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GASTRIC POLYPOSIS.
Review Author(s): Thomas F. Marshall Review by: Thomas F. Marshall Source: American Literature, Vol. 53, No. 3 (Nov., 1981), pp. 539-541 Published by: Duke University Press Stable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/2926258 Accessed: 27-06-2016 04:56 UTC Your use of the JSTOR archive indicates your acceptance of the Terms & Conditions of Use, available at http://about.jstor.org/terms
JSTOR is a not-for-profit service that helps scholars, researchers, and students discover, use, and build upon a wide range of content in a trusted digital archive. We use information technology and tools to increase productivity and facilitate new forms of scholarship. For more information about JSTOR, please contact [email protected].
Duke University Press is collaborating with JSTOR to digitize, preserve and extend access to American Literature
This content downloaded from 128.197.26.12 on Mon, 27 Jun 2016 04:56:02 UTC All use subject to http://about.jstor.org/terms
This content downloaded from 128.197.26.12 on Mon, 27 Jun 2016 04:56:02 UTC All use subject to http://about.jstor.org/terms
540 American Literature
viable posture in a realm of fragmentation and chaos. It is, in the words of the author, "a confrontation with the Inferno." And it is the first movement of the pendulum.
The second movement, "Images of Creation," embodies the tensions which develop from the clash between a lingering hope and an enveloping hopelessness by contrasting Wilder's Our Town with plays by Williams, Albee, and O'Neill. Wilder's popular play stresses the connection to a meaningful purpose through the medium of a ritual related to time and space; by contrast, the later plays of O'Neill portray a human condition in which loss of meaning has grown from a distorted view of this past. Here, and in Williams and Miller, the connection has been broken by inescapable personal entanglements and meaningless repetition. Their accepted view that ritual is nonproductive, and that God is dead accents the belief that we have lost our faith in each other, and often in ourselves. Life then becomes a game in which we assume masks in order to recover a
meaning and a purpose; or we dream, in an alcoholic haze, of a future which ends in nightmare. The result, in either case, is that life becomes absurd or grotesque. But, in the midst of this litany of despair, radical theatre groups have stressed involvement and participation, both on and off the stage. And in this, we come full-circle back to ritual, on however different a plane. If it is true that the quest of modern man is a recovery or discovery of whatever connections exist, then aesthetic and religious considerations seem to have merged again as they did in the days of the Greeks.
The image of man's experience as a kind of purgatory occupies the third section of the book, and is tied to the work of Albee and Beckett. Role playing, not realistic presentation, is Beckett's goal, and the question he asks is "of what drama, if any, is one a part?" In an attempt to escape what appears to be an impersonal and indifferent universe, the actors wait listlessly for some connection to something. They wish to "become," but they are powerless to do more than exist, not knowing for what
reason or for whom. This state of stasis is shared by Albee's characters, but these at least know that what they face is nothingness, a lack of love, death. They encounter stark terror, but more frequently they experience a purgation, an arrival at some kind of peace, however brief. And in this facing of the presence of death, they dramatize the action of becoming.
In our century's drama, there is very little of the Aristotelian beginning or ending. There is only middle. And the dominant action is found in the
act of waiting-for Lefty, for Godot, for the gentleman caller, for some kind of redemption or redeemer. The waiting, in the absence of any firm
This content downloaded from 128.197.26.12 on Mon, 27 Jun 2016 04:56:02 UTC All use subject to http://about.jstor.org/terms
Book
Reviews
541
belief, becomes an end in itself. And the attainment of the still point on the pendulum becomes an act of creation, a function of becoming. In Mr. Vos's view, we have reached that point.
While the nature of this study precludes any elaborate analyses of the plays cited, the insights are challenging and the arguments thoughtprovoking. Basically, these lie within the history of ideas. Ideas, of course, are not a synonym for drama; for, if this were so, Bertrand Russell would
be compared to Shakespeare. Nevertheless, since the very texture of drama is made of one's own view of the human condition, the imaginative attention to the specifics of a large number of plays, and a view of them from
an unfamiliar angle provides us with a useful and welcome book of theory. Upperco, Maryland. THOMAS F. MARSHALL.
MARQUESAN ENCOUNTERS: Melville and the Meaning of Civilization. By
T. Walter Herbert, Jr. Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard Univ. Press. I980. 237 PP. $I5.00.
Professor Herbert's book offers three "exemplary encounters" between nineteenth-century Americans and Marquesan islanders. Captain David
Porter, who "took possession of the Marquesas Islands in I8I3" (P. 79) as a tangent to his activities in the Pacific during the War of I8I2; William Alexander, leader of a Protestant mission to convert the Marquesans in I833; and Herman Melville, sailor and ship-jumper, all wrote accounts of their island experiences which Herbert examines for insights into "the meaning of civilization." Porter's book, as Herbert reads it, gives us "civilization" as the "Enlightenment Man" understood it; Alexander's presents the "Calvinist" idea of "civilization"; while Melville's Typee projects the idea of "civilization" as the type Herbert calls the "beachcomber" might conceive it.
There are a number of problems with all this. The "beachcomber," for example, is obviously a different order typological construct than the "Enlightenment Man," or the "Calvinist," and it is never apparent that Herbert knows his types are constructs, that they are extrapolated from discourse rather than somehow merely "given" in "history." These particular "encounters" are "exemplary," we are told, "because those who acted in them were determined to see them as exemplary," and because they are here placed "in an arena where they are compelled to interact"
(P. 23). This, like the arrangement of the material not in chronological order, but as a "dramatic trilogy" (pp. 2I-22), as "three circles of light upon the darkness of a vast social experience" (p. 22), is far more resonant than clear.
