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The Petrified Forest
Gabrielle Maple is a waitress in an Arizona diner at the edge of the Petrified Forest who feels trapped in a provincial dead-end and has all but given up on her dream of a finer, more meaningful life as an artist in France. Alan Squier is a disillusioned writer who is hitchiking his way to the Petrified Forest where he is planning to commit suicide. When Squier stops into the diner, he reinvigorates Maple's dreams of a better life and begins to find his own sense of self-worth revitalized.
74 pages, Paperback
First published January 1, 1935
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About the author
Robert E. Sherwood
69 books17 followersRobert Emmet Sherwood was an American playwright, editor, and screenwriter.
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Displaying 1 - 9 of 9 reviews
July 18, 2015
This was a fun read, but not a great one. It has some interesting ideas but it is flawed by over-the-top melodrama and romantic cliché and it's not nearly as good as the novel in which it appears as a failed community theater production: Revolutionary Road by Richard Yates.
Act I is full of promise and sets up themes of spiritual angst and empty intellectualism that readers familiar with Revolutionary Road will find themselves perking up at.
Gabby Maple is a despairing small town waitress with stunted dreams of a better life and questionable talent as a painter. ("I'll bet I could improve if I could get to France. You know, they've got some of the finest art schools in the world there. And they've got beautiful things to paint, too - flowers, and castles and rivers. But here in this desert - it's just the same thing over and over again.")
Alan Squier is an angst-riddled writer who stops into Gabby's diner with lofty ideas and didactic monologues. ("The trouble with me is, I belong to a vanishing race. I'm one of the intellectuals.") Squier is as self-absorbed and self-important as Frank Wheeler in Revolutionary Road, but with a major difference: he's aware of the ultimate emptiness of his own intellectualism. ("Yes - I have brains without purpose. Noise without sound. Shape without substance. Have you ever read 'The Hollow Men'? Don't. It's discouraging, because it's true.")
Unfortunately, these themes of yearning and searching for meaning in life don't get developed enough to be as interesting as they could have been. Sherwood takes these promising seedling ideas from Act I and kills them off fairly abruptly in the form of an out-of-the-blue mobster hostage story in Act II. Guns, gangster talk, desperate heroics, more guns, more gangster talk, more guns.
Very interesting start, very lame ending.
Yates used many of the same seedling ideas and grew them into something brilliant in Revolutionary Road. I don't see how April Wheeler and crew could ever have mounted a successful community theater production with the material they were handed. Don't cry, April.
Act I is full of promise and sets up themes of spiritual angst and empty intellectualism that readers familiar with Revolutionary Road will find themselves perking up at.
Gabby Maple is a despairing small town waitress with stunted dreams of a better life and questionable talent as a painter. ("I'll bet I could improve if I could get to France. You know, they've got some of the finest art schools in the world there. And they've got beautiful things to paint, too - flowers, and castles and rivers. But here in this desert - it's just the same thing over and over again.")
Alan Squier is an angst-riddled writer who stops into Gabby's diner with lofty ideas and didactic monologues. ("The trouble with me is, I belong to a vanishing race. I'm one of the intellectuals.") Squier is as self-absorbed and self-important as Frank Wheeler in Revolutionary Road, but with a major difference: he's aware of the ultimate emptiness of his own intellectualism. ("Yes - I have brains without purpose. Noise without sound. Shape without substance. Have you ever read 'The Hollow Men'? Don't. It's discouraging, because it's true.")
Unfortunately, these themes of yearning and searching for meaning in life don't get developed enough to be as interesting as they could have been. Sherwood takes these promising seedling ideas from Act I and kills them off fairly abruptly in the form of an out-of-the-blue mobster hostage story in Act II. Guns, gangster talk, desperate heroics, more guns, more gangster talk, more guns.
Very interesting start, very lame ending.
Yates used many of the same seedling ideas and grew them into something brilliant in Revolutionary Road. I don't see how April Wheeler and crew could ever have mounted a successful community theater production with the material they were handed. Don't cry, April.
February 10, 2018
I only occasionally read plays because there is usually not enough description and, because of the nature of the writing, they seem short and choppy. However, I try to break out of my routine reading at times and sometimes I like to read the book from which a movie was developed . I am not sure how I came upon this book but I enjoy watching movies made in the 30's and 40's and I think I saw the movie, starring Humphrey Bogart, on Turner Classic Movies. It must have made an impression for me to remember it.
July 6, 2015
No doubt read in prep school. Just recalled via reading "Revolutionary Road". Have seen the movie at least once. Was not a "breakthrough" part for Bogart though he was good in it as he'd been on Broadway. It took him several more years to finally mature into his tough-guy star persona. Date read is a guess.
February 10, 2023
I loved this one and the movie was good too, it’s very interesting seeing the characters change and how they interact with other over the course of their little situation tee hee drama
December 6, 2025
The Petrified Forest by Robert Sherwood
An excellent play- 9 out of 10
We are near the Arizona desert, in the vicinity of The Petrified Forest, where a roadside diner is run by the Maple family.
