The Stonemason: A Play in Five Acts
It is fitting that Ecco Press, which reissued McCarthy's novels when most of the world was neglecting them, should publish a play that is still in search of a theater. But this story of deep trouble amidst four generations of a black family in Louisville, Kentucky, places McCarthy-arguably America's best living novelist-in the long tradition of novelists who have tried the dramatic form and failed to meet its elusive demands. There are some wonderful scenes, and obvious problems of stagecraft-such as cue lines for a god and impractical sets, including a real stone wall-are nothing a good director can't surmount. But a deeper flaw is that its conflicts are both overly transparent and insufficiently bodied forth in dramatic action. The main character, Ben, is wrong when he tells us that stonemasonry is man's first gift and oldest craft. Those in theater know there is an older one whose secrets are just as long, as hard, and as necessary to master. Recommended for comprehensive literature collections.Peter Josyph, New YorkCopyright 1994 Reed Business Information, Inc.--This text refers to theHardcoveredition.