"Pillowman", Form and Tradition

Author(s): Robert L. King

Source: The North American Review , May - Aug., 2005, Vol. 290, No. 3/4, Annual
Summer Fiction Double Issue (May - Aug., 2005), pp. 78-83
Published by: University of Northern Iowa

Stable URL: https://www.jstor.org/stable/25127415

JSTOR is a not-for-profit service that helps scholars, researchers, and students discover, use, and build upon a wide
range of content in a trusted digital archive. We use information technology and tools to increase productivity and
facilitate new forms of scholarship. For more information about JSTOR, please contact support@jstor.org.

Your use of the JSTOR archive indicates your acceptance of the Terms & Conditions of Use, available at
https://about.jstor.org/terms

is collaborating with JSTOR to digitize, preserve and extend access to The North American
Review

This content downloaded from

222.20.193.117 on Tue, 19 Sep 2023 19:03:46 +00:00
All use subject to https://about.jstor.org/terms
 N A R

Pillowman, Form and Tradition

ROBERT L KING

The stories in Pillowman have wider That story, the first one rendered in father showered nothing but love,
consequences than those in earlier plays Katurian's style, works a dark variation on kindness, warmth, all that stuff. He
of its author, Martin McDonagh, or of "The Pied Piper of Hamelin," bleak had his own little room in a big
his contemporary Irishman, Conor enough in the original. In Katurian's ver house in the middle of a pretty
McPherson. They have a dramatic life sion, the piper intended to kill the children forest.
that endures far beyond any moral tag orall along, brought the rats with him and The little boy's parents encourage his
conclusive meaning. In their form, they crippled the surviving boy beforehand by"creativity... from an early age," but the
are, with one key exception, self-con chopping off his toes, an image later experiences they exposed him to included
tained, but they function in the drama asbrought to stage life. Besides the twists andthe torture of his brother. In performance
dialogue, as revelations?at times iron details, the original "Pied Piper" and at the National Theatre as Katurian intro
ic?of character, as vehicles of hidden Katurian's revision have in common a duced his story's characters, they
meaning, and?here is McDonagh's sin fairy-tale style, that deceptively simple appeared framed above the stage, set in
gular advance in dramatic form?as vehicle that often carries deep, disturbing the rear wall. Their slow, stylized move
actions that drive the forward movement meanings. Both begin "Once upon a time" ments enacted his words and, in their
of the play. At the opening, Katurian andand use ordinary words in plain declara ordinary simplicity, deepened the ritualis
his brother, Michal, are together in prison
tive clauses; both portray children as innotic quality of the story's action and, so,
after being held in separate cells. cent victims of cruel adults. "Little boy" provided the theatrical embodiment of
Katurian imagines his predicament as sounds like a refrain in Katurian's story. Asthe form of the fairy tale. The violence of
fodder for a fiction; his premise is the Katurian's stories comes out of his child
in "Hansel and Gretel," the first "little" can
play's: "A writer in a totalitarian state is refer to size; with each of its four repeti hood; his fictions are attempts to control
interrogated about the gruesome contenttions, however, McDonagh enlarges its them from a third-person point of view
of some of his short stories and their context to expose Katurian's plea for a senin a conventional narrative. But?
similarities to a number of child-murdertimental response to the "little boy" staring
McDonagh subtly implies?Katurian is
ers that are happening in his town." A at his "muddy little toes" severed by a compelled to tell these stories, simultane
frustrated writer, Katurian has publishedcleaver. The consistent subject-verb pat ously repulsive and pleasurable, and his
only one of his four hundred stories, but tern introduced by the repeated "and" lullscompulsion has fed his failed career:
the police have taken some twenty of the listener into participation in the story His stories stayed strange and twisted
them and see clear parallels between the and, ideally, to acceptance of its meaning. but good, and he was able to thank
bizarre details of a few and the manner of
For, hearing "and... and" repeated, we his parents for the weirdness they'd
some children's murders. Badgered by thecome to recognize and expect it; once into put him through.
chief interrogator, Tupolski, Katurian the rhythm of the stylistic formula, we?in At the start of the next scene Michal
maintains that he has "no axe to grind ...Kenneth Burke's insight?"will its complesits alone in his cell trying to recite one of
no social anything whatsoever" and that tion." In performance then, whether in the Katurian's stories. His brother's screams
his "only duty... is to tell a story." He home or the theatre, the fairy tale is deeply from the next cell annoy him out of con
insists, "I'm not trying to say anything at ironic; its surface form is designed to quietcentration, so after three starts, all "Once
all." In a belligerent tone, he affects the children to rest, but for them and for upon a time," he gives it over. Katurian is
moral indifference of the ivory-tower Katurian's brother, it can awaken subcon thrown into the cell. His pain is real; he
artist: "Are you trying to say I shouldn't scious demons. Its apparently rounded learns that Michal's earlier screams have
write stories with child-killing in them conclusion may, then, have abiding consebeen an act directed by Tupolski to
because in the real world there are childquences as the latent ambiguity of "ever unnerve him. Ironically, Katurian, story
killings?" All that matters to him is the after" implies. teller, has been deceived by make-believe.
shape of the story and its immediate Alone on stage in the second scene, He soon learns that his fictions moved his
appeal; they alone are meaningful, and Katurian begins the story of his childhood brother to murderous acts; Michal says,
when the story ends it is, in any practical in the conventional style, and through the "Every story you tell me, something hor
sense, inconsequential. When he reads familiar formula, McDonagh begins to rible happens to somebody. I was just
one at Tupolski's command, his delivery suggest his character's psychological moti testing out how far-fetched they were."
confirms his attitude; on the defensive in
vation for writing his horrific tales: Katurian can't remember how "The
prison, he nonetheless "enjoys its details Once upon a time there was a little Pillowman" "actually starts," and Michal
and its twists'' boy upon whom his mother and prompts him twice with "Once upon a

