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| re: ‘Edward Albee’s Final Wish: Destroy My Unfinished Work,’ reports The New York Times | |
| Posted by: ryhog 06:58 pm EDT 07/04/17 | |
| In reply to: ‘Edward Albee’s Final Wish: Destroy My Unfinished Work,’ reports The New York Times - jesse21 05:55 pm EDT 07/04/17 | |
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| Interesting and well done piece. The Long Day's Journey example is not really analogous (it was a moratorium, not a destruction). The better example is More Stately Mansions, which Carlotta was to burn, but didn't. |
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| re: ‘Edward Albee’s Final Wish: Destroy My Unfinished Work,’ reports The New York Times | |
| Posted by: lordofspeech 08:59 pm EDT 07/04/17 | |
| In reply to: re: ‘Edward Albee’s Final Wish: Destroy My Unfinished Work,’ reports The New York Times - ryhog 06:58 pm EDT 07/04/17 | |
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| I think I was only recently reading how O'Neill did want some of his unfinished works destroyed (not Long Day's Journey). Or that he destroyed a lot near the end of his life...? It's nice that Albee left a little wiggle room for his executors...but I can certainly understand his concern. Half-drafts paraded under the auteur-ial hand of the latest "hot" directors, distorting what Albee might've really been going for. Horrors. |
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| re: ‘Edward Albee’s Final Wish: Destroy My Unfinished Work,’ reports The New York Times | |
| Posted by: AlanScott 09:14 pm EDT 07/04/17 | |
| In reply to: re: ‘Edward Albee’s Final Wish: Destroy My Unfinished Work,’ reports The New York Times - lordofspeech 08:59 pm EDT 07/04/17 | |
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| IIRC, O'Neill thought he had destroyed everything he had written for his unfinished cycle "A Tale of Possessors Self-Dispossessed." I can't recall the specifics but his plans for the cycle (in terms of how many plays it was to comprise) got bigger once or twice along the way when he working on it. Two of the plays, A Touch of the Poet and More Stately Mansions, managed to survive. Since he thought all copies had been destroyed, he may not have bothered putting any prohibition in his will on the publication and production of the plays. A long time ago, I knew more about this. Probably a search online would bring more info. Hughie was also to have been part of a cycle, to be known as "By Way of Obit.' He completed one other play in the cycle, but he destroyed it along with notes on some other plays planned for the cycle. I'm not sure if he thought he had destroyed Hughie. |
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| re: ‘Edward Albee’s Final Wish: Destroy My Unfinished Work,’ reports The New York Times | |
| Posted by: ryhog 10:18 pm EDT 07/04/17 | |
| In reply to: re: ‘Edward Albee’s Final Wish: Destroy My Unfinished Work,’ reports The New York Times - AlanScott 09:14 pm EDT 07/04/17 | |
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| The published (1964, much edited and revised) script has a preface by Donald Gallup (then curator of the O'Neill archives at Yale) and tells the whole story (at least from Yale's perspective). I won't repeat much of the details except that the Mansions (3rd revised) typescript was inadvertently sent to Yale when they were closing up the house in Marblehead. It had a leaf in it saying "Unfinished work. This script to be destroyed in case of my death! Eugene O'Neill." After his death, Carlotta put a 25 year restriction on everything Yale had but later (around when Journey and Poet were published) inquired about any other completed scripts other than Hughie that Yale had. They told her about Mansions and she asked for it. They sent it without the leaf about destroying it. Subsequently she authorized a Swedish translation and production (at the theatre where Journey premiered), and later decided to publish-but not authorize performance-of the script in English (which was the '64 book). [A couple other notes: They had burned up the 1st 2 plays in the cycle (Greed of the Meek and And Give Me Death) in '43. The cycle eventually had 11 plays planned, having been increased 5 times.] | |
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| re: ‘Edward Albee’s Final Wish: Destroy My Unfinished Work,’ reports The New York Times | |
| Posted by: AlanScott 01:41 am EDT 07/05/17 | |
| In reply to: re: ‘Edward Albee’s Final Wish: Destroy My Unfinished Work,’ reports The New York Times - ryhog 10:18 pm EDT 07/04/17 | |
