Product Description
This book was converted from its physical edition to the digital format by a community of volunteers. You may find it for free on the web. Purchase of the Kindle edition includes wireless delivery. ... Read more

Product Description
This reproduction was printed from a digital file created at the Library of Congress as part of an extensive scanning effort started with a generous donation from the Alfred P. Sloan Foundation.The Library is pleased to offer much of its public domain holdings free of charge online and at a modest price in this printed format.Seeing these older volumes from our collections rediscovered by new generations of readers renews our own passion for books and scholarship. ... Read more

Customer Reviews (4)

Melodrama and bathos swamp several otherwise powerful scenes
The first O'Neill play performed on Broadway (in 1920), "Beyond the Horizon" is actually the fifth full-length drama in O'Neill's career as a playwright. ("Bread and Butter,""Servitude," "The Personal Equation," and "Now I Ask You" all were completed before 1916, although none of them were performed during O'Neill's lifetime.)

A commercial success and winner of a Pulitzer Prize (the first of four for O'Neill), "Beyond the Horizon" is somewhat jarring to the modern ear in both theatric arrangement and thematic development; it shows a still-green O'Neill struggling to convey his characters' emotional depth and psychological torments in the not-quite-convincing framework of a melodramatic plot.

The problems start in the very first act, when Robert Mayo, a youth inclined to poetry and a life of idleness, is preparing to leave for an apprenticeship at sea with his uncle. In the matter of a few pages, Robert confesses his love for his brother Andrew's childhood sweetheart, Ruth;he casts aside the plans for his voyage and decides to live as a farmer--an occupation he despises; the love-struck couple agree to be married forthwith; and Andrew, in bitterness, assumes Robert's position on the ship and leaves the very next morning for a journey of several years. All in a evening's work. This abbreviated soap opera suffers from a lack of any attempt at dramatic preparation or character development; Ruth, in particular, pretty much walks onto the stage and ecstatically accepts Robert's out-of-the-blue marriage proposal. As O'Neill was to learn later in his career, it takes a much longer play to set up this sort of scenario.

Fortunately, the rest of the play is much better; it focuses on the deterioration of Robert and Ruth's hasty marriage, with Ruth regretting her decision and pining for Andrew's infrequent visits. In these two acts, O'Neill avoids impulsive, life-changing choices and more effectively shows slice-of-life scenes: Ruth's fights with her mother and her indolent husband, Andrew's exultant although brief return, the near-bankruptcy of the farm, and Robert's declining health. Although the play closes with a sentimentality bordering on bathos, these two acts herald the first triumph of one of America's great dramatists.

Provincial and predictable early work
BEYOND THE HORIZON was Eugene O'Neill's first full-length play. The tale of two siblings who take off on very different and unexpected paths in life, the play explores how fate and our own decisions can doom our lives. Robert and Andrew Mayo have grown up on a farm somewhere in the United States. Robert is the dreamer and intellectual of the two, a lifetime of frailty preventing him from working as a farmer, and he dreams of seeing the world and living in places beyond the small confines of his family's farm. Andrew, however, is a man of purely practical concerns who is happily following in his father's footsteps and taking care of the farm. As the play opens, Robert has just been offered as change to go to see with his merchant seaman uncle, an opportunity that would fulfill his wanderlust. However, a woman creates a conflict between the brothers and Andrew takes the trip while Robert stays on the farm. From here, the play opens to show how one's best-laid plans can be dashed by the unexpected, as both brothers lead lives of despair.

While BEYOND THE HORIZON won O'Neill the first of his four Pulitzer Prizes, it doesn't survive the test of time very well. He insists on spelling out everything for the audience, resulting in some of the most ridiculous and just plain unrealistic dialogue I have ever seen. Readers who grew up in the tradition left by Samuel Beckett and Harold Pinter will also find O'Neill's lengthly set design annoying, as in some parts he spends up to two pages laying out each and every detail instead of leaving it up to the director as is done nowadays. Finally, BEYOND THE HORIZON is rather provincial and has none of the refinement that readers today will have become used to. American theatre at this time lacked any figure to make it matter on the world stage, and while O'Neill was to become this figure with his later plays, this work shows him still very immature.

I believe BEYOND THE HORIZON is a work worth reading only if one has a particular interest in the evolution of American theatre or the works of Eugene O'Neill in general. Its poor writing makes it quite unentertaining.

