An excellent rendition of the life of Eugene O'Neill. I was mesmerized. Surprising that a play could hold me like it did. Hope to see it on stage some day.

This revised version of the Gelb's famous biography from the sixties is an incredible read. It traces the life of O'Neill from his early beginnings to his first Broadway play, Beyond the Horizon. One gets an in-depth view of his life with his parents and brother. Monte Cristo provides the modern reader with an enriched biographical background that really elucidates aspects of O'Neill's masterwork, Long Day's Journey Into Night. This biography is clearly written, thoughtful, provocative, and interesting. It's definitely one of the great literary biographies of an American writer.

Please. I am searching for a contact with Barbara VOGLINO; she has my same surname.I like to receive some help to contact her about our families.Any help would be appreciated. Excuse me for avoiding a review on her book.Thanks for your patience.

This is considered to be one of the finest overall summaries of the works of Eugene O'Neill, one of America's finest playwrights. I found it to be insightful, challenging, and very helpful in my readings of O'Neill's works. I highly recommend it.

this book helps scholars to understand the sources in greek tragedies that O'Neill drew upon for his own work. It covers achetypal figures such as Dionysus, Elecktra and others.

This book helps you dive into Eugene O'Neill's work and life, letting you inside him while he wrote his plays. A must have for any serious O'Neill fan.

The letters sent between O'Neill and his second wife reveal a much more personal view of life in the spotlight. It exposes the personal grit and scandal of their relationship as well as revealing a more accurate picture of Agnes Boulton. The detailed yet brief background of their lives lends greater understanding to the personal contents of the letters. Most of all, it offers a greater appreciation for the human heart when pulled between love for a companion and a passion for their work. Put down the fiction and pick up this book about a real relationship full of fight and love that engulfs and excites even the simplest parts of a mediocre life! A must read for O'Neill fans and newcomers alike!

Oneill, death death death, this is rereleased in vintage 1958,
mourning becomes electra , strange interlude, required reading
for all playwrights of our era.

Nobel winner, great thinker, and great playwrite. After one grows accustomed to the dialect, DESIRE is a great work of potent, thought-provoking content. Highly recommended.

Each of the three plays in this volume are beautiful in their own way, with a poignant message that you'll be the better for hearing. O'Neill's genius is breathtaking and sometimes I wonder how he does it. Out of all his plays, there's not a stinker in the bunch.

I haven't actually read a play since college and I picked this up because I am going to see the Broadway production of "Long Day's Journey Into Night", starring Vanessa Redgrave and Brian Dennhey,and I always find that I appreciate shows like that more if I am familiar with the play itself. It was an enjoyable genre change for me!

What makes this play particularly interesting is the autobiographical nature of the plot (so disturbingly autobiographical, in fact, that O'Neill would not allow its publication and production until after his death!). O'Neill dedicated the play to his wife, basically stating that writing this was his way of coming to grips with his own past and the "4 haunted Tryrones" of his life. I imagine that when this first appeared in the theaters in the 1950s, it struck a sensitive and somewhat controversial chord amongst the public since issues such as drug addiction and alcoholism were not common topics in popular entertainment at the time. I also enjoyed all the literary references to the likes of Shakespeare, Baudelaire and Swineburne (and so forth!). It made me want to acquaint myself with such literary talents once again!

This is another example of a piece of literature that reaches across the decades with timeless themes such as familial love, loyalty, jealousy, guilt and betrayal, as well as depression, addiction and greed. While I pitied and even despised some of the qualities I saw in these characters, I couldn't help empathizing with Mary's nervous addiction as well as James' feeling of disappointment in his past failures. In other words, these characters are all so human, that I couldn't help being drawn into the realistic pathos of their lives.

If one needs the ultimate example of a classic American play, I would have to say the play about the most un-classic, untypical (or is it?) American family...Eugene O'Neill's "Long Days Journey Into Night." Set in the chlostrophobic New England summer house of the Tyrone's, and spanning over the course of one day, the Tyrone family--the stingy, retired actor James, the lonely opium addicted wife Mary, drunken Jamie, and sensitive, ill Edmund--avoids, denys, confronts and retreats from all their demons, until it is finally night, and they no longer can.

Depressing, huh? Well, of course it is...but within it is something so powerful, so strangely beautiful, that the reader (or viewer) is enthralled. One sees seemingly strong James, ashamed of himself for selling out his acting abilities for financial security. Mary, lonely from James' years of touring, has turned to an opium addiction that she can not seem to confront. Jamie, from hate of his father's stinginess and his own self-blame, loses himself in alcohol and whores. And sweet, artistic, tubulcular Edmund (O'Neill's alter ego) plays witness in the deteration of his family's web of pain, denial and lies. All they want is for morning to come, another day to let the fog come in around them so they can forget again.

