O'Neill: Life with Monte Cristo

by Arthur Gelb, Barbara Gelb

If at first you don't succeed... well, actually, Arthur and Barbara Gelb's 1962 book about Eugene O'Neill was a resounding success by any measure; for years, theirs was the definitive account of the Nobel Prize-winning playwright and his work. Far from resting on their laurels, however, the Gelbs spent the next 38 years continuing their research, interviewing O'Neill's family and friends and digging up new sources of information. Now they've produced O'Neill: Life with Monte Cristo, both a rewrite of their 1962 biography and a major literary event in its own right. The first installment of a projected trilogy, O'Neill uses the plays themselves as a jumping-off point for an exploration of the playwright's life, including substantial discussion of his colorful father, his Irish ancestors, and his troubled early years. This later work gains not only from its new source materials and widened scope but also from what the Gelbs note is a "changed sensibility"--both in themselves and the world around them. Those 38 intervening years have brought increased personal understanding and remarkable developments in O'Neill scholarship, they write, and O'Neill benefits from both. Marked by meticulous attention to detail and daring leaps in chronology, the Gelbs' biography is a remarkable reevaluation of one of our most violent and original American talents. --Greta Kline

Genres: Biography, Nonfiction, Theatre

722 pages, Hardcover

First published January 1, 1960

About the author

Arthur Gelb was an American editor, author, executive and a former managing editor of The New York Times. He enjoyed the plays of Eugene O'Neill so much that he wrote three biographies of the playwright with his wife Barbara Gelb.

Reviews

[Sharonlee]

I read this the summer of 1977, while my boss was on a 3-week vacation. Immersing myself in the life of my favorite playwright, I was in the middle of trying to decide what to do with the rest of my life, now that I had given up acting. It was a difficult time.

[Michael Paquette · Rating 5 out of 5]

A thoroughly reasearched and extraordinary account of the life of Eugene O'Neill that includes his father's early lives and their escape from the Irish famine and struggles and experienences in the late nineteenth and early twentieth century in Cincinnati, and his apprenticeship as a machinist and later attempts as a farmer. His father would become one of the greatest actors in America and tour the country with the role of the Count of Monte Cristo for years. This book provides the background of what would become a volatile relationship with his parents and a worshipful relationship with his older brother by a young Eugene that leads to a gradual disillusionment. Through their reportorial style and their deeply researched subject the authors provide a guide to the societal and theatrical history of the United States from the mid 1800s to the 1920s. The book provides a look at the struggles of a young writer, his influential teachers, his angst and anxieties, his desire for adventures at sea, his spiritual despair and alcoholism, all of which he would overcome and become the greatest dramatist and playwright in American history. The book weaves the stories of his life into the characters in his works. It deftly describes the periods of his life that lead to his stories and his desire for a new and more realistic theater. His emotianal attachments to the thwarted relationships with Beatrice Ashe, Maibelle Scott and Louise Bryant are fully fleshed out through interviews, letters and correspondance. These early relationships as well as his marriage to Kathleen Jenkins which his father had him removed from after learning she was with child are thoroghly detailed and given the perspective of how they influenced his career. An extraordinary work and one of the finest biographies of any American artist.

[Drew · Rating 5 out of 5]

This fat biography of Eugene O'Neill is nothing if not thorough. Over 900 unpadded pages, Gelbs Barbara and Arthur give the skinny about a gargantuan figure in American playwrighting, onstage and off. And so we learn about the real-life counterparts to the tragic characters in "Long Day's Journey Into Night" as well as the writer's own rocky marriages to three very different women (one ignored; one abandoned; one revered and reviled). I especially enjoyed reading about his salad days with the Provincetown Players; about his overall distaste for Hollywood adaptations; and about his voluminous output. For the first half-decade of his career, he was averaging four one-acts and two full-lengths every year. This pace slowed only slightly during the subsequent 15 years and it was always bolstered by a firm belief in his own work matched only by an optimism that his best scripts always laid ahead. The final unhappy chapters in which his third marriage falls apart, his body hits the skids, and one child commits suicide, one becomes a drug addict, and one marries Charlie Chaplin are a strange example of life imitating art: serious sadness with some humor laced in.

[Cws]

812.52

[Jim · Rating 5 out of 5]

Can't wait for Arthur & Barbara Gelb to release second volume of O'Neill's extraordinary life. This work is a masterpiece!
Jim