A brilliantly emotional tragedy
Beyond the Horizon was O'Neill's first major full-length play and its release is considered a significant turning point in the history of American theater.Its main characters are two twentysomething brothers,Rob and Andy, who have both spent their lives on the family farm and havequite opposite dispositions: Andy is excruciatingly practical and hopes forlittle more in life than to take over the farm and make it successful;whereas Rob is something of a bookish dreamer who hopes to see what life islike "beyond the horizon."He gets this opportunity when hisuncle invites him to come along on a three year trip to South America andAsia, but the night before their departure, a woman with whom both Rob andAndy are in love professes her love for Rob, causing Rob to stay behind tomarry her while Andy, unable to bear the idea of living alongside the newcouple, takes Rob's place on the trip.The bulk of the play deals with thelong-term consequences of this one night in which the brothers ignoredtheir callings in life.

As is often the case in O'Neill's plays, thepremise is fairly simple and unoriginal and the development of the plot isrelatively predictable, but the intensity with which the characters aredeveloped is excellent and truly memorable.We see in Rob the same sort offutile hope that O'Neill would develop so well some years later in TheIceman Cometh, and the despair of the other characters is quite moving.At times, the pathos in the play can almost be over-the-top (and I imaginethat in live performances this might be something that the actors have tobe all the more careful to avoid), but O'Neill manages to avoid going intothe realm of melodrama and create very real, touching characters.

O'Neill would, of course, go on to write many other deeply emotional plays,a number of which are still better known than this one.Beyond the Horizonshows us many of the talents for which O'Neill is now universallyrecognized, and the almost-universal acclaim that it received upon its 1920premiere seems equally apt today.

Extremely thought provoking
Beyond the Horizon is the story of 2 very close brothers, Robert and Andrew, who choose opposite paths in life. Each unfortunately, chooses a path better suited for the other.The deeper meaning in this play is whathappens to a man's soul when he doesn't follow his dreams. ... Read more

Product Description
This digital document, covering the life and work of Eugene (Gladstone) O'Neill, is an entry from Contemporary Authors, a reference volume published by Thompson Gale. The length of the entry is 8694 words. The page length listed above is based on a typical 300-word page. Although the exact content of each entry from this volume can vary, typical entries include the following information:

• Place and date of birth and death (if deceased)
• Family members
• Education
• Professional associations and honors
• Employment
• Writings, including books and periodicals
• A description of the author's work
• References to further readings about the author

Product Description
This reproduction was printed from a digital file created at the Library of Congress as part of an extensive scanning effort started with a generous donation from the Alfred P. Sloan Foundation.The Library is pleased to offer much of its public domain holdings free of charge online and at a modest price in this printed format.Seeing these older volumes from our collections rediscovered by new generations of readers renews our own passion for books and scholarship. ... Read more

Customer Reviews (5)

The Emperor Jones
A very good play.Understanding the history at the time it was written helps for an understanding of the importance of the character.

From Croatia to Korea
Eugene O'Neill's classic play was originally produced on Broadway in 1920 with Charles S. Gilpin in the lead.It reappeared for 3 more Broadway productions.Although O'Neill himself did not embrace the label, "The Emperor Jones" seems a quintessential expressionist piece as the little formless fears, Jeff the gambler, the convicts and the auctioneer all seem to be projected from Jones' deteriorating inner emotions.The opening scene between Jones and Smithers, the Cockney trader, is powerful with the brutal dialogue & interplay between characters.The next 6 scenes all reflect Jones' inner state with the tremendous mechanism of the increasingly intense tom-tom drums driving him to the breaking point and his increasingly tattered clothing reflecting how he is being worn down.Demonstrating the expressionist technique, frequently at the conclusion of these scenes the forest seems to draw around Jones after he shoots his revolver at his illusion.Scenic designer Cleon Throckmorton broke new ground by using a plaster skydome in place of the traditional canvas cyclorama to enhance the outdoor visual effects, which would be a challenge to produce.The play climaxes offstage in Scene 8 as Jones is cornered and executed.The play shows us an island on the edge of civilization where local dictators can use muscle to loot the public treasury for personal gain as they create and evade their own laws.The sad universality of the piece is that 85 years after its first production, whether you call them Taliban, Castro or Saddam Hussein, we can still see places in the world where similar dramas of dictatorship are played with various ethnicities and geography.The savagery of O'Neill's Emperor Jones may seem different; but from Croatia to Korea, it still exists in many places.This is a play that still resonates thematically and dramatically.Enjoy!

Beyond the stereotypes, a still-powerful play
"Emperor Jones" is a significant entry in American theater history for a number of reasons. With its dreamlike sequences featuring scenes built entirely around monologues, the play is O'Neill's first foray into experimental theater, it was the first Broadway play featuring an African-American in the lead role, and it became a 1933 film featuring Paul Robeson. And when the New York Drama League initially refused to invite Gilpin to its annual awards dinner, O'Neill led a successful protest.

