LEADER 04334nam 2200685 a 450 001 9910812451603321 005 20200520144314.0 010 $a1-281-95956-1 010 $a9786611959562 010 $a0-226-14882-3 024 7 $a10.7208/9780226148823 035 $a(CKB)1000000000578649 035 $a(EBL)408260 035 $a(OCoLC)476228280 035 $a(SSID)ssj0000150264 035 $a(PQKBManifestationID)11176828 035 $a(PQKBTitleCode)TC0000150264 035 $a(PQKBWorkID)10280506 035 $a(PQKB)10129281 035 $a(StDuBDS)EDZ0000117477 035 $a(MiAaPQ)EBC408260 035 $a(DE-B1597)523474 035 $a(OCoLC)1058065871 035 $a(DE-B1597)9780226148823 035 $a(Au-PeEL)EBL408260 035 $a(CaPaEBR)ebr10266057 035 $a(CaONFJC)MIL195956 035 $a(EXLCZ)991000000000578649 100 $a20060915d2007 uy 0 101 0 $aeng 135 $aur|n|---||||| 181 $ctxt 182 $cc 183 $acr 200 10$aEugene O'Neill's America $edesire under democracy /$fJohn Patrick Diggins 205 $a1st ed. 210 $aChicago $cUniversity of Chicago Press$d2007 215 $a1 online resource (322 p.) 300 $aDescription based upon print version of record. 311 $a0-226-14880-7 320 $aIncludes bibliographical references (p. [267]-282) and index. 327 $aKnowers unknown to ourselves -- The misery of the misbegotten -- The playwright as thinker -- Anarchism: the politics of the "long loneliness" -- Beginnings of American history -- "Lust for possession" -- Possessed and self-dispossessed -- "Is you a nigger, nigger?" -- "The merest sham": women and marriage -- Religion and the death of death -- "The Greek dream in tragedy is the noblest ever" -- Waiting for hickey -- The theater as temple. 330 $aIn the face of seemingly relentless American optimism, Eugene O'Neill's plays reveal an America many would like to ignore, a place of seething resentments, aching desires, and family tragedy, where failure and disappointment are the norm and the American dream a chimera. Though derided by critics during his lifetime, his works resonated with audiences, won him the Nobel Prize and four Pulitzer, and continue to grip theatergoers today. Now noted historian John Patrick Diggins offers a masterly biography that both traces O'Neill's tumultuous life and explains the forceful ideas that form the heart of his unflinching works. Diggins paints a richly detailed portrait of the playwright's life, from his Irish roots and his early years at sea to his relationships with his troubled mother and brother. Here we see O'Neill as a young Greenwich Village radical, a ravenous autodidact who attempted to understand the disjunction between the sunny public face of American life and the rage that he knew was simmering beneath. According to Diggins, O'Neill mined this disjunction like no other American writer. His characters burn with longing for an idealized future composed of equal parts material success and individual freedom, but repeatedly they fall back to earth, pulled by the tendrils of family and the insatiability of desire. Drawing on thinkers from Emerson to Nietzsche, O'Neill viewed this endlessly frustrated desire as the problematic core of American democracy, simultaneously driving and undermining American ideals of progress, success, and individual freedom. Melding a penetrating assessment of O'Neill's works and thought with a sensitive re-creation of his life, Eugene O'Neill's America offers a striking new view of America's greatest playwright-and a new picture of American democracy itself. 606 $aDramatists, American$y20th century$vBiography 606 $aDramatists, American$y20th century$xFamily relationships 606 $aDramatists, American$y20th century$xPsychology 607 $aAmerica$xIn literature 615 0$aDramatists, American 615 0$aDramatists, American$xFamily relationships. 615 0$aDramatists, American$xPsychology. 676 $a812/.52 676 $aB 700 $aDiggins$b John P$0174338 801 0$bMiAaPQ 801 1$bMiAaPQ 801 2$bMiAaPQ 906 $aBOOK 912 $a9910812451603321 996 $aEugene O'Neill's America$94002263 997 $aUNINA