Edward Albee: The Poet of Loss by Anita M. Stenz

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Reviews 381 How do I fit it all together? Where can I go from here?” Bigger books have done less. DAVID A. RICHARDSON Cleveland State University Anita M. Stenz. Edward Albee: The Poet of Loss. Studies in American Literature, Volume XXXII. The Hague: Mouton Publishers, 1978. Pp. 146. Bibliography. DM 36. Although it perhaps lacks the depth and range of a truly definitive study, Anita M. Stenz’s slender volume makes a useful contribution to Albee scholarship. Contending that the motivation and behavior of Albee’s characters merit fuller examination than they have received, Stenz discusses the plays from The Zoo Story to Seascape. Some of what she says is already part of Albee criticism. She is certainly not the first to claim that the playwright “is a stern moralist”; nor is she original in considering Albee’s characterization both realistic-psychological and symbolic-stylized. She is indebted to several critics, especially to C. W. E. Bigsby {Albee, 1969), for much of the commentary on the early plays. Both the notes and the extensive bibliography suggest her close familiarity with Albee scholarship in general. The book presents a corrective to much of the simplistic criticism generated by Albee’s dramaturgy. For example, by demonstrating effec­ tively that Albee is no more generous with his male than with his female characters, Stenz defends the playwright against the naive view that he sees “women as evil forces.” Her major contribution is not so much in what she says about how Albee develops character—in fact she says precious little about his technique of characterization— but in her often repeated claim that Albee is not the nihilist that critics tend to make him. Assessing the existential crises of Albee’s characters, Stenz argues with good sense that the dramatist insists on the ambiguity of existence, not on nihilism. Her theory that characters, such as Peter in The Zoo Story and the Intern in The Death of Bessie Smith, gain “partial victories” over despair merits further consideration. Particularly admirable are her discussions of some of the later plays, especially Tiny Alice, A Delicate Balance, All One, and Seascape. Less effective are her too derivative discussion of Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf? and her all but pointless summary of The Sandbox. In all, though, her criticism presents a valu­ able, synthesizing view of Albee’s dramas. Stenz’s attempt to underplay allusion, allegory, and symbolism some­ times does lead her into near vagaries of criticism, as when she notes with apparent seriousness that Martha (in Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf?) gives “little evidence that she ever took pride in homemaking.” Even if we accept the idea that Albee’s characters are motivated by their existential conditions and individual circumstances, we can hardly ignore their mythic and allegorical roles. It is important to character, after all, and most certainly to the meaning of the play, that George is History 382 Comparative Drama and Nick is Biology. Stenz seems caught at times between describing plays as essentially existential patterns of action and accounting for the surface realism of individual characters. Asking “about the psychological implications of coitus interruptus” on Agnus (in A Delicate Balance) implies to me an almost absurdly reductive reading of the play. Stenz’s methodology involves rather elongated plot summaries which occasionally obscure more than they illuminate her insights. In some chapters, for example the chapter on The Sandbox, we get little more than the plot line. Stenz does sprinkle her commentaries with an impres­ sive range of secondary material, and she makes it clear where she stands in relation to particular critics. Now and again, she uses a strawman, as when she refers to certain unnamed critics who assume that Aibee “is attacking marriage and the family as such” in The American Dream. Clearly, the study has its limitations—its belabored plot synopses, its undervaluing of the mythic dimensions of Albee’s characters, and its occasional lack of critical focus; but it is worthy of attention. It provides an intelligent, if somewhat eclectic, overview of twenty years of Albee’s work; and it allows us to see the continuity of the existential themes that underlie the plays. Despite its faults, Edward...