The fourth chapter, "Odets and the Dwindling Political Theatre (1940-1954)," is the book's strongest. Herr interrogates Odets' "struggle to find a context in which his work could be meaningful" (104) after the dissolution of the Group Theatre in 1941. When the United States was on the verge of its entry into the second World War, and the threat of Nazism was at the core of the nation's concerns. Herr points to Clash by Night (1941) as Odet's "attempt to articulate his political vision by means of the personal dilemma and there to show how an inherent American lack of form led to the ensnaring of human beings in violence; the hot, dull Staten Island setting becomes a microcosm'though not an allegory'of the kind of personal abdication that allows despotism to gain power" (106). In this sense, Clash by Night articulates the ongoing concerns about American life fostered in Odets by the Group. For the next two decades and throughout The Cold War, Odet's labored as a screenwriter and generated partisan influenced and socially conscious work. Although Odets' drama appealed to a proletarian constituency, Herr cautions us to recognize that "the complexit[ies:] of Odets' own career and the deep ambivalence revealed in his plays about the promises and failures of American life point to the pivotal position Odets holds as a mirror of the times in which he lived" (147). In chapter four, Herr's foray into the machinations of the House Un-American Activities Committee (HUAC) is by far the most problematic aspect of this study. On one hand, Herr construes Odets testimony before the HUAC, in dual terms. Odets appeared to both in supporting liberalism and condemning Communism. His testimony was probative and shocking to those already blacklisted for he unabashedly capitulated to the committee. Odets exercised the before the HUAC to provide evidence and receive conditional immunity from them in exchange for his testimony. An act that permitted him to remain gainfully employed as a writer. Because Odets "named names" (120) others (those artists already blacklisted) saw him as a traitor. Elia Kazan and Harold Clurman both later insisted that the social censure he received broke Odet's spirit, and deprived him of the "heroic identity he needed most" (120). Yet Herr limits his discussion solely of Odet's and the HUAC to the likes of Odets, Kazan, and Clurman and he thereby loses an opportunity to examine "Odet's Apologia for the HUAC Testimony" (121) and see it from the perspectives of the leftists who criticized him for "selling out." The ways in which the HUAC unfairly treated many artists is not problematized by Herr who seems to sympathize with both Odets and Kazan rather than leading the reader towards the larger issue of how the introduction of revolutionary propaganda, allegedly a form of communist rhetoric, clashed with the optimistic nature of the film industry as a whole. Despite the periodic repetitive nature of reexamining Odet's body of works (this, however, is a minor issue), Herr's text, rich in information and insight, makes an important contribution to the study of twentieth century American political theatre; a field of research that is by no means bereft of attention. Herr succeeds in demonstrating how Odets used the theatre to criticize the government, how the Depression gave Odets a cause, and Herr insightfully examines the durability of Odet's social conscience. Moreover, Herr gives the reader an informed appreciation of how the works Odets acted as a lightning rod in the socially-conscious milieu of the 1930s. Moreover, how Odets became an outsider in the shifting political climate of the 1940s and 1950s, and in particular how he became more so, after his testimony before the House Un-American Activities Committee (HUAC) in 1952 are explored. Herr's well-documented book which includes an excellent chronological table, extensive bibliography, and comprehensive index, will help to foster more dialogue among theorists and historians as to Odet's legacy as a significant political American playwright.

Review # 2 was written on 2012-09-22 00:00:00 Karl Conrad a solid work but it plays it very safe. lots of buzzwords from late 1990s / early 2000s here: self-reflexivity, performativity, disavowal, resistance; "always already" formulations; suturing; abjection; ironic paren(theses) and slash/mark use; fractured identities and multiple allegiances... note: could be useful to read this against rey chow's the protestant ethnic and the spirit of capitalism