Drinks Before Dinner: A Play

by E.L. Doctorow

The long-unavailable work by one of America's most eminent writers. Drinks Before Dinner, called “witty and provocative” by the New York Times, is E.L. Doctorow’s only play. A tour-de-force of language and ideas concerning the individual’s role in and response to contemporary America, Drinks Before Dinner revolves around a dinner party for the economically privileged. As Doctorow writes in his introduction, “[This play] deals in general statements about the most common circumstances of our lives, the numbers of us, the cars we drive, the television we watch, the cities we live in, our contraception and our armaments, and our underlying sense of the apocalypse. . . .”

Genres: Plays, Drama, Fiction, Theatre

52 pages, Kindle Edition

First published January 1, 1979

About the author

History based known novels of American writer Edgar Laurence Doctorow. His works of fiction include Homer & Langley, The March, Billy Bathgate, Ragtime, The Book of Daniel, City of God, Welcome to Hard Times, Loon Lake, World’s Fair, The Waterworks, and All the Time in the World. Among his honors are the National Book Award, three National Book Critics Circle Awards, two PEN Faulkner Awards, The Edith Wharton Citation for Fiction, and the presidentially conferred National Humanities Medal. In 2009 he was short listed for the Man Booker International Prize honoring a writer’s lifetime achievement in fiction, and in 2012 he won the PEN Saul Bellow Award given to an author whose “scale of achievement over a sustained career places him in the highest rank of American Literature.” In 2013 the American Academy of Arts and Letters awarded him the Gold Medal for Fiction.

Reviews

[Loane · Rating 5 out of 5]

A really fun play to read if you’re feeling pretentious and better than the intellectual upper class intellectualizing life. Main character is a male pick me. Obviously I loved this.

[Kalle · Rating 2 out of 5]

Pretty neat, but nothing special.

[Martin Denton · Rating 3 out of 5]

The same flaw in the human race that destroys it provides the conspiracy of survivors with the responses that save it. The same insufficient humanity that brings doom provides a few people with the insensitive strength to plan beyond the doom.

The harsh truths that emerge in this uncompromising and, yes, flawed play, are necessary to hear. Drinks Before Dinner, which is about what happens when a discontented guest (quoted above) hijacks--literally--a cocktail party, is contrived and talky and, most of the time, as untheatrical as it is unbelievable. And yet: throughout, the conversation--rhetoric, more like--is bitterly profound, filled with insights we'd rather squelch; and at its climax--the nature of which I resolutely refuse to reveal--Doctorow's vision proves baldly, inhumanly clear. Drinks Before Dinner is not an entertaining experience, but it's a worthy one.

[Gabrielle Johnson · Rating 4 out of 5]

Certainly is not the best play in the world, but it is very interesting to read in context of Doctorow’s other works. I don’t think this should be read like the traditional play, which may make it less than appetizing for some drama lovers. However, this is a text that will likely sit in my brain for some time before I come to a definitive conclusion on it. If someone knows where to find a recording of the play please let me know!

[Brenna Donahue · Rating 2 out of 5]

I didn't love this - I know the language/style was the point (as mentioned in the author's note) but it was really hard for me to get past that. Just too philosophical, too much of an arrogant air. I can't imagine this being performed and resonating with a modern audience, even with some of the conspiracy theory type issues brought up. Not for me.

[Rachel Saper · Rating 2 out of 5]

Interesting to read, but I think it’s be very hard to be performed. It’s basically just pages of philosophical monologues - thought there are some gems to be realized.

One such gem:
You are one of those traitorous malcontents, one of those spiritual vandals who would like to be a revolutionary but hasn’t the balls of a flea.

[Ryan · Rating 4 out of 5]

First act has some weak spots but I really enjoyed the second one.

[Cliff Baechle · Rating 5 out of 5]

Not your typical dinner party conversation. And certainly not while waving a gun at your host and honored guest.

[Bridgette Hayes · Rating 3 out of 5]

Interesting. Existential. Cerebral. Reminds me of Don DeLillo’s writing.

But I’m not sure it makes a good play…

[Jamie Teller · Rating 3 out of 5]

Some compelling turns of phrase and some relevant ideas, but there’s a reason this hasn’t been revived since the original production.

[Ranjana · Rating 3 out of 5]

A very clever play that focuses on deep world issues.

[Derek · Rating 4 out of 5]

E. L. Doctorow never ceases to amaze. This play is social commentary at its best. Think Sartre's No Exit meets Delilo's White Noise.

A group of friends meet for dinner, talk, chitchat, catchup, seems rather droll and bourgeoisie until one of them -- deemed inconsolable -- in classic Raymond Chandler-esque fashion pulls out a gun and takes the living room hostage

As with everything E.L. Doctorow, everything is instantly quotable, thus --

"We're all changing. None of us is exempt. It is happening to us all. How can I be a chauvinist if my personality no longer supports me, if my concept of the person has failed, if our reasons for the person are failing, and that all of us now in this country, fucking or being fucked, are persons whose being as persons has failed."

"We're suicidal in the fullness of our being. The world will therefore end from the fullness of our creation of it. It is already ending in every possible way it can end. It is ending in all directions. Whatever we do inevitably brings it closer to its ending because everything around us which we have made ourselves express the idea of its ending. it will end of the failure of the human mind to locate itself in any category it can imagine. it will end of the failurebid human beings to be sufficiently human."

[Kylie · Rating 1 out of 5]

Perhaps people who believe "the theatrical mode has been so exhausted by television and film that i'm astounded it is still thought by playwrights to be useful and interesting" should simply not write plays.

And well, if Doctorow thinks "perhaps the play should be thought of as spoken opera," then perhaps we should see his play "as only the painted cardboard and the oddly dressed men and women who moved, spoke and sang so strangely in that brilliant light ... so blatantly false and unnatural" (Tolstoy).

[Ardyss (With Her Head in a Book) · Rating 3 out of 5]

I enjoyed this. But I don’t think it holds up well for modern readers, even considering the philosophical debates within the play itself—as if the story has been played out too many time in the last few decades.

Most interesting, with the exception of one husband and wife duo, the professions and religion of characters are never addressed, allowing for many types of people to fill the roles and bring their own background.

[Rick · Rating 4 out of 5]

An absolute linguistic tour-de-force which reminded me of Eliot's The Cocktail Party,in that, dramatically this play is not completely sound but what it lacks in drama it makes up in passion, polemic and pure language. I first read this play over 20 years ago and its imagery is still seared on my soul.

[Riley Haas · Rating 3 out of 5]

"Some great lines, but I've never been to a party like this. It reads too much like a fabrication. I can't imagine it coming off any more realistically on the stage. Still, the ideas are interesting."

[John · Rating 1 out of 5]

Ugh. All interior dialogue. Little action.

[Stephanie Wayman · Rating 2 out of 5]

The play I chose for my challenge read. Started out interesting but ended not how I expected. Could not picture this being put on in a theater

[Carolyn Van · Rating 2 out of 5]

kind of strange