78 NORTH AMERICAN REVIEW May-August 2005

This content downloaded from

222.20.193.117 on Tue, 19 Sep 2023 19:03:46 +00:00
All use subject to https://about.jstor.org/terms
 time." Katurian picks up the cue, and
McDonagh dramatizes Michal's full, easy
participation. He"silently whistles" at the
nine-foot height of the man and antici
pates: "Uh-oh, here it comes" at one point
and "I like this bit" at another. The ending
of the story is, as Katurian intends, "a bit
downbeat"; Michal prefers a more posi
tive one, not knowing, anymore than the
audience does, that his brother's "down
beat" ending will later be enacted before
us. In the moral innocence of a person
"brain damaged" by years of abuse,
Michal reveals that he has acted out the
horrific details of three of Katurian's
"most repulsive" stories, "because you told his sleeping brother that what he did was
me to." Katurian reacts first with "disgust" not his fault?a tacit, perhaps subcon
and then with violence (banging his
brother's head on the floor). Finally, in
tears and under McDonagh's ironic con
trol, Katurian resorts to his strongest
source of power over Michal?the fairy
tale style that his brother accepts as the
expression of unquestioned truth: "You're
going to a little room in a little house in a
little forest" to be tortured "for the rest of
all time."
Drawing on this style to punish, fright
en, and dominate Michal, Katurian
unwittingly admits to his own underlying
motives in writing and to the unavoidable
consequences of his stories. Katurian
sensed all along that the conventional
shape of the fairy tale enclosed but could
not fully contain an attraction to the
aberrant and, yes, the perverse. In his own
life, the promise of escapism in "Once
upon a time" went unfulfilled. He wrote
"The Pillowman" to exorcise a personal
demon, the adolescent Katurian who
smothered his parents years earlier, but
the same demon drives him to a similar
act later in the play. As if to honor the
advice given to aspiring authors, he began
with what he knew personally and
worked on it imaginatively. The
Pillowman of his story can reverse time
and allow a suicidal adult to return to
childhood, foresee the life of pain ahead
and avoid it by killing himself. In this fan
tastic vision ("I like the Pillowman. He's
my favorite."), Michal could have chosen
escape from abuse in an early death. In
the reality of the cell, Katurian cannot
turn the clock back to Michal's undam
aged boyhood; he can only spare him the
pain that Topulski is certain to inflict.
Michal "settles down on the mattress" to go
to sleep. It is ritual bedtime again, and
again Michal prompts his brother with
222.20.193.117 on Tue, 19 Sep 2023 19:03:46 +00:00
"Once upon a time" to begin his favorite I
story, "The Little Green Pig." As before,
Michal participates and, identifying with
New Title
the odd animal, repeats a comforting line: from
"T'm happy in being a little bit peculiar,'
he says to God." Before Katurian finishes Final Thursday Press
it, the story has its intended effect and
lulls Michal to sleep. Its author, though,
must finish to satisfy his own need and
the audience's to fill out the story's form.
Kyrie
For nearly a minute in a theatre stilled to
silence and in "a low whisper" he tells the
story to its nonviolent ending where the
little pig thanks God for miraculously
preserving him as peculiar. Katurian tells
poems by Jonathan Stall
scious, acceptance of his own responsibil
ity as a writer who pretends to simply tell
stories without consequences. Crying, he
adopts the role of Pillowman and smoth
ers Michal: "Sweet dreams, little baby. I'm
coming along soon."
Michal is killed because he believed so
completely in stories that he acted them
out. Theatre is a place for acting out some
stories, the difference being that the play's
action?the dramatization of character
and events?and the story's plot generally
come together in a resolution of some
kind. Katurian wrote The End to his sto
