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Eugene O'Neill: A Life in Four Acts
A major new biography of Eugene O'Neill, the Nobel Prize–winning dramatist who revolutionized American theater “Restores balance to the slightly skewed twenty-first century reputation of America’s greatest playwright. . . . [An] important story, perceptively recounted.”—Wendy Smith, Washington Post
Finalist for the Los Angeles Times Book Prize
This extraordinary new biography fully captures the intimacies of Eugene O’Neill’s tumultuous life and the profound impact of his work on American drama. Robert M. Dowling innovatively recounts O’Neill’s life in four acts, thus highlighting how the stories he told for the stage interweave with his actual life stories. Each episode also uncovers how O’Neill’s work was utterly intertwined with, and galvanized by, the culture and history of his time.
Much is new in this extensively researched connections between O’Neill’s plays and his political and philosophical worldview; insights into his Irish upbringing and lifelong torment over losing faith in God; his vital role in African American cultural history; unpublished photographs, including a unique offstage picture of him with his lover Louise Bryant; new evidence of O’Neill’s desire to become a novelist and what this reveals about his unique dramatic voice; and a startling revelation about the release of Long Day’s Journey Into Night in defiance of his explicit instructions. This biography is also the first to discuss O’Neill’s lost play Exorcism (a single copy of which was only recently recovered), a dramatization of his own suicide attempt.
Written with lively informality yet a scholar’s strict accuracy, Eugene O’ A Life in Four Acts is a biography that America’s foremost playwright richly deserves.
Finalist for the Los Angeles Times Book Prize
This extraordinary new biography fully captures the intimacies of Eugene O’Neill’s tumultuous life and the profound impact of his work on American drama. Robert M. Dowling innovatively recounts O’Neill’s life in four acts, thus highlighting how the stories he told for the stage interweave with his actual life stories. Each episode also uncovers how O’Neill’s work was utterly intertwined with, and galvanized by, the culture and history of his time.
Much is new in this extensively researched connections between O’Neill’s plays and his political and philosophical worldview; insights into his Irish upbringing and lifelong torment over losing faith in God; his vital role in African American cultural history; unpublished photographs, including a unique offstage picture of him with his lover Louise Bryant; new evidence of O’Neill’s desire to become a novelist and what this reveals about his unique dramatic voice; and a startling revelation about the release of Long Day’s Journey Into Night in defiance of his explicit instructions. This biography is also the first to discuss O’Neill’s lost play Exorcism (a single copy of which was only recently recovered), a dramatization of his own suicide attempt.
Written with lively informality yet a scholar’s strict accuracy, Eugene O’ A Life in Four Acts is a biography that America’s foremost playwright richly deserves.
584 pages, Paperback
First published October 28, 2014
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Displaying 1 - 19 of 19 reviews
March 7, 2023
Thoroughly researched, frequently fascinating look at the troubled life and pathbreaking work of playwright Eugene O'Neill, less a cradle to grave biography than an examination of how his upbringing, experiences at sea and among a bunch of washed-up, washed-out drunks--many of them disillusioned anarchists and former radicals-- as well as his own alcoholism, informed his art. One of the most interesting aspects of the book is the way it incorporates the sociopolitical events of the day in contextualizing the plays, especially ones like The Emperor Jones, The Hairy Ape and All God's Chillun Got Wings, which dealt with hot-button issues of the day like race and racial violence, interracial marriage, imperialism and the dehumanizing effects of industrialization, and broke with tradition by employing black actors (former porter Charles Gilpin became an overnight sensation as the original star of The Emperor Jones, and the great Paul Robeson acted in productions of that play as well as playing the black husband of a racist white woman in "Chillun," a show that caused a massive stir for featuring the white actress Mary Blair kissing his hand on stage). His early work with the Provincetown Players company also greatly expanded, along with that of Susan Glaspell, the technical boundaries of the American theater on top of dramatically changing its thematic content. The book is incredibly rich with detail about and insight into O'Neill and his work, and features appearances by noteworthy names like Hart Crane, William Carlos Williams, Malcolm Cowley, John Reed and Louise Bryant (the love triangle that formed the basis of Reds is covered), Walter Huston, Charlie Chaplin, Edmund Wilson and more.
