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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 Further, it had been copyrighted as an unpublished work in 1946.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 Yet the copyright notes in that same edition say this: A Touch of the Poet Unpublished dramatic composition copyright © by Eugene O'Neill.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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