ries before The Pillowman begins, and all
their appeal as stories with twists and
details comes across as we hear them. At
the same time, the formal conventions
Kyrie
poems by Jonathan Stull
and structures have a deeper appeal as ISBN: 0-9742764-1-3
they may well awaken buried memories
and satisfy an unspoken desire for a full,
$6.00 + $0.95 S & H
rounded conclusion independent of a
story's specifics. ALSO AVAILABLE
As parts of a dramatic structure,
Katurian's stories acquire other expansive Ghost Wars
meanings. Their theatrical contexts poems by Vince Gotera
include the speaker's character and the WINNER OFTHE2004 GLOBAL
onstage audience. McPherson leads us to FILIPINO LITERARY AWARD
appreciate Katurian's skill by briefly cast ISBN: 09742764-0-5
ing Tupolski as an inept storyteller. When
Tupolski paraphrases one of Katurian's
$5.00 + $0.95 S & H
stories, he robs it of its rhythm; the famil
FTP
iar "and ... and" pattern is missing and
"uh-huh" interjections interrupt what is
left of narrative flow. When he tells his
*\al'>'IU,Nl..<P%i
own story to Katurian, his truly captive
audience, Tupolski begins with an uncer
tain title and a false start: "Okay, so, once
upon a time." His rhetorical questions ask Final Thursday Press
for the wrong kind of participation from 815 State St.
his listener, and he leaves a crucial event, a
twist, undeveloped. He sprinkles in a few Cedar Falls, IA 50613
"y'know"s, and he not only explicitly geocities.com/finalthursdaypress
May-August 2005 NORTH AMERICAN REVIEW 79
This content downloaded from
All use subject to https://about.jstor.org/terms
 interprets action but does so in an ineptly
Johns Hopkins: Poetry and Fiction formal, bureaucratic style: "The old man
John T. Irwin, General Editor assesses the situation quite correctly."
McDonagh's Tupolski is an unsophisticat
ed, powerful figure with a modicum of
Words Brushed by critical intelligence. In contrast to
Music Katurian, he is a poor storyteller, yet he
ironically instructs his prisoner on the fic
Twenty-Five Years of the Johns Hopkins
tional stereotypes that operate in his
Poetry Series
world to get a story out of a suspect. At
edited by John T. Irwin one point, his brutal aide, Ariel, has just
with a foreword by Anthony Hecht
painfully gouged Katurian's face; casually,
Sometimes
before going back to "literature," Tupolski
comic, always says, "Oh, I forgot to mention. I'm the
moving, these good cop, he's the bad cop." Later in the
poems reflect same scene, he cues the audience on its
the talent of
M?kc \ role as interpreter: one of Katurian's sto
twenty
distinctive ries "is saying to me, on the surface I am
voices: John saying this, but underneath the surface I
Bricuth, John am saying this other thing." In another
Burt, Thomas heavy-handed commentary, Tupolski
Carper, Philip identifies himself with the savior of a
Dacey, Tom child in his story: "He represents me." As
Disch, Emily an unsophisticated critic, Tupolski stands
Grosholz,
as McDonagh's reminder that an author
Vicki Hearne, John Hollander, Josephine often projects part of himself into his
Jacobsen, X. J. Kennedy, Charles Martin,
work. More crudely, Tupolski makes the
Robert Pack, Robert Phillips, Wyatt
play's reply to Katurian's insistence that
Prunty, Gibbons Ruark, William Jay
his stories have no consequences outside
Smith, Barry Spacks, Timothy Steele,
of themselves; he orders Katurian to stand
David St. John, and Adrien Stoutenburg.
In this anniversary volume, award and read his version of the Pied Piper.
winning poet and critic Anthony Hecht
katurian. This feels like school
reflects on the state of American poetry somehow.
today. tupolski. Mm. Except at school
$12.95 paperback they didn't execute you at the end.
(Pause)Unless you went to a really
Last Encounter fucking tough school.
Like many of Tupolski's lines, this last one
with the Enemy is funny; not so sadistic or single-minded
stories by Greg Johnson as Ariel, he complicates an audience's