I will say, just as a minor quibble not affecting my overall enjoyment but mildly shocking, the editing for the book is remarkably shoddy, though, especially coming from a prominent and prestigious press like Yale University's, with tons of typos, mangled sentences, stray clauses, etc.
I will say, just as a minor quibble not affecting my overall enjoyment but mildly shocking, the editing for the book is remarkably shoddy, though, especially coming from a prominent and prestigious press like Yale University's, with tons of typos, mangled sentences, stray clauses, etc.
May 22, 2024
All anyone needs to know about the playwright and his life, with concise descriptions of the plays and other works (poems, stories), lies between these covers.
Once you dry off from splashing around in the sea of liquor that Eugene O'Neill and his wives and friends (no way are they the same thing) drank (mostly whisky, beer, and wine), reorient yourself as to where you are when this or that expensive house is built and abandoned for some mythical better place, and aren't completely put off by the ugly aspects of the woman-beating O'Neill and his other lousy (as well as good) behaviour, you might come away wanting to actually see the plays and not simply read them. A biography that doesn't kill that impulse has to have good qualities (though the proofreading could have been better).
Once you dry off from splashing around in the sea of liquor that Eugene O'Neill and his wives and friends (no way are they the same thing) drank (mostly whisky, beer, and wine), reorient yourself as to where you are when this or that expensive house is built and abandoned for some mythical better place, and aren't completely put off by the ugly aspects of the woman-beating O'Neill and his other lousy (as well as good) behaviour, you might come away wanting to actually see the plays and not simply read them. A biography that doesn't kill that impulse has to have good qualities (though the proofreading could have been better).
November 16, 2021
A detailed work on Eugene O'Neill's life, literary career and gives important insights into his works. Any study of Eugene O Neill would be incomplete without this work.
September 25, 2015
I read this book after visiting the Monte Cristo Cottage in New London, Ct. It's excellent and authoritative. The accumulation of so many important details made it a slow read for me but I recommend.
January 24, 2015
Just what a biography ought to be. Essential reading for anyone interested in the man, his work and his times. Thoroughly researched, authoritative and eminently readable.
March 4, 2021
This review originally published in Looking For a Good book. Rated 4.0 of 5
I have an undergraduate degree in theatre and am familiar with the works of Eugene O'Neill, having read or seen (or both) most of his body of works. I was only passingly familiar with O'Neill the man, the writer, from brief bios in college text books.
Author Robert M. Dowling has done an exhaustive amount of research to give us a deep understanding of the man, Eugene O'Neill, and understanding the man provides insight to the works.
Dowling gives us O'Neill in a straight-forward presentation, and although I presume he has respect or deep appreciation for O'Neill, manages to keep his personal thoughts out of the writing. There are times, especially early in the book, when this comes across as dry academic writing and it takes some patience to keep going, but the further we get in the more I appreciated the style.
O'Neill the playwright defined an era. When his play Long Day's Journey Into Night had its world premiere in Sweden, the critics wrote that O'Neill was (according to Dowling's postscript), "the world's last dramatist of the stature of Aeschylus and Shakespeare." I may not go quite that far but I respect the way he raised the bar in modern drama.
Like so many writers of this past era - especially those who brought forward deep themes - O'Neill had his demons. How much those demons affected his writing or how much his writing created the demons can only be guessed at and debated by scholars and students, but books like this are important tools for those who really want to understand the man and his work.
Looking for a good book? The biography Eugene O'Neill by Robert M. Dowling is an important scholarly work and should be required reading for any theatre or English student.
