Edward Albee: A Singular Journey: A Biography

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The Barnes & Noble Review
In some senses, three Pulitzer Prizes have not made Edward Albee well-known. "I'm a playwright," he avers. "Of course no one recognizes me!" But although this Greenwich Village resident can dine relatively unnoticed almost anywhere, he has transformed American drama more than once. His influential plays, from Zoo Story (1960) to Who's Afraid of Virginia Wolf? (1962) to Three Tall Women (1991), strike notes of almost autobiographical immediacy. Nevertheless, although Albee is generous with interviews, he remains a shadowy and enigmatic figure. Mel Gussow, who has known the playwright since his first production, shows how this step-son of privilege, helped and hurt by his adopted parents' affluence, rebelled against authority. (He was thrown out of at least two schools.) Albee's alcoholism, another seldom mentioned topic, is shown here raging and then gradually beaten. Readers gain a sense of a man rattled by experience, yet transmuting that turmoil into his art. An authoritative and humane biography of a major American dramatist.
— Sal Cordaro

Ann Hornaday

Mel Gussow brings extraordinary rectitude and insight to the project of synthesizing Albee's life and work. Edward Albee: A Singular Journey is a thoroughly absorbing book that functions not only as a biography, but as a criticism, social history and psychological allegory...
— Baltimore Sun

Clifford A. Ridley

Consistently cogent and perceptive, one of the best books of 1999.
— Philadelphia Inquirer

Emily Burns

Albee is considered one of the United States' greatest living dramatists, and Gussow's new biography provides a very interesting study of the man behind the famous plays. Gussow, a writer for the New York Times, has written an extensive history, starting with Albee's childhood as the adoptive son of wealthy and neglectful parents, before moving to his attempts at poetry and the suggestion (from Thornton Wilder no less) that he switch his focus to writing for the theater. The stories of Albee's literary self-education and his eventual success (as the writer of The Zoo Story, Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf?, A Delicate Balance and Three Tall Women) are intriguing, and Gussow has done a great deal of research, unearthing obscure documents and acquaintances. Gussow writes admiringly of the playwright's work without being judgmental of Albee as a person.

Everett Evans

Inherently important, automatically definitive...and a must for all lovers of drama. [It] raises the curtain more than it ever has been raised on Albee and the impulses that fire his dramatic art.
— Houston Chronicle

Lawrence DeVine

A riveting biography...we see Albee today, culturally born again...up there in the same theatrical pantheon with Eugene O'Neill, Arthur Miller and Tennessee Williams.
— New York Times Book Review

New Yorker

Gussow, with a light and generous touch, shows us the strengths of an artist whose core of resilience ultimately insured his survival.

Sheridan Morley

The finest theatrical biography of the year.
— London Sunday Times

Publishers Weekly

The American playwright Edward Albee's greatest glories came early in his career. When his first play, The Zoo Story, debuted in Provincetown, Mass., in 1960, he was called, as Gussow (cultural writer for the New York Times) puts it here, "our homegrown equivalent of Beckett." After his masterpiece, Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf? was staged in 1962, Albee was heralded as the voice of his generation. Then came two decades of debilitating alcoholism and commercial and critical flops. However, his most recent play, 1997's Pulitzer Prize-winning Three Tall Women, has returned him to the spotlight. In this biography, Gussow demonstrates that Albee's life has always been riven with contradictions. The playwright's youth--born in 1928, he was the adopted son of an extremely laconic owner of a chain of vaudeville theaters--was unhappy. Perhaps as a result, Albee has always been drawn to idyllic images of family life in literature. Still, in his extensive interviews with Gussow, he describes his own escape from marriage and "two-and a half kids" with great relief. "What did I think I was doing?" Albee asks of his brief engagements. "I was going to bed with boys from age thirteen on and enjoyed it greatly." Nonetheless, Albee is still fuming about '60s critics who questioned his ability to understand family life, pigeonholing him as a "homosexual" writer whose female characters are either misogynistic travesties or stand-ins for male lovers. A friend and ex-lover of Albee's once complained of "forever trying to penetrate your iron curtain." Here, Gussow adroitly accomplishes that feat, never shying away from the complexities of the elusive playwright's troubled personality and his still potent artistic vision. (Aug.) Copyright 1999 Cahners Business Information.

Library Journal

For most readers, the name Edward Albee immediately evokes the play Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf? Fortunately, Gussow, the drama critic and cultural writer for the New York Times, goes well beyond that one title and explores Albee's entire output, beginning with the spectacular 1960 debut of The Zoo Story and ending with his 1995 comeback hit Three Tall Women and his 1996 smash revivals of A Delicate Balance on Broadway and Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf? in London. The focus of the book, however, is biographical, illustrating how Albee's life both informs and enriches his plays. His drinking, drug abuse, and suicide attempts are covered honestly but without the gossipy tone that so often accompanies biography. Of particular interest is Gussow's attention to the actors who appeared in the plays and what they brought to the productions. Recommended for all academic collections and libraries with theater holdings. (Photos and index not seen.)--Susan L. Peters, Emory Univ. Lib., Atlanta Copyright 1999 Cahners Business Information.

Booknews

A critic and cultural writer for , Gussow knew the American playwright since 1962, had access to letters to and from him, and interviewed him extensively to produce the biography. He considers the interplay between public and private lives, his influences and interactions professionally and personally, and the impact of his work. No date is mentioned for the cloth-bound original. Annotation c. Book News, Inc., Portland, OR (booknews.com)

Lawrence DeVine

His candor about his private and professional life is often amazing, and you sense that Albee might not have been as forthcoming to someone with lesser credentials than Gussow....Gussow allows Albee to talk, which allows us to judge.
— The New York Times Book Review

William Wright

All this Sturm und Drang has been well captured in Mel Gussow's readable new biography of Albee, which lends the Albee spectacle more drama and narrative shape than some Albee plays...
— The New York Times

Kirkus Reviews

An intelligent, sympathetic biography of the three-time Pulitzer-winning playwright from Gussow, cultural writer for the New York Times and author of prior books on Beckett, Pinter, and Stoppard. As the American agent of the absurd, our homegrown equivalent of Beckett, Albee has amused, provoked, irritated, and flummoxed audiences with jaundiced views on identity, illusion, psychological maiming by parents, and the failure of the American dream. Certain aspects of his life, including his homosexuality and troubled relationship with his adoptive parents, are well known in the theater world. But Gussow draws on Albee•s papers, interviews with friends and associates, and his own four-decade acquaintance with the playwright to demonstrate how strongly Albee•s life inspired these themes. Unloved by his parents, an affluent WASP couple, Albee left home and broke off relations with them at the age of 20. His literary apprenticeship ended when, by his own description, he was born at the age of 30, the year he wrote The Zoo Story, a startling one-act play that made him the American leader of the theater of the absurd. Over the next decade, he wrote the great body of work that influenced such later playwrights as Stoppard, Mamet, Guare, Shepard and Zindel, including A Delicate Balance, The American Dream, and especially Who•s Afraid of Virginia Woolf? In the '70s and '80s, Albee hit a personal and career nadir, as he slid into alcoholism and turned off critics with increasingly self-conscious work. During the 1990s, he rebounded with Three Tall Women, his most autobiographical play, in which he came to terms with his recently deceased, beautiful, but imperious mother. Gussow illuminates Albeeas a resilient survivor who, through a strong work ethic, a healthy ego, and efforts to aid emerging playwrights and fight censorship has outlasted and even converted former detractors. No dramatic fireworks, but a thoughtful retrospective on one of America•s most controversial (and, in recent years, honored) artists. (photos, not seen)