"He rings a response to Katurian's stories as dramatic
hundred events. Our spontaneous, unreflective
changes on the laughter frequently makes us complicit
emotional with him, the onstage audience for
issues with
Katurian's fairy tales and for his self-justi
which he deals,
fying explanations.
keeping them
always Given Pillowman's success in London
interesting,
and New York, other productions will
always
almost certainly be mounted across the
mysterious,
changing and country. I won't, then, disclose the potent
content of its final minutes. Like all that
evolving before
our eyes." goes before, the twists and revelations
?Pinckney Benedict, Chicago Tribune come out of character and, most impor
Book Worlds reviewing a previous volume tant critically, out of stories that are both
$14.95 paperback rounded and unbounded.
The title of Conor McPherson's Shining
Cityrefers ironically to contemporary
The Johns Hopkins University Press
Dublin where light is more likely to be
1-800-537-5487 www.press.jhu.edu
electrical than spiritual. Ian, an ex-priest
80 NORTH AMERICAN REVIEW May-August 2005
This content downloaded from
222.20.193.117 on Tue, 19 Sep 2023 19:03:46 +00:00
All use subject to https://about.jstor.org/terms
and unmarried father of a baby, occupies
a cluttered room that serves as office for
his practice as a lightly qualified therapist.
A loud buzzer announces John's arrival;
he is looking for a sympathetic audience
for his story. Indeed, for much of the play,
Ian seems to be only a sounding board, a
convenience for the playwright to get
John's story recited. At the end, however,
the roles of the two men are reversed, and
Ian, having helped to purge John of guilt,
is left alone to deal with his own.
John's wife has been dead for a few
months when he enters to tell Ian of the
horrible automobile accident that took
her life. He has?no surprise in a
McPherson play?seen her ghost in their
house; she called his name through the
bathroom door one night while he was in
the tub. Frightened, he has moved out to
a nearby B & B. As the scene ends, Ian,
who obviously does not believe in ghosts,
agrees to help him: "Don't worry. (Pause)
We'll sort it out." The next scene takes
place months later and introduces Neasa
[Neesa], the estranged mother of Ian's
child. He admits to her that her help was
invaluable in getting him through his cri
sis of "turning his back on the church,"
but he will not reconcile with her. Nearly
two months pass and John returns to
dominate the play's longest scene with
another McPherson hallmark, the long
narrative. It has no ghosts in any tradi
tional sense, but as John fumbles his way
through it, he admits to failed attempts at
betrayal with another woman, confesses
to attacking his wife over his failures, and
concludes by saying that he may be
responsible for her being on the road the
night of the accident: "I believe in a way
that I probably did it to her. (Pause) And
that's probably why I've seen her."
In the next brief scene, Ian has for the
first time picked up a younger man in a
park. To cover his nerves and ease his
fears, the two engage in small talk, and as
Ian talks about his work as a therapist, he
uses the word that haunts the play as
much as any ghost has haunted John,
"guilt." In the final scene, John returns as
Ian is packing to leave; he will go to
Neasa, now his fianc?, and their child.
John has brought a gift, "a thank-you
present," for he no longer sees his wife's
ghost. It is the second gift he has bought;
before the play opens, his sense of guilt
led him to give his wife an expensive red
coat, the one she wore in the accident and
in her ghostly visit to their home. At one
point in the final dialogue, Ian uses "God" In Act II, having sight means false i
six times in five lines; from him it seems a hopes in love and repetitive work for
conversational filler, but it is McPherson s Martin who thinks he was better off RED, WHITE,