I received a digital copy of this book from the publisher, through Netgalley, in exchange for an honest review.
I have an undergraduate degree in theatre and am familiar with the works of Eugene O'Neill, having read or seen (or both) most of his body of works. I was only passingly familiar with O'Neill the man, the writer, from brief bios in college text books.
Author Robert M. Dowling has done an exhaustive amount of research to give us a deep understanding of the man, Eugene O'Neill, and understanding the man provides insight to the works.
Dowling gives us O'Neill in a straight-forward presentation, and although I presume he has respect or deep appreciation for O'Neill, manages to keep his personal thoughts out of the writing. There are times, especially early in the book, when this comes across as dry academic writing and it takes some patience to keep going, but the further we get in the more I appreciated the style.
O'Neill the playwright defined an era. When his play Long Day's Journey Into Night had its world premiere in Sweden, the critics wrote that O'Neill was (according to Dowling's postscript), "the world's last dramatist of the stature of Aeschylus and Shakespeare." I may not go quite that far but I respect the way he raised the bar in modern drama.
Like so many writers of this past era - especially those who brought forward deep themes - O'Neill had his demons. How much those demons affected his writing or how much his writing created the demons can only be guessed at and debated by scholars and students, but books like this are important tools for those who really want to understand the man and his work.
Looking for a good book? The biography Eugene O'Neill by Robert M. Dowling is an important scholarly work and should be required reading for any theatre or English student.
I received a digital copy of this book from the publisher, through Netgalley, in exchange for an honest review.
January 4, 2024
Robert Dowling's hefty bio of America's first great playwright is a nice follow-up to the Gelbs' mammoth tome of '62 not simply because of newly unearthed material (photos, diaries, letters, unpublished memoirs). Dowling has a sharper focus: fellow playwright Susan Glaspell gets more stage time; second wife (and author) Agnes Boulton gets more respect. And O'Neill's last wife/heir Carlotta - to whom the Gelbs may've felt indebted because of interviews granted - is revealed to be a raging antisemite and racist. O'Neill too feels less like the subject of a hagiography here as Dowling relates the Nobel laureate's history of wife-beating, child neglect, and hardcore drinking. Perhaps fewer pages make O'Neill's accomplishments register more impressive, coming as they do in quick succession, from his breakthrough with the Provincetown Players to his restless experiments on Broadway to his final masterpieces. Plays that escaped my attention in the last book - "Lazarus Laughed," "Exorcism," "Marco Millions" - emerge as definitely worth a look. O'Neill is/was so much more than "Long Day's Journey into Night" and "The Iceman Cometh."
February 14, 2022
A captivating biography detailing the life and career of a man who made a huge influence on the world of theatre. Although the flow of the book starts off slow due to the overwhelming amount of quotes and references, the author finds a more suitable balance for the rest of the text. Once hitting that balance, it's not hard to find oneself wanting to keep reading to find out what happens next. As someone who wasn't familiar with Eugene O'Neill prior to learning about this book through an interview with the actor Alfred Molina (who lists this among his favorites), I found myself quickly impressed by the playwright's life story and desired to see the plays I had just learned about. For anyone who is a fan of the theatre arts (especially when it comes to Broadway's history), I would highly recommend taking the time to read this. Even if you aren't, you'll quickly learn how connected O'Neill was with other well-known names, both in the theatre and literary realms.
July 19, 2017
At first I was distanced by the rather academic tone of this life treatment, but I eventually came to appreciate it. It is not a comprehensive biography but rather a study of the life as it manifested in the works, and vice versa. It would be extremely useful for teaching; all American theatre history students should read this book. It would also serve theatre practitioners very well as it gives particular insight into O'Neill's process of working with the innovative designer Robert Edmond Jones. Perhaps the highest compliment I can pay Dr. Dowling is that his study made me want to read those of O'Neill's plays with which I'm unfamiliar, formidable though that task will be. I may very well read another biography of O'Neill at some point, but I'm very glad to have read this one first.
