num_pages: 282
description: Editor Miller bravely asserts, "As a poet of the theater, [Odets] has no peer. His body of work should rank near O'Neill's, and with those of Williams and Miller, in the forefront of American drama." One may not fully agree with this assessment, but it would take a heartless critic or one still repeating the judgments of an earlier age not to admit that Clifford Odets has had far less than his share of academic critical objectivity directed at his output over the years. Indeed, the editor claims rightly that theater in general is given short shrift in the schools; and both points are evidenced by the fact that this book's introduction is both extremely thorough and extremely short. This new compilation ought to do a great deal to redress prior wrongs; it appears to be the most inclusive volume to date on the theater of Clifford Odets, containing as it does a superbly balanced assortment of original newspaper and magazine reviews of Odets's major plays, along with an equally balanced assemblage of essays on those plays, either culled and reprinted from earlier sources or especially commissioned for this anthology. There are also interviews with Odets himself. The introduction, as with other titles in this series, is in effect an annotated bibliography. Doing much to free appraisal of Odets from the propagandistic context of the '30s, this eminently useful text belongs in every serious theater collection.-J. M. Ditsky, University of Windsor
language: English
title: Critical Essays on Clifford Odets
titlecomplete: Critical Essays on Clifford Odets (Critical Essays on American Literature)
publisher: G K Hall