artful signal of Ian s spiritual loss. The ex weaving rushes at leisure and begging. Act
priest cannot rid himself of God and III finds both Douls blind again but hap AND BLUES
guilt. He tells John that he once wanted a pier than when literal sight opened a Poets on the
ghost: "Just something that gave every
thing (Beat) some meaning, you know?
harsh reality to them. They hear the bell
of the approaching Saint but want no
Promise of America
f m talking about God, really, you know?" part of another miracle, for as Martin edited by Virgil Su?rez
Of course, neither does know and the puts it, their hearing, smelling, and seeing and Ryan C. Van Cleave
ambiguity of "really" next to "God" along imaginatively are "finer sights" than at
with that "you know" is McPherson s not Knock where the devout believe that the
Ian s. As John leaves to join his new Virgin Mary appeared in 1879. Rather
woman and start a new life, the light of than have his Mary cured, Martin sweeps
day continues to fade in the room. In the the can of holy water from the Saint's POETS ON THE PROM 1SE OF
gloom of deep stage, Ian s wish for tran upraised hand. The dismissive gesture
scendence comes to chilling fulfillment:
the ghost of John s wife appears behind
affirms their choice to stay as they were.
The townspeople expel them lest they
AMER ICA
the door, "just as John described her; she bring God's wrath upon the place, and
wears her red coat which is filthy her hair once more they take to the road. The
is wet. She looks beaten up. She looks terri harsh life imagined for them by Synge is
fying" As Ian is turning to see what he sharply contrasted by the play's ending;
dimly senses, the lights go down. We are the Saint will preside over a young cou
left to imagine his response, but the vivid ple's marriage?the promise of social har VIRGIL SU?REZ
RYAN G. VAN CLEAVE
image rules out incredulity. Whatever it mony and continuity that comedy so
means, it is present before us and soon often makes to its audience. But that cere
will be there for him. McPherson s mony takes place after the curtain, and
increasingly secular Dublin no longer the play finally takes the side of the blind "Once more Virgil Su?rez and Ryan Van
shines brightly with faith as it once did, couple who travel on, unable to put their Cleave give us their astute and timely
but heirs to its religious tradition, like Ian, trust in a faith that puts its trust in literal take on the state of affairs in contempo
cannot blot out all their former beliefs. rary America. Red, White, and Blues is a
seeing.
rich, readable, and wonderfully reward
Yeats's Purga tory laments the passing of
Tradition and mythic belief were Yeats's ing gathering of poetic voices?many of
the Protestant Ascendancy in Ireland; it is
set before a "ruinedhouse with a bare tree them new, all powerful?singing together
concerns throughout his career; his
in raucous harmony. It is never easy to be
Purgatory was among the representative in the background'' Yeats takes a specifical a countryman, a citizen, or a poet in this
plays in the Irish tradition presented at the ly Roman Catholic belief, as his title indi or any other nation; and these particularly
Dublin Theatre Festival in conjunction cates, to suggest that those who "killed" vexed days bespeak the need for poets to
with the one-hundredth anniversary of the "great house" are doomed to repeat sing the hard truths again and again,
the Abbey. Along with another produc their unforgivable crime against the site naming each beauty, each brutality, with
tion, John Synge's Well of the Saints, that once symbolized the status of a equal measures of passion, conscience,
Purgatory contains elements that persist in refined class. The Abbey's dark staging and clarity."?David Baker, author of
drama right up to our time: the appeal of did not evoke a sense of the place where Changeable Thunder
the spectral or mysterious and the search what "is left" is "The souls in Purgatory contributors include