This content downloaded from 128.197.26.12 on Mon, 27 Jun 2016 04:56:02 UTC All use subject to http://about.jstor.org/terms
JSTOR is a not-for-profit service that helps scholars, researchers, and students discover, use, and build upon a wide range of content in a trusted digital archive. We use information technology and tools to increase productivity and facilitate new forms of scholarship. For more information about JSTOR, please contact [email protected].
Duke University Press is collaborating with JSTOR to digitize, preserve and extend access to American Literature
This content downloaded from 128.197.26.12 on Mon, 27 Jun 2016 04:56:02 UTC All use subject to http://about.jstor.org/terms
This content downloaded from 128.197.26.12 on Mon, 27 Jun 2016 04:56:02 UTC All use subject to http://about.jstor.org/terms
540 American Literature
viable posture in a realm of fragmentation and chaos. It is, in the words of the author, "a confrontation with the Inferno." And it is the first movement of the pendulum.
The second movement, "Images of Creation," embodies the tensions which develop from the clash between a lingering hope and an enveloping hopelessness by contrasting Wilder's Our Town with plays by Williams, Albee, and O'Neill. Wilder's popular play stresses the connection to a meaningful purpose through the medium of a ritual related to time and space; by contrast, the later plays of O'Neill portray a human condition in which loss of meaning has grown from a distorted view of this past. Here, and in Williams and Miller, the connection has been broken by inescapable personal entanglements and meaningless repetition. Their accepted view that ritual is nonproductive, and that God is dead accents the belief that we have lost our faith in each other, and often in ourselves. Life then becomes a game in which we assume masks in order to recover a
meaning and a purpose; or we dream, in an alcoholic haze, of a future which ends in nightmare. The result, in either case, is that life becomes absurd or grotesque. But, in the midst of this litany of despair, radical theatre groups have stressed involvement and participation, both on and off the stage. And in this, we come full-circle back to ritual, on however different a plane. If it is true that the quest of modern man is a recovery or discovery of whatever connections exist, then aesthetic and religious considerations seem to have merged again as they did in the days of the Greeks.
The image of man's experience as a kind of purgatory occupies the third section of the book, and is tied to the work of Albee and Beckett. Role playing, not realistic presentation, is Beckett's goal, and the question he asks is "of what drama, if any, is one a part?" In an attempt to escape what appears to be an impersonal and indifferent universe, the actors wait listlessly for some connection to something. They wish to "become," but they are powerless to do more than exist, not knowing for what
reason or for whom. This state of stasis is shared by Albee's characters, but these at least know that what they face is nothingness, a lack of love, death. They encounter stark terror, but more frequently they experience a purgation, an arrival at some kind of peace, however brief. And in this facing of the presence of death, they dramatize the action of becoming.
In our century's drama, there is very little of the Aristotelian beginning or ending. There is only middle. And the dominant action is found in the
act of waiting-for Lefty, for Godot, for the gentleman caller, for some kind of redemption or redeemer. The waiting, in the absence of any firm
This content downloaded from 128.197.26.12 on Mon, 27 Jun 2016 04:56:02 UTC All use subject to http://about.jstor.org/terms
Book
Reviews
541
belief, becomes an end in itself. And the attainment of the still point on the pendulum becomes an act of creation, a function of becoming. In Mr. Vos's view, we have reached that point.
While the nature of this study precludes any elaborate analyses of the plays cited, the insights are challenging and the arguments thoughtprovoking. Basically, these lie within the history of ideas. Ideas, of course, are not a synonym for drama; for, if this were so, Bertrand Russell would
be compared to Shakespeare. Nevertheless, since the very texture of drama is made of one's own view of the human condition, the imaginative attention to the specifics of a large number of plays, and a view of them from
an unfamiliar angle provides us with a useful and welcome book of theory. Upperco, Maryland. THOMAS F. MARSHALL.
MARQUESAN ENCOUNTERS: Melville and the Meaning of Civilization. By
T. Walter Herbert, Jr. Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard Univ. Press. I980. 237 PP. $I5.00.
Professor Herbert's book offers three "exemplary encounters" between nineteenth-century Americans and Marquesan islanders. Captain David
Porter, who "took possession of the Marquesas Islands in I8I3" (P. 79) as a tangent to his activities in the Pacific during the War of I8I2; William Alexander, leader of a Protestant mission to convert the Marquesans in I833; and Herman Melville, sailor and ship-jumper, all wrote accounts of their island experiences which Herbert examines for insights into "the meaning of civilization." Porter's book, as Herbert reads it, gives us "civilization" as the "Enlightenment Man" understood it; Alexander's presents the "Calvinist" idea of "civilization"; while Melville's Typee projects the idea of "civilization" as the type Herbert calls the "beachcomber" might conceive it.
There are a number of problems with all this. The "beachcomber," for example, is obviously a different order typological construct than the "Enlightenment Man," or the "Calvinist," and it is never apparent that Herbert knows his types are constructs, that they are extrapolated from discourse rather than somehow merely "given" in "history." These particular "encounters" are "exemplary," we are told, "because those who acted in them were determined to see them as exemplary," and because they are here placed "in an arena where they are compelled to interact"
(P. 23). This, like the arrangement of the material not in chronological order, but as a "dramatic trilogy" (pp. 2I-22), as "three circles of light upon the darkness of a vast social experience" (p. 22), is far more resonant than clear.
This content downloaded from 128.197.26.12 on Mon, 27 Jun 2016 04:56:02 UTC All use subject to http://about.jstor.org/terms