Brecht:
Fowlie, Wallace
ciency leaves his superiors quite dum- action unfolds) sweeps through all man- high seriousness and adopting a humor- founded. A typically humorless bureau- ner of social rot in...
...sion the Army gave me...
...A random example: BRECST: human beings, a problem today closely "I hate you...
...different situations, times and places, with action and description placed not around the talking but rather fitted into Brecht on stage those old cracks, the "he said-she said" portions...
...The book is a complete account of London, Paris, Barcelona, San Juan and the playwright's life, beginning with his An fnrerpretalion 01 the Message of the also the U.S...
...committed ideal...
...in satisfying the producers, is a life constantly changing its focus, its cities, its friends, its projects...
...To the writing of Vargas Llosa thereby turning novelistic this study he has brought a German's procedure literally inside-out...
...For Southern Cone...
...ciency leaves his superiors quite dum- action unfolds) sweeps through all man- high seriousness and adopting a humorfounded...
...Vol ker stresses, and rightfully so, like a Chink...
...Hopkins University, spent seven months his self, of his self-realization...
...academics in 1974 and 1975 operating a fork-lift in a reader finds it impossible to answer this have made forays into the workplace Baltimore factory...
...A life spent in the lence of the underworld still appears lonesco who sees in Brecht's art a sterile theater as playwright and director, with today on university stages...
...His panoramic masterpiece, foreshadowing of the theater of the ab- FORTRESS PRESS 2900 Queen Lane Conversation in the Cathedral (the latter surd, and especially in the problem it Philadelphia PA 19129 is not a temple but a bar where the basic exposes of communication between 8 June /979: 347 Brecht's relationship with his age and and audience should be severed, and he Volker is not a literary critic and for an preeminently with Communism...
...In- political upheavals from the time of ternational, Mario Vargas Llosa is a World War I to the post-World War II Peruvian cosmopolite who has lived in years...
...and, the Old...
...In Eric Bentley and David Grossvogel...
...Pochita throws a Klaus Volker lonesco...
...Brecht's many ac- This biography of a man is also a min, Arnold Schoenberg, Peter Lorre, tivities in the theater are fully related, and chronicle of the productions of his plays, Aldous Huxley, among others...
...Klaus Volker, is co-editor of the Some of those in-between descriptions complete works of Bertolt Brecht, and eventually become full-length para- has served as a director of plays in Gergraphs that summarize entire scenes- many and Switzerland...
...knowledge of his own country and its Currently the president of P.E.N...
...Together with (among student days in Augsburg and Munich Be ble for today s Worka others) Garth Marquez, Cortazar and (somewhat reminiscent of Villon's life in Paris), with tavern drinking and ani- Jose Miguez Bonino Puig, he is one of a generation of Latin American novelists now garnering criti- mated discussions...
...reader's mind, the most persistent con- Robert Howard Unfortunately, it shows...
...his skill as play director...
...Volker, we WORKING FOR CAPITALISM a stranger to the social science literature have the sense of a personality changing Richard M. Pfeffer on work, I would write up my work exalso in the light of changing circum- perience before I allowed myself to read stances...
...Because of these The professor's radical soap opera inevitable changes going on, which are faithfully narrated by Mr...
...Is it an austere devo- THE PROBLEMS with Working for and unoriginal book which has not been tion to Communism revealed in the Capitalism begin with the Prologue...
...The entire foreign sentiment (see New York Times, privates, and soldiers' payments for story is told through an artful combina- February 15...
...ous, ribald tone...
...There apply his principal dramatic theory by mental and manual labor in our society is the "young movement type," the "not which he hoped to create a new kind of and as a result has acquired a "new un- particularly progressive woman," the theater In English, this is usually called derstanding" of how society functions...
...catapulted to notoriety when, back in murders his best friend: an episode urges each of us to come to grips with Lima, some 1000 copies of Time of the faintly recalling Verlaine's shooting of the others vdpl fare Hero-his first novel, set in a military Rimbaud...
...his rela- and sells food to the soldiers, there is and theatrical career will be recognized tionships with some of the celebrated inevitably an impulse of sympathy on the by American readers, but those friends figures of the day: Erwin Piscator, part of the audience toward the leading and associates who are known here form Thomas Mann, Charles Laughton, character...
...and continuing with Bonino challenges all Christians to face file down-to-earth questions of cal kudos throughout the New World and his early sense of a writer's vocation and .' orld peace...
...participant-observation...
...That such an idea might be spout neat one-liners which announce the the audience are able to identify with considered new is curious...
...Columbia University Press, $5.95, 382pp...
...equal Opportunity...
...There is not cerns the two drives that help shape this an idea or argument in this disappointing man's personality...
...A younger Vargas Llosa was his play of 1918, Baal, in which the hero social justice His eloquent plea rightly assumes tnat the reality of the Gospel...
...It never worked completely...
...But there were only a few Soldier, to his last play, Turandot, part of history...
...This opera on the vio- from the two extreme views of Eugene cuse the biographer...