for transcendent meaning in a sparse stage that come back / To habitations and Fred Chappell Kelly Cherry
space. The central characters, Martin and familiar spots," nor did I hear delivery to Beth Ann Fennelly Albert Goldbarth
Lola Haskins -Walt McDonald
Mary Doul [Dull] enter tapping their justify Eliot's claim that the verse "laid all
blind way along a road bounded by a of his [Yeats's] successors under obliga Paisley Rekdal Donald Reuell
stonewall. Small rocks surround a short, Gary Soto Nance Van Winckel
tion to him." Nevertheless, the play's dra
Miller Williams and many more
scrawny bush on stage left. It's a place that matic imagery and action locate it firmly
a Beckett figure might inhabit. The Douls in the Irish tradition. Two characters, Boy 246 PAGES $19.95 PAPERBACK
have never seen each other, and when the and Old Man, stand before the house; six
water from the Saint, an itinerant priest, teen years earlier, the Old Man killed his
gives Martin sight, he at first believes a father, Boy's grandfather, there because he
"burned down the house when drunk."

young beauty to be his Mary. Her sight is
also restored, but neither thinks that see
ing the other or the world is a blessing:
MARY: I'm thinking it's a poor thing
when the Lord God gives you sight
and puts the like of that man
[Martin] in your way.
IOWA
The Old Man's mother married beneath
her, and his father, a stable groom, tried
to deny him education so as to keep him
on a low social level. The Old Man
returns to the scene of his patricide, and University of Iowa Press
that murderous action has a return of its
www.uiowapress.org

May-August 2005 NORTH AMERICAN REVIEW 81

This content downloaded from

222.20.193.117 on Tue, 19 Sep 2023 19:03:46 +00:00
All use subject to https://about.jstor.org/terms

