Word: saroyaned
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RAZZLE DAZZLE-William Saroyan- Harcourf, Brace...
...preface to one of these 16 short plays William Saroyan compares himself to George Bernard Shaw. The comparison is not altogether presumptuous. He shares with Shaw a fearless, sassy gaiety, and like Shaw he holds naturalism, heavyminded-ness and the theater in general in contempt. Both, in Saroyan's words, believe that the theater "all theater-should be fun. . . ." Whatever else they are, these plays and prefaces...
Among the books included in the exhibition are the best sellers: "The Epicure in Imperial Russia," "The White Cliffs," "The Flowering of New England," and "Saroyan's Fables." However, the literary content of the books was considered only as it related to the problems of typographic design and production...
...Saroyan is not at all orthodox about his procedure in playwriting. His flamboyant ego, his unreserved sentimentality and love for the people, have baffled the critics, who, at first, accused him of being a hoax. His ingenuous personality and his unashamed bravado puzzled the more mature and sophisticated onlookers. But now he is recognized as the leader of a one-man cult. He wants mood most of all in drama; plot, situation and character are all incidental to the creation of the proper feeling. A play, for him, must excite as music does, in a sweeping, comprehensive whole...
...playwriting is the better, for several years. It is a stimulating discussion but unlikely to affect, the trend of play-writing. There is a place for both the vers libre and the mechanical playwrights. Lillian Hellman's "Watch on the Rhine" is as moving a play as any by Saroyan, whether or not we are conscious of her careful plot manipulation. Tchekov realized that form or the lack of form is not everything when he has Treplev, in the last act of "The Sea-Gull," say, "I come more and more to the conviction that it is not a question...