...A typically humorless bureau- ner of social rot in the Peruvian 1950s...
...This enhances is the fact that, is spite of his intense he then expounds with generous use of the enjoyment of the audience and awareness of all that separates him from italics and quasi-Marxist buzz words, sharpens the skills of the actors...
...pillow at him...
...The translation into contempodeath of the Novel, Vargas Llosa further tain Pantoja sniffs out corruption in high rary American by Christ and Kolovakos develops his own third-person device- places, but it also presents something of is first-rate-one of the better renderings the intermixing of dialogue from totally a break, Vargas Llosa here shedding his of modern South American prose fiction...
...each of his plays is analyzed either with a constantly shifting background of The biography of Volker revives the briefly or at some length...
...even more so lessons Pfeffer has learned and on which characters on the stage...
...Seabury, $14.95, 412 pp...
...But these cardboard characters Commonweal: 348...
...made more clearly and cogently by Marxist didacticism of so many of his A college professor and graduate of someone else...
...In its final estimate, Bertolt Brecht does not emerge from this laboration with Kurt Weill, lasted a year the book does not take a view different biography, I would not necessarily ac- in Berlin in 1928...
...This In itself, this is not so unusual...
...an impressive repertory: Walter BenjaElisabeth Bergner...
...The plot is funny crat oblivious to the humor of his role, in Complementing his career as novelist of enough, but the real laughs come from the end Pantaleon appears more com- Peru's armed forces, Vargas Llosa re- iVargas Llosa's variegated linguistic plex, a kind of foolish hero or tragic fool.cently spoke out against the ruling mili- registers -ranging from the earthily colThough easy and amusing from page tary regime, criticizing its huge arms loquial to the deadpan-bureaucratic...
...I never thought I'd get ahead with the mis- THE AUTHOR of this biography, Mr...
...anything specifically about work in Of all the questions that rise up in a America...
...The strongest sites: Munich, Berlin, London, Den- moving story of a gifted man who from impression the book gives us of Brecht is mark, Stockholm, Finland, Hollywood, his earliest poem, Legend of the Dead the man's full consciousness of being a New York...
...cerning a new kind of playwriting...
...plays, or is it in the quest for his own kind "so-called elite universities" decided to Pfeffer, a political scientist at Johns of theater which would be the seeking of spend his sabbatical working in a factory...
...Vargas Llosa has even achieved "aspirations" (marvelous tion of dry military dispatches, juicy per- warned against the danger of war with euphemism) being entered into ledger sonal letters, verbose radio rhetoric, and Chile-not a remote eventuality, given books under the guise of laundry exlurid sensationalist news reports (with the highly-charged, militarized atmos- penses (laundered money, literally...
...campy headlines about "BLOOD, PAS- phere now hanging over the reactionary After reading Special Service, that PenSION AND BASE INSTINCTS...
...Instead of a fascinatquestion from the abundant data pro- for years, usually calling it ing insider's view of class relations in a vided by Klaus Volker...
...The circum- ideological theater, and of Kenneth the endless complications involved in at- stances surrounding the various produc- Tynan who sees in Brecht a socially tracting a public, in placating the actors, tions are described in this book, but Mr...
...his theories con- stage...
...However, particular workplace, he has written a I imagine the greatest disappointment this academic, we are told, has "vio- Marxist soap opera, rife with stock for Brecht himself was his failure to lated" the systematic separation between stereotypes and banal moralizing...
...The used every device possible to obstruct assessment of the plays one would have personal dramas are there also: his wives, any identification with characters on the to go to the writings of Martin Esslin, children and mistresses...
...Brecht workers and their daily lives, the author just in case the reader didn't catch it the believed that this alliance between actor decides: ". . . Although I was essentially first time...
...Panta, don't talk Translated by John Nowell Mr...
...to page, Captain Pantoja is no pop- purchases, its closing down of opposition Here we see "undersigned" colonels realist puff job-no "straight" third- or media, its tendency to whip up anti- coolly tabulating the sex needs of buck first-person narratives here...
...Themes of Rimbaud are also s3 95 paperback academy he had once attended-were audible in his play of 1923, In the Jungle A1 bookstores or from the publisher burned in public ceremony at that very of Cities, an important text in its school...
...I'm just happy, girl . . . " Panta is opening and closing his arms, Wallace Fowlie squatting and jumping...
...the Mother Courage, for example, that Only a small percentage of the many very uneven literary achievements of the chronicle of a sutler who follows an army names of people in Brecht's personal life plays...
...Traditionally, in "America's fundamental problem is rank-and-filer" (among others...
...tagonese term "Specialist" seems oddly those doomsayers who proclaim the As in the author's earlier books, Cap- jocose...
...notable theatrical successes...
...The wanted to dramatize history and man's If a clear picture of the personality of Threepenny Opera, a work done in col- social responsibility...
...savvy worker," and the "scrappy the "alienation effect...
...Why don't you . A BIOCRAPSY associated with the plays of Beckett and, please me...
...They successfully acted plays, the members of capitalism...
Vol. 106 • June 1979 • No. 11