Has anyone ever
called you crazy?
What if you moved to
another country, to live with
people you didn't know?
What if you went
to improve their lives,
and in the process,
improved yours.
Would that be crazy?
Peace Corps.
Life is calling.
How far will you go?
800.424.8580 | peacecorps.gov
own. With the same knife he used on his
father, he kills his son "because had he
grown up / He would have struck a words." The play's action is resolved when
woman's fancy / Begot, and passed pollu
tion." Perhaps cultural ghosts of Purgatory conflict between Hector and Irwin comes
were stirring deep in McDonagh's sub
conscious when he wrote Pillowman, for
the antecedents in Yeats's play are surely
there: the motive behind the violence, the
spectral apparitions at windows in the
stage's rear wall, and the cyclical return
from a narrative past, signaled by Yeats
with the approaching hoof beats of the
long dead grandfather. Separated by six
decades, the two plays stand with creative
singularity on common ground.
Although the couple in the row before teaching anymore. Through Hector's
me at London's National Theatre occa voice from beyond the grave, Bennett
sionally chuckled in recognition at refer
ences I didn't get, Alan Bennett's History
Boys consistently reached beyond the
boundaries of its stage and country of
origin to appeal to anyone interested in
culture and education. The eight boys of
the title are seventeen and eighteen,
preparing for the tests that will determine
which universities they will attend.
Dressed in white shirts and wearing uni
form ties, they are nonetheless a mixed
lot, black and white, Christian and Jew,
gay and straight, athletic and pudgy. They
all aspire to Oxford or Cambridge and
thanks to their mentor, Hector, they all
have easy familiarity with good poetry
and classic films. Hector teaches culture
and, so, exasperates Headmaster, a man
who could slide with ease into many
administrations here. He is "curriculum
directed," a measurer who while admit
ting that Hector "produces results,"
objects to him because "they are unpre
dictable and unquantifiable and in the
current educational climate that is no
use." To better prepare the boys for their
tests, Headmaster engages Irwin who
teaches exam strategy rather than content
and who prefers gimmicks to historical
accuracy. For example, as a way of
impressing their examiners with a fresh
point of view, he recommends that the
boys might simply call Hitler a politician
as opposed to a madman. Invariably call
ing Irwin "Sir" as they do Hector, the boys
see through him even as they go along
with his approach; they are "smart" with
him and "thoughtful" with Hector.
Irwin teaches history as journalism;
Hector teaches history. Irwins methods
narrow the boys' outlook; Hector, to
Headmaster's dismay, "has an old-fash
ioned faith in the redemptive power of
all the boys are accepted at Oxbridge. The
to a crashing end offstage when Hector
dies in a motorbike accident which
reduces his passenger and fellow teacher
to life in a wheelchair. As a testimonial to
him takes place, Hector?like so many
dead characters in recent drama?comes
back to stage life to deliver the play's final
words. His boys, all but one, have found
success; Posner, the "only one who took
everything he taught to heart," lives alone
on an allotment. In his tribute, Irwin says
that there is no time for Hector's kind of
delivers the heartfelt wish that his kind of
knowing be passed on through his last
group of history boys. My teacher's throat
tightened at the earned nostalgia.
Last year's world premiere of Peter and
Jerry at Hartford Stage introduced its Act
II, Edward Albee's renowned Zoo Story,
with a new work, Homelife, as Act I. Albee
resisted labeling Homelife a prequel to its
famous antecedent but saw it rather as
amplifying Peter's character in Zoo Story
to make him "more sympathetic and
more understandable." To the extent that
his intention is realized, however, Zoo
Story loses its sense of absurdist irresolu
tion, and the cryptic dialogue of
Homelife's first lines is odd prelude to
Peter's long speech of self-disclosure. The
blocking and action of the opening paral
lels that of Zoo Story: Peter is discovered
reading the proofs of a textbook his firm
will publish; he takes off his glasses and
cleans them with his handkerchief. He is
so absorbed in his reading and so indif
ferent to his wife that he doesn't respond
immediately to her first line, "We should
talk." After a long pause, he says, "What,"
and she repeats "We should talk." Such
dialogue?so Pinteresque?usually
tempts an audience to tease out meaning;
before long, however, Albee abandons
indirection and, with it, trust in that audi
ence. Peter's wife, Ann, after telling him
that he has been a good, tender lover with
whom she is happy, says that lately at least
he has not been a good "fuck." Peter's
response is a story from his college days
about his fraternity initiation, one his
wife has never heard. The pledges were
fed alcohol and "grass" as were sorority