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| And to move along with a bit more info on A Touch of the Poet, I first have to say that I'm glad I started my earlier post with IIRC. After your post and some searching online, I find that it doesn't seem that he thought A Touch of the Poet had been destroyed. For one thing, it seems that he offered it to the Theatre Guild in 1946, although nothing I read clarified whether he sent them a copy. But if he did, he would have had to try to have that copy destroyed as well. Further, it had been copyrighted as an unpublished work in 1946. Having said that, I do see things in older articles about the play that might have made me think that O'Neill had tried to destroy it. Although I wasn't around on March 30, 1957, to read that day's Times article on the Stockholm world premiere of the play, that article says that the play was "the second of three discovered since the playwright's death in 1953. All of the plays supposedly had been destroyed by the dramatist before he died." So even though I never read that article till today, perhaps that incorrect info had showed up in something that I did read. And while I was searching, I found a rather big and obvious error in Martha Gilman Bowers's introduction to the 2004 Yale University Press edition of More Stately Mansions and A Touch of the Poet. Bower writes, "There is no doubt that A Touch of the Poet is a complete play, as it was published during O'Neill's lifetime, in 1946." Yet the copyright notes in that same edition say this: A Touch of the Poet Unpublished dramatic composition copyright © by Eugene O'Neill. First published in 1957 by Yale University Press, copyright © by Carlotta Monterey O'Neill. That's the kind of thing that might destroy your faith in university presses, if you still have any left to destroy. |
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| re: ‘Edward Albee’s Final Wish: Destroy My Unfinished Work,’ reports The New York Times | |
| Posted by: ryhog 02:18 am EDT 07/05/17 | |
| In reply to: re: ‘Edward Albee’s Final Wish: Destroy My Unfinished Work,’ reports The New York Times - AlanScott 01:41 am EDT 07/05/17 | |
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| That also contradicts what Gallup wrote in '63 (written 1936, published 1957) [also Yale University Press]. He went on to say that, by '43, Poet was the only one he had "complet[ed] to his satisfaction" (saying re Mansions that he "had partly finished his revision of the third draft" before shifting gears away from the cycle to write Iceman, Journey, Hughie and Moon). I think Bowers may have just been sloppy. The rest of the chronology: 1st draft completed 9/8/38, 2nd 1/1/39, 3rd (first typed one) 1/20/39. He then added: "Further revisions and notes for rewriting were made in 1940 and 1941, and O'Neill was sufficiently satisfied with the play" such that when they burned the earlier drafts in '43, he kept the typed draft with the destroy at death notation. Re the Times article, assuming you want to believe Gallup, it is entirely possible they had what they would have considered a good source, Carlotta, who presumably for some period thought it had been destroyed. There is a single page of the typescript included in the '64 preface. It kinda shows why he might not have wanted anyone to see it. LOL On the one hand, I wish everything were extant. On the other, I shred stuff all the time. |
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| Oops. Correction to the above. Too late to edit. | |
| Posted by: AlanScott 02:03 am EDT 07/05/17 | |
| In reply to: re: ‘Edward Albee’s Final Wish: Destroy My Unfinished Work,’ reports The New York Times - AlanScott 01:41 am EDT 07/05/17 | |
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| Those copyright notes should have read: A Touch of the Poet Unpublished dramatic composition copyright © 1946 by Eugene O'Neill. First published in 1957 by Yale University Press, copyright © by Carlotta Monterey O'Neill. |
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| Author's wishes versus me own selfishness | |
| Posted by: bmc 09:43 pm EDT 07/04/17 | |
| In reply to: re: ‘Edward Albee’s Final Wish: Destroy My Unfinished Work,’ reports The New York Times - AlanScott 09:14 pm EDT 07/04/17 | |
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| I'm finishing reading howard Pollock's bio of Marc Blitzstein; His Sacco and Vansetti opera was unfinished at his death, Finished songs remain, there have been attempts by friends to finish the work, etc.,But I cant go down to Barnes and Noble and buy a CD of the opera; I like all of his music that I've heard, except for . oddly enough, the famous Cradle Will rock.I've got the recording with Jerry Orbach on order- maybe that will change my mind;......After he finished his big three novels, Henry James had one of those (Let's toss all the letters in the fireplace tea parties) and earlier he had written a novella The Aspern Papers, Later dramatized by Sir Michael Redgrave. that dealt with a similar situation. I suppose Albee's executors will go by the letter of the will, but if they can honestly want and find a loophole for publication, I WOULD NOT OBFECT(LIKE I HAVE ANY RIGHT TO OBJECT)Sorry my keyboard is misbehaving. | |
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