In a way, isn't that what we all want to do sometimes? Just forget what's going on around us, even for a while. I would recommend this play as absolutly essential to read--for the fan of the theatre, literature, or a layman. Anyone can relate to the pure, raw emotion and guilt O'Neill conveys. Buy it now, you'll thank me later.

Long Day's Journey into Night is the play in which Eugene O'Neill, as he says in the dedication, had to "face [his] dead at last" by writing about the tragic dysfunctions of James, Mary, Jamie, and Edmund Tyrone, characters based respectively on O'Neill's father, mother, and brother, and O'Neill himself. It is set entirely at the O'Neill residence and takes place over the course of the day on which the family doctor confirms that 23 year-old Edmund has tuberculosis and must go to a sanatorium. There is relatively little action in the play aside from that; most of the dialogue relates to the other members of the Tyrone family facing the various problems that haunt them every day of their lives: Mary is addicted to morphine; Jamie is an alcoholic and at 33 seems unlikely to amount to anything; and James also has an alcohol problem but more importantly is still bitter about his childhood, which was cut short when he was obliged to go to work at a machine shop at the age of 10 because of the departure of his father.

The whole Tyrone family is in a state of despair, and it's hard to think of an author better at capturing despair than O'Neill (in no small part, one suspects, because he came of age in the sort of environment depicted in this play). O'Neill was certainly bitter about his past, but, importantly, he doesn't lose perspective. Although the way the Tyrones treat each other ranges from neutral to downright cruel, O'Neill does a splendid job of balancing this against the fact that they all love each other deeply and feel very unnerved whenever they realize that they're treating each other unfairly. Despite all the problems he faced as a young adult, O'Neill always viewed his family with a good deal of love and reverence, and that comes through in the play. As Mary puts it, "None of us can help the things life has done to us. They're done before you realize it, and once they're done they make you do other things until at last everything comes between you and what you'd like to be, and you've lost your true self forever." The tragedy of Long Day's Journey into Night lies in the fact that these great individuals have lost their true selves due to the various demons that haunt their lives.

Some of O'Neill's works could reasonably be criticized for featuring relatively one-dimensional characters and formulaic plots. In the case of Long Day's Journey, though, because O'Neill was able to rely on his own experiences, all four main characters are exceptionally deep and balanced, and the plot is distinctly unpredictable. Though I've very much enjoyed all the O'Neill plays I've read, it seems that in Long Day's Journey he finally put together all his talents and produced his crowning achievement.

The Ice Man Cometh was the first play I read of Eugene O Neil and I was throughly disappointed. The play is incredibly slow and lacks action or movement. A synopsis of the play is simple, a group of men, all "washed up" sit around in a bar and live on their "pipe dreams" (you'll hear that word repeated over and over, in other words their dreams for tomorrow that will never come true, or their reworking of the past, in order to provide them with pleasant memories)till Hickey (a salesman) comes along and attempts to save them all. In the first few pages, you'll learn everyone's past, which are very stereotypical and made to order, and their pipe dreams. Leaving the remainder of act 1 a waste of repetition. The greatest points of play come some point after Hickey has arrived and the characters are on edge. Here O' Neil's dramatic tension can be marveled at. The end of the play is a surprise, and is well worth the short fourth act. The Iceman Cometh is a nihilistic work that plays on basic assumptions --- the things being said here are known and perhaps only illustrated. It took me two weeks to finish this play and in between act two and three I dreaded reading more. After completing my reading, I have a much better perspective on the work and only wish O' Neil would have cut a lot of the unnecessary dialogue. I don't know whether to recommend this work or not. The play seems a work of its time.

In his play, Eugene O'Neill describes Harry Hope's bar and the depair among its customers during the early part of the 20th century. In the bar you meet tons of characters who have dreams but have no motivations to achieve them. So instead they drink and drink and along with their booze goes their ambitions. So as Harry's birthday get closer all the bar flies anxiously await the arrival of their pal, Hickey. But with him comes a surprize. Hickey brings with him a new way of life and it is up to the customers whether or not they accept his theory for obtaining peace. This is a great play with a interesting ending. Should be read by all.

O'Neill's finest drama, The Iceman Cometh, is a compelling tale of desolation. The play centers around its characters hope for a different and more fulfilling life. Driven to hide from society and anathetize their problems with alchohol and pipe dreams, deluding themselves into thinking their lives have a psuedo-promise for a vague future imporvement; the characters converge in Harry Hope's squalid bar in New York City's meat-packing district. There, they live a past-obsessed life based incongrously on a fantasy future. When Hickey, an old friend who comes to the bar on periodic binges, comes and forces the others to confront their pipe dreams, we learn the value of sustaining illusions to those whose lives are so desolate that they have nothing else to live for. The Iceman Cometh is a classic of the American theater and I wholeheartedly reccomend it to everyone.