82 NORTH AMERICAN REVIEW May-August 2005

This content downloaded from

222.20.193.117 on Tue, 19 Sep 2023 19:03:46 +00:00
All use subject to https://about.jstor.org/terms
sisters. Communal sex followed with her creation of a dramatic whole. If Ruhl
mattresses on the floors. Peter volun aimed for the effects her stage directions
teered to perform oral sex on his partner, call for, the poised balance of the phrase MARVIN BELL
but she wanted the bloody, painful, anal "magic realism" eluded her; The Clean
variety. Obliging her, he satisfied his ani House has too little realism beyond the Rampant
mal instincts. This story told, Albee's stage properties of "Connecticut" and too $20 CLOTH
audience presumably understands Peter's much indulgent "metaphysics" to make "[An] excellent
behavior in Zoo Story, which opens with the play magical. new collection
him on the park bench, reading and then of poems...
cleaning his glasses. Nothing has changed August Wilson completed his ten-play The real thing."
except our knowledge of his past and, in cycle on the black experience in America ? New York
with Radio Golf, to his credit and the the Times Book
my case, an uneasy feeling that porno
Review
graphic talk has been palmed off as atre's he ended where he began (with Ma
sophistication. Homelife, so far as I know, Rainey's Black Bottom) at Yale Rep. Set in
went nowhere after Hartford. 1997, the play begins by promising to
expose the betrayal of the black heritage
THE POEM
Sarah Ruhl's The Clean House had its by the generation that profited, literally
world premiere at Yale Rep with advance and morally, from the sacrifices of
BEHIND
publicity that a commercial theatre Martin Luther King and others. The THE POEM:
would pay dearly for. The New York Times action takes place in the office of
season listings had identified it as a hot Harmond Wilks; it houses the Bedford Translating Asian Poetry
$18 PAPER
item, and four leading regionals had Hills Development, a project that he as
included it in their seasons. To my disap potential mayoral candidate and his Twenty-one
noted transla
pointment, its premise and execution childhood friend, Roosevelt Hicks, pro tors discuss
were too coyly derivative to create or sus mote together. The planned apartment their methods,
tain the interest that Yale's record, the unit would require the demolition of muses, and the
cast, and the publicity generated. Much 1839 Wilie, a derelict house now being forces of imagi
as a sitcom would be launched, a painted, the two learn, by Elder Barlow nation neces
Brazilian woman who hates housework is who claims to own it. The interior of this sary to bring a
hired as a "cleaning lady" by a Doctor house provided the set for the first of poem from one
Lane. The play is set, Ruhl notes, in a Wilson's plays in their chronological language into
another. Con
"metaphysical Connecticut." This explicit order, Gem of the Ocean. Now, Wilie with
tributors include Jane Hirshfield,
sign points to the world of magic real its century of history in Pittsburgh's Hill
Gary Snyder, John Balaban, and
ism?here all skin with none of Rushdie's District is an offstage obstacle to the Arthur Sze.
or Marquez's political muscle?and the redevelopment vision of Wilks and the
opening joke in Portuguese sets us at entrepreneurial plan of Hicks. The gap
fashionable distance from language as between these men in their forties, mem
vehicle of clear meaning. (Ruhl's stage bers of the black middle class, and the Dazzling."
? Publishers
direction reads, " We can tell she is telling a younger generation is sharply, humor
Weekly
joke even though we might not understand ously laid open in one of Radio Golf's
the language") In the first four speeches, first lines when Hicks enters and
three characters address the audience announces that he has parked his car
directly as they offer prefatory exposition where he can see it from the office so that
with built-in laugh lines. The overall "niggers" won't steal it or from it. The
shape of the play is, like its jokes, episodic distinction, current before '97, between PABLO NERUDA
and self-enclosing; when the text is defi the self-effacing, compromising Negro Seven authorized translations of
cient, Ruhl resorts to stage directions to and the true-to-his-race "nigger" is later Pablo Neruda's late and posthumous
state her intentions: " Virginia has a deepmade explicit in one of the play's many work, with the original Spanish
impulse to order the universe" and, of a overly expository confrontations. Wilks is en face, are available from Copper
man performing surgery, "It would be chastised by the undereducated painter, Canyon. Titles include the best
selling Book of Questions.
nice if he could sing an ethereal medieval Sterling Johnson: "You ain't got to study
love song in La tin about being medically right and wrong." Having absorbed the
cured by love." When two characters bite lesson, Wilks later says that the develop
into apples and throw them down to the ers "can't tear down history and tradi
stage from a balcony, they think that they tion." Only poster boards could have
[fS| Copper Canyon Press
are pitching them into the sea, but " The made the lessons more obvious. The play for poem samples and
a complete title listing
sea is also the living room!' Whatever sig goes on to Los Angeles in the summer
nificance this action and many others like and presumably will be revised; major www.coppercanyonpress.org
it may have is simply imposed by the will changes are needed to subsume the toll-free order phone 877-501-1393
of the playwright; it does not come from message in a subtle, coherent drama.

May-August 2005 NORTH AMERICAN REVIE

This content downloaded from

222.20.193.117 on Tue, 19 Sep 2023 19:03:46 +00:00
All use subject to https://about.jstor.org/terms