The story is simple: a Pullman porter, after a conviction for murder, escapes to a Caribbean island and becomes the ruler of the natives. Once the natives grow restless, the Emperor Jones takes flight through a haunted forest, only to be confronted by the ghosts of his own past (his murder victim, prison guard) and of African American history (slavery). Through each of the six middle scenes, which would be a challenge for any actor, we see Jones deteriorating mentally and physically. It all seems entirely implausible, but this short drama is not an exercise in naturalism; instead it is a dark fable prefiguring a later tradition of magic realism.

In spite of its place in African American cultural history, however, both the stage directions and the dialogue (as A. R. Gurney points out in another edition of this book) "seems nowadays to be badly stereotyped." This is somewhat of an understatement. In addition to the "Heart of Darkness"-inspired drumming of the natives and the monologues of the fleeing, scared-witless "emperor," O'Neill includes stage directions that make the reader wince, as when he describes the chief of the native soldiers is "a heavy-set, ape-faced old savage of the extreme African type, dressed only in a loin cloth."

These uncomfortable representations are set off only slightly by the play's only white character, who is a two-faced and greedy manipulator of the situation. Once you get past these considerable faults, typical of the societal attitudes of yesteryear, the play's power and originality are impressive.

Welcome to the Emperor's nightmare
"The Emperor Jones," by Eugene O'Neill, is a striking work by one of America's most significant dramatists. A bibliographic note in the Dover edition states that the play was first performed in 1920 and published in 1921. It's a one-act play in 8 scenes.

The play tells the story of Rufus Jones, a former Pullman porter who has become the monarch of a West Indian island. But as the play opens there is trouble in his empire.

This is a surreal, nightmarish character study, full of violent and disturbing images. There is some biting dialogue, as well as an intriguing exploration of tension between Black Christianity and Black "heathen" religion.

Jones is a memorable figure, powerful and tragic. O'Neill's stage directions are full of fascinating visual and audio touches--his mastery of the genre is quite evident. Ultimately, "Jones" is a haunting meditation on power, belief in the supernatural, and the seemingly inescapable pull of history.

Emperor Jones--One of O'Neill's Best
While psychological drama does not often achieve its goal, O'Neill gets it right with "The Emperor Jones."Even when reading the play, one develops a sense of inexorable dread as the native drum speeds up and the Emperor runs into one hallucination after another.All in all, a decent play, though I cannot give it five stars, since I really do not buy into the whole "Emperor" idea.It is the one thing O'Neill does not pull off. ... Read more

Customer Reviews (1)

A tour de force of the great playwright's life.
An excellent rendition of the life of Eugene O'Neill. I was mesmerized. Surprising that a play could hold me like it did. Hope to see it on stage some day. ... Read more

Product Description
Stricken with guilt and grief when his father, mother, and brother died in quick succession, young playwright Eugene O'Neill mourned deeply for two decades. This enlightening critical biography presents a remarkable new understanding of the playwright's life, work, and slow grieving. Stephen A. Black argues that O'Neill's writing was a form of self-psychoanalysis and that his plays reflect his psychological and artistic growth. Selected by Choice as an outstanding academic title for 2000 ... Read more

Customer Reviews (2)

O'Neill's long day's journey on Black's couch.
It has been nearly fifty years since Eugene O'Neill's death.Much hasbeen written about him since that time.In his new biography, StephenBlack insightfully analyzes the Pulitzer and Nobel Prize winning dramatistand his work.Black is an English professor with training as apsychoanalytic therapist.The "thesis" of his biography, Blackwrites, "is that O'Neill spent most of his writing life inmourning" (p. xvi).O'Neill, he contends, used playwriting as a meansof self-therapy.

Black's 543-page biography is filled with interestinginformation about his subject's troubled life.We learn, for instance,O'Neill was born in a hotel room in 1888, and died in a hotel room in 1953. In between, he lived "a life of earthly and psychic wandering"(p. 43).At the time of his birth, O'Neill's mother became addicted tomorphine, for which he blamed himself.As a mother, Ella O'Neill was"lonely" and "inadequate" (pp. 48, 51).O'Neill'sfather, an actor, was "revered," though "distant" (p.47).O'Neill's estranged daughter, Oona, married Charlie Chaplin when shewas 17.Chaplin was 54, and two month's younger than O'Neill.We learnthat O'Neill's life was plagued with, among other things (and the list islong), illness, depression, alcoholism, family tension, unhappy marriages,and one devastating death after another.Truly, it is a wonder O'Neillever found his way through the obstacles in his life to write four PulitzerPrize winning plays, and to win the Nobel Prize in literature in1936.

Black's book also contains plenty of perceptive commentary aboutO'Neill's plays.It ends with an impressive bibliography.Although Ioccasionally found O'Neill spending too much time on Black's couch in thispsychoanalytical biography, this is nevertheless a worthwhile book foranyone interested in the playwright or his writing.

