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High Tor
High Tor - classic novel
142 pages, Hardcover
First published December 1, 1936
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About the author
Maxwell Anderson
118 books11 followersMaxwell Anderson was an American playwright, poet, and journalist. He won a Pulitzer Prize in Drama in 1933, for Both Your Houses, and the New York Drama Critics Circle Award for both Winterset and High Tor.
Several of his plays were adapted into successful movies, including Anne of the Thousand Days and Key Largo.
Several of his plays were adapted into successful movies, including Anne of the Thousand Days and Key Largo.
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Displaying 1 - 8 of 8 reviews
February 11, 2022
Poetic, whimsical fantasy, one of master playwright Maxwell Anderson's lesser works (though it did win prizes in its day), revolves around a dreamer who lives on the titular mountain and resists selling it to industrialists. Entering the fray are a squadron of sixteenth-century Dutch sailors and their captain's wife, seemingly marooned on the mountain and in time. Anderson writes richly and, at times, ornately this blank verse play, but the story is mostly too flimsy to support the level of dramatic writing he gives it. It is more the material of a musical than a play, and in fact was turned into an unsuccessful musical on television. Anderson is a superb writer, but he has numerous works which transcend the power of this one.
February 27, 2023
Happened upon this by chance and I am struck by the beauty of this writing, as well as the questions it’s grappling with of industry, economics, belonging (and belongingS), and colonization. Some funny stuff interspersed between longer, incredible passages like:
“There was once a song,
if only I could call back air and words,
about a king who watched a goblet rising
and falling in the sea. It came to land
and on the rim the king's name was inscribed
with a date many years before. Oh, many years,
a hundred or three hundred. Then he knew
that all his life was lived in an old time,
swept out, given to the waters. What remained
was but this goblet swimming in the sea,
touching his dust by chance.”
“There was once a song,
if only I could call back air and words,
about a king who watched a goblet rising
and falling in the sea. It came to land
and on the rim the king's name was inscribed
with a date many years before. Oh, many years,
a hundred or three hundred. Then he knew
that all his life was lived in an old time,
swept out, given to the waters. What remained
was but this goblet swimming in the sea,
touching his dust by chance.”
August 24, 2025
What a great play High Tor is! It's greater than Winterset, and Winterset is a masterpiece. Another tidbit: Anderson was writing magical realism before magical realism was a thing. High Tor reminds me of the novel that started the magical realism trend, Juan Rulfo's Pedro Paramo. But Pedro Paramo was not published until 1955; High Tor was first performed in 1946, so Maxwell Anderson should get kudos for the invention of magical realism. There are almost as many ghosts in High Tor as in Pedro Paramo, and Anderson's play, besides being imaginative, is poetic (not merely versified) and has a perfect ending. Maxwell Anderson is a neglected master of the American stage--and he is neglected. The last New York production of High Tor was in 2010.
November 15, 2018
Fantasy on the Hudson. Mystical in places, but not very fulfilling.
May 25, 2020
Kinda fluffy, but entertaining. I'm a little confused how the ghosts can be insubstantial yet pick up objects, but we'll let that go.
April 29, 2013
“Trapped in Time, Space and Love”
Set on a mountain overlooking the Hudson River this semi-comedy offers spectators/readers an extensive cast of diverse characters--something for everyone’s palate. Obeying the Unities of Time and Place Anderson's roster of ghosts and humans interact in a curious manner throughout one magical night on High Tor. The predominately male cast includes: an old Indian, a young man
determined to protect and preserve his beloved mountain heritage at all cost; two scoundrels hell-bent on buying and developing the craggy beacon; three shiftless, lackluster bank robbers, two representatives of the law, and a hard-core businessman. But the most fascinating characters porve a sea captain and his Knickerbocker crew who have been marooned on the shores of the Hudson for some 300 years after—who struggle to comprehend the “modern” era. (Who else could it have been playing at nine pins during Rip Van Winkle’s long slumber?)