Gabrielle is the heroine of the story, where the father- Jason and the grandfather Gramp are secondary characters.
Gabrielle is half- French and her mother went back to France, where the romantic young woman wants to travel.
Her dream is to move to Bourge and become a painter there.
The problem is she is unaware of the studies and work of the wonderful Daniel Gilbert who wrote about happiness.
In his classic work Stumbling Upon Happiness, Professor Gilbert demolishes a few myths connected with well being.
We tend to believe that we would be happy if only we moved to California or Bourge in the case of Gabrielle.
Alas, it does not work that way for we tend to adapt to a base level of happiness no matter where we move.
- It is called hedonic adaptation
One day, the knight on shining armor enters the dinner, but he comes in the shape of a drifter named Alan Squier.
Even if he is not the proverbial frog, the first impression is that this man cannot be the love that would cause a game change.
But he is, because underneath the unappealing appearance, there is a noble heart and the great mind of a writer.
In a coincidence that seems improbable he has been living in France and talks to Gabrielle about her goal of moving there.
- Imagine that- two people in the Arizona desert, one coming from France and the other imagining her life there
They are the two halves of the same sphere that Plato wrote about.
Gabrielle falls in love with Alan and wants to use the stock that was placed in a bank in Nevada- if I remember well- to get them both to Bourge.
There is a nasty turn, when a wanted man – Duke Mantee steps into the diner, with his band of bandits.
They have killed people and threaten to do so again, machine gun in hand, for we are in the middle of the Great Depression.
In an amazing play, there is talk about values, ideals and the lost way of people who no longer believe in God and wander in search of meaning.
Alan understands that he fell in love with Gabrielle and proves himself a hero, a valiant man ready for any sacrifice for the woman he loves.
His modesty has no boundaries and he talks about the insufficient meaning and entertainment he might bring for Gabrielle.
Another man, Boze is also in love with Gabrielle- if I were cynical I would say that it makes sense for she surely is the only young maid on a thousand miles radius.
Boze steps up to fight with the villains, showing a fabulous bravery.
There is a movie made based on the play, with no other than Humphrey Bogart as the cruel Duke Mantee.
Amazing story
An excellent play- 9 out of 10
We are near the Arizona desert, in the vicinity of The Petrified Forest, where a roadside diner is run by the Maple family.
Gabrielle is the heroine of the story, where the father- Jason and the grandfather Gramp are secondary characters.
Gabrielle is half- French and her mother went back to France, where the romantic young woman wants to travel.
Her dream is to move to Bourge and become a painter there.
The problem is she is unaware of the studies and work of the wonderful Daniel Gilbert who wrote about happiness.
In his classic work Stumbling Upon Happiness, Professor Gilbert demolishes a few myths connected with well being.
We tend to believe that we would be happy if only we moved to California or Bourge in the case of Gabrielle.
Alas, it does not work that way for we tend to adapt to a base level of happiness no matter where we move.
- It is called hedonic adaptation
One day, the knight on shining armor enters the dinner, but he comes in the shape of a drifter named Alan Squier.
Even if he is not the proverbial frog, the first impression is that this man cannot be the love that would cause a game change.
But he is, because underneath the unappealing appearance, there is a noble heart and the great mind of a writer.
In a coincidence that seems improbable he has been living in France and talks to Gabrielle about her goal of moving there.
- Imagine that- two people in the Arizona desert, one coming from France and the other imagining her life there
They are the two halves of the same sphere that Plato wrote about.
Gabrielle falls in love with Alan and wants to use the stock that was placed in a bank in Nevada- if I remember well- to get them both to Bourge.
There is a nasty turn, when a wanted man – Duke Mantee steps into the diner, with his band of bandits.
They have killed people and threaten to do so again, machine gun in hand, for we are in the middle of the Great Depression.
In an amazing play, there is talk about values, ideals and the lost way of people who no longer believe in God and wander in search of meaning.
Alan understands that he fell in love with Gabrielle and proves himself a hero, a valiant man ready for any sacrifice for the woman he loves.
His modesty has no boundaries and he talks about the insufficient meaning and entertainment he might bring for Gabrielle.
Another man, Boze is also in love with Gabrielle- if I were cynical I would say that it makes sense for she surely is the only young maid on a thousand miles radius.
Boze steps up to fight with the villains, showing a fabulous bravery.
There is a movie made based on the play, with no other than Humphrey Bogart as the cruel Duke Mantee.
Amazing story
July 7, 2016
just ok.
added this to my list from it's reference in "revolutionary road" Gabby was the perfect character for the main character in RR to play!
looking forward to seeing the movie production of this play.
added this to my list from it's reference in "revolutionary road" Gabby was the perfect character for the main character in RR to play!
looking forward to seeing the movie production of this play.
August 20, 2010
I'm getting a quote tattoo'd on my body from this.
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August 15, 2013812.5 S5544p 1935
February 17, 2023
A well-written, delightfully presented story that has become one of my all-time favorites in the fiction genre.
💥 Recommended.
🟣
💥 Recommended.
🟣
Displaying 1 - 9 of 9 reviews