February 9, 2024
However much Dowling's fussy and irritating structure wants to give the reader the impression that they are reading something more, this is effectively a glorified chronology. In this respect it feels reasonably complete. But any perspective on O'Neill's inner life is lacking and there is no insight into the creative process. Why did O'Neill turn to the Oresteia in 'Mourning Becomes Electra' or Faust in 'Days Without End'? Where did the artistic vision which produced the conviction that plays of Wagnerian length would work on Broadway come from? Dowling has no answers. Worse, he seems not to think that these and many other questions are of interest.
September 5, 2020
This book started out promising, but then became a choir to read. I gave it two stars mostly for the amount of research and work that was put into it. I wish it was a more entertaining read, but it may be possible that the interesting version of this book can only exist in the canon of Eugene O'Neill's plays.
June 3, 2021
I didn't know anything about Eugene O'Neill or his plays until I read this fascinating book. I wanted to find out about O'Neill since, for a time, he lived nearby. Dowling did a thorough job of researching O'Neill and an admirable job of bringing his research to life, making one feel like they met O'Neill personally.
March 9, 2018
An exceptional work of biography! Dowling certainly comes at his subject from the perspective of a fan but he manages to keep the book from descending into simple hagiography. As with all first-rate bios of literary figures it is also a biography of the work.
July 26, 2024
There were some extremely interesting sections amidst a bunch of more academic ones. A little too detailed for an introduction, mostly interested in the connection between his life and his works rather than focusing firmly on one of the other.
November 20, 2025
An excellent biography of a damaged and frequently terrible human being but an important, even transformational, playwright. I assume his plays are more frequently revived in the States than they are here, given how thoroughly American he is in his concerns and style.
November 4, 2024
A challenging but impressive read, truly one of the most important playwrights of all time who suffered for his art
April 14, 2016
A scholarly, informative, objective, and interesting read
If you have read Long Day's Journey into Night and want to know more of the biography behind the autobiographical play, you'll want to start with this book. By an established O'Neill scholar, the book is informed (he seems to have read anything even remotely related to the playwright) and informative. And despite the amazing amount of detail, the story never gets bogged down. O'Neill led a life full of interesting (though usually sorrowful) events. You definitely don't have to wade through a lot of him-drum normality before getting to the interesting parts! Dowling writes very well; he is not dry. And the organization of the book into 4 parts works well.
If you have read Long Day's Journey into Night and want to know more of the biography behind the autobiographical play, you'll want to start with this book. By an established O'Neill scholar, the book is informed (he seems to have read anything even remotely related to the playwright) and informative. And despite the amazing amount of detail, the story never gets bogged down. O'Neill led a life full of interesting (though usually sorrowful) events. You definitely don't have to wade through a lot of him-drum normality before getting to the interesting parts! Dowling writes very well; he is not dry. And the organization of the book into 4 parts works well.
February 8, 2016
Completely changed the way I think about O'Neill. Highly recommended.
April 2, 2017
I enjoyed this despite the sometime dryness (no pun intended!) in tone and the unfortunates facts laid bare regarding O'Neill himself. As a reader who knew feck all about the playwright I found it an interesting experience, to read this book from cover to cover while forming a dislike and disregard for the man O'Neill. Fair play to biographer Robert M. Dowling for placing it all there, the development of the genius alongside the development of the bitter drunk who would beat not one, but two of his wives and deserved few accolades as a father. I have never seen an O'Neill play but found it fascinating to read about them and the process involved. The book is well-researched and I especially enjoyed the photographs selected. There is no happy ending for most of those mentioned, everything just sorts of rots away - health, wealth and sanity. His life was a bit of a soap opera, sodden with booze, whether he was on or off the wagon. I admire his dedication and discipline regarding his work ... but little else.
Displaying 1 - 19 of 19 reviews