Stretching My Mind: The Collected Essays, 1960-2005

by Edward Albee

America's most important living playwright, Edward Albee, has been rocking our country's moral, political and artistic complacency for more than 50 years. Beginning with his debut play, The Zoo Story (1958), and on to his barrier breaking works of the 1960s, most notably The American Dream (1960), Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf? (1963), and the Pulitzer Prize-winning A Delicate Balance (1966), Albee's unsparing indictment of the American way of life earned him early distinction as the dramatist of his generation. His acclaim was enhanced further in the decades that followed with prize-winning dramas such as Seascape (1974) and Three Tall Women (1991), as well as recent works like The Play About the Baby (2001) and The Goat. (2002).

Albee has brought the same critical force to his non-theatrical prose. Stretching My Mind collects for the first time ever the author's writings on theater, literature, and the political and cultural battlegrounds that have defined his career. Many of the selections were drawn from Albee's private papers, and almost all previously published material—dating from 1960 to the present—has never been reprinted. Topics include Samuel Beckett, Eugene Ionesco, Sam Shepherd, as well as autobiographical writings about Albee's life, work, and worldview.

Genres: Nonfiction, Theatre

340 pages, Hardcover

First published November 28, 2005

About the author

Noted American playwright Edward Franklin Albee explored the darker aspects of human relationships in plays like Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf? (1962) and Three Tall Women (1991), which won his third Pulitzer Prize.

People know Edward Franklin Albee III for works, including The Zoo Story , The Sandbox and The American Dream .
He well crafted his works, considered often unsympathetic examinations of the modern condition. His early works reflected a mastery and Americanization of the theater of the absurd, which found its peak in European playwrights, such as Jean Genet, Samuel Barclay Beckett, and Eugène Ionesco. Younger Pulitzer Prize-winner Paula Vogel credits daring mix of theatricalism and biting dialogue of Albee with helping to reinvent the postwar theater in the early 1960s. Dedication of Albee to continuing to evolve his voice — as evidenced in later productions such as The Goat or Who Is Sylvia? (2000) — also routinely marks him as distinct of his era.

Albee described his work as "an examination of the American Scene, an attack on the substitution of artificial for real values in our society, a condemnation of complacency, cruelty, and emasculation and vacuity, a stand against the fiction that everything in this slipping land of ours is peachy-keen."

Reviews

[Chas · Rating 2 out of 5]

I have to say, I wish there were a few more essays on Albee's craft and process, and a few less essays on Art Collecting (or "accumulation" as Albee likes to call it).

[Christopher · Rating 2 out of 5]

This collection of various writings needed a better editor. Edward Albee repeats himself quite a bit in various pieces and this can get a bit annoying. That being said, maybe it was just me but everything he states about the need of a aesthetic education in America and the need for artists to familiarize themselves with all the other arts to better round themselves are things I've believed as second nature since I was in grade school, though I also believe that artists must be familiar with the political, social, and natural sciences as well.
It is interesting to read about his thoughts on the nature of theater in the US as he wrote some of his masterpieces (so far) and to learn his writing process (one that is also rather familiar to be).

It is his discussions on sculpture that were a bit lacking. His "insights," that he proclaims as if he is a visionary in a sea of blind men, are rather elementary and without too much depth. His passion for art is clear and he does indeed have taste and a good eye, but his comments don't deepen our understanding of the art form.

this was a very quick read however so I won't complain too much about these quivels.

[Justin Levine · Rating 4 out of 5]

An engaging, comprehensive chronological peek into the complex and voracious mind and art of Edward Albee. Ranging on a variety of topics from theatre and playwriting, the arts and their respective practitioners, politics, critics, music and beyond, Albee's signature propensity for splicing the intricacies of art and its place in society is preserved with surgeon-like precision and care.

[Diana Polansky · Rating 4 out of 5]

Think: Oscar the grouch meets Hemingway

[Keith · Rating 4 out of 5]

really interesting and the politics

[Albie]

Stretching My Mind : The Collected Essays 1960 to 2005 by Edward Albee (2005)

[Ophelia · Rating 5 out of 5]

Man, I love Edward Albee.