G. Merritt

outstanding psychoanalytic interpretation
Stephen A. Black has assembled an extraordinary range of materials to provide the first comprehensive psychoanalysis of O'Neill. Others have offered fragmentary perspectives, or analyses based on a little reading inpsychoanalytic theory, but Black brings his experience as a trained analyst(as well as a literary scholar) to a through review of the historicaldocuments. It must have been harrowing work for him, but we all stand tobenefit from his having gone into the very mouth of a hellish psyche.(Hmmm... not so sure about that metaphor.) Anyway, it's a terrific book. ... Read more

Product Description
This volume of specially commissioned essays contains studies of O'Neill's life, his intellectual and creative forebears, and his relation to the theatrical world of his creative period, 1916-1942. Also included are descriptions of the O'Neill canon and its production history on stage and screen, and a series of essays on "special topics" related to the playwright. One of the essays speaks for those who are critical of O'Neill's work, and the volume concludes with an essay on O'Neill criticism containing a select bibliography of full-length studies of the playwright's work. ... Read more

Product Description
From one of America’s greatest playwrights, four of his finest short plays. Written between 1913 and 1917 and filled with moody, intense and fascinating characters entrapped by larger forces, they include Bound East for Cardiff, In The Zone, The Long Voyage Home and The Moon of the Caribbees.
... Read more

Customer Reviews (1)

The precocious mastery of O'Neill's Glencairn cycle
The four plays in this paperback were originally included in Eugene O'Neill's "The Moon of the Caribbees and Six Other Plays" (1919). This Dover edition omits "Ile," "The Rope," and "Where the Cross Is Made," and includes only the four one-act dramas set on the "tramp" steamer Glencairn. All four plays were performed in New York City between 1916 and 1918, and together they first brought O'Neill to critical attention. Although they do not share a storyline, one could easily imagine them staged together as interrelated sketches.

Set in the years leading up to the outbreak of World War I (with "In the Zone" taking place at the onset of hostilities), all four plays share common themes and characters. The only tragedy of the bunch is "Bound East for Cardiff," in which the crew of the Glencairn offer aid and encouragement to a wounded sailor who lies suffering from a horrible fall. We meet Driscoll (who is one of two characters in all four plays) as he tends to his dying friend.

While occasionally filled with tension, the remaining three plays show the far lighter side of life at sea. "In the Zone" depicts the crew's frayed nerves while their boat traverses an enemy sea filled with submarines. Smitty hides a mysterious black box and raises the suspicions of his jumpy crewmates--to unintentionally comic (although simultaneously melancholy) effect. In "The Long Voyage Home," four of the crew enjoy a shore leave in a dingy London bar, and Olson falls victim to a gang of local sharks. "The Moon of the Caribbees" sees Smitty, Driscoll, and company anchored off port in the tropics, where, defying the captain's orders, they sneak several native women (and quite of lot of rum) onto the ship.

These short, effective plays all display O'Neill's nascent mastery at depicting both sailors' vernacular and their camaraderie (and rivalry). The lack of intensity famous in O'Neill's later works is due more to the brevity of the one-act form rather than to his apprenticeship as a playwright, and one could argue that the Glencairn cycle comprise O'Neill's first major works. ... Read more

Product Description
Eugene O'Neill was the first important American playwright, according to Harold Bloom. This title analyzes O'Neill's Anna Christie, The Iceman Cometh, and Long Day's Journey Into Night.

This series is edited by Harold Bloom, Sterling Professor of the Humanities, Yale University; Henry W. and Albert A. Berg Professor of English, New York University Graduate School; preeminent literary critic of our time. Titles present the most important 20th-century criticism on major works from The Odyssey through modern literature reflecting a variety of schools of criticism. Texts also contain critical biographies, notes on the contributing critics, a chronology of the author's life, and an index, and an introductory essay by Bloom. ... Read more

Customer Reviews (2)

It is not fair to trade in obsolete editions
My interest in Eugene O'Neill has extended to researching his early life in Argentina. An article written by me on this topic was included in the 2007 edition of Bloom's Modern Critical Views. My order for a copy of this book (believing it to be currently available) was answered with an out of date 1987 (probably remaindered) edition. This represented an expensive failure for me. I have asked for it to be replaced.

Interesting and Helpful
I'm writing a thesis regarding the tragic mode in works ranging from Aueschylus' Oresteia to Miller's Death of a Salesman, works that include O'Neil's Mourning Becomes Electra. In using this book as a reference I havebeen able to create a thesis that is both informed and interesting. Greatbook... ... Read more

Product Description
"...essential to any understanding of...O'Neill if only because they demystify him." -Arthur Miller, The New York Times Book Review ... Read more