Van and his sweetheart, Judith, argue over the practicality of marriage without the stability of a real job and money in the bank. Will the environmental activist sacrifice a life of happiness for barren real estate? The robbers inadvertently stash their loot in a poor hideout, so that the controversial and traceable bank notes wind up in the pockets of the two white-collar crooks who scheme to force Van Dorn to sell. During Act 2 the two female characters meet after having briefly switched lovers. Delightful literary confusion results with the intermingling of diverse wills and goals--as relationships, ethics, and the location of banknotes are in constant flux. And where will the old Indian’s bones ultimately lie for eternity amidst white man’s plans and dreams?
Witty dialogue and cleverly comedic conundrums disguise some sobering underlying themes: sacrifice for love, the need to preserve the wilderness, and coming to terms with being anachronisms in a strange world. HIGH TOR provides high class theatre--in any time frame.
June 21, 2010-longest day of the year!
I welcome dialogue with theachers.
Set on a mountain overlooking the Hudson River this semi-comedy offers spectators/readers an extensive cast of diverse characters--something for everyone’s palate. Obeying the Unities of Time and Place Anderson's roster of ghosts and humans interact in a curious manner throughout one magical night on High Tor. The predominately male cast includes: an old Indian, a young man
determined to protect and preserve his beloved mountain heritage at all cost; two scoundrels hell-bent on buying and developing the craggy beacon; three shiftless, lackluster bank robbers, two representatives of the law, and a hard-core businessman. But the most fascinating characters porve a sea captain and his Knickerbocker crew who have been marooned on the shores of the Hudson for some 300 years after—who struggle to comprehend the “modern” era. (Who else could it have been playing at nine pins during Rip Van Winkle’s long slumber?)
Van and his sweetheart, Judith, argue over the practicality of marriage without the stability of a real job and money in the bank. Will the environmental activist sacrifice a life of happiness for barren real estate? The robbers inadvertently stash their loot in a poor hideout, so that the controversial and traceable bank notes wind up in the pockets of the two white-collar crooks who scheme to force Van Dorn to sell. During Act 2 the two female characters meet after having briefly switched lovers. Delightful literary confusion results with the intermingling of diverse wills and goals--as relationships, ethics, and the location of banknotes are in constant flux. And where will the old Indian’s bones ultimately lie for eternity amidst white man’s plans and dreams?
Witty dialogue and cleverly comedic conundrums disguise some sobering underlying themes: sacrifice for love, the need to preserve the wilderness, and coming to terms with being anachronisms in a strange world. HIGH TOR provides high class theatre--in any time frame.
June 21, 2010-longest day of the year!
I welcome dialogue with theachers.
December 13, 2011
For those of you who think a story with written in verse featuring a suicidal Indian, a crew of Dutch ghosts and scheming land developers trapped in a steam shovel can't possibly work, well, you're right. This play is a bit of a mess. In a plot that would later fuel numerous mid period Steven Segal movies, the main character stands alone in defense of a natural piece of land against those who seek to pay him lots of money in order to turn the minerals in the mountain into something useful. The main character stays strong in his beliefs even in the face of his unsympathetic one-dimensional girlfriend. Luckily, there's a bank robbery, a ghostly love interest, a comic bit stolen from The Tempest and a deus ex machina who words of wisdom are to "sell out." After reading a handful of Maxwell Anderson's plays, I find it interesting that he seems unable to write a character with a convincing natural voice that is not taken from Elizabethan times. You time is better spent reading Elizabeth the Queen or Mary Stuart.
May 30, 2015
Play which is odd mix of realism (a man trying to save a mountain overlooking the Hudson River from being further scarred by developers) and fantasy (the ghosts of some Dutch explorers from hundreds of years ago appear at night on the mountain and interact with the current-day folks). Some of it is written in free verse, some of which is lovely and some of which is ridiculous. Interesting and mostly humorous, though I'm fairly certain this doesn't get revived much these days.
Displaying 1 - 8 of 8 reviews