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Overview
The nameless narrator of this blistering monologue lies ill and alone in a dreary hotel room in a poverty-stricken country. A political execution is about to take place beneath his window. Far from the glib comforts of his own life, he struggles with memories and his own conscience, which are challenged by the misery and poverty he sees. With compassion, eloquence, and ruthless self-scrutiny, the playwright discovers that having good intentions toward the dispossessed is not enough. As the narrator reminisces and agonizes over his own responsibility for the downtrodden, he reaches the inevitable conclusion that the politically correct are guilty themselves unless they take action. At the play's conclusion, the narrator has succeeded in defining his own guilt but is uncertain whether or not he has the personal courage to join in the struggle. Aghast at his own weakness, he longs for forgiveness and the strength to earn it.Celebrated actor and playwright, Wallace Shawn, also the author of My Dinner With Andre, offers a powerful work of the imagination in which the narrator's visit to a beautiful country is marred by political struggles which force him to review the presumptions of a "liberal" existence in the face of harsh, murderous reality. This eventually leads him to question his own existence.
Editorials
NY Newsday
...mesmerizingly theatrical—a profoundly engaging journey through the awakening of a pampered man's conscience.NY Times
THE FEVER is a work that asks, in a highly original way: Is it possible, or even right, for a sensitive person to be happy in today's world?Publishers Weekly -
The narrator is having a mid-life crisis. He's shaking and vomiting in a hotel in a strange Third World country, contemplating the plight of the poor and the oppressed around the globe. As his annoying interior monologue unfolds, he becomes increasingly nauseated by the ignorance and complacency of his own moneyed existence, although he's not quite ready to give up the perks of privilege--luxury hotels, fine restaurants, glamorous theater events--in order that others might be able to feed their hungry children. The speaker wonders how he and his friends could be ``decorating their lives and their world as if they were having a permanent party'' while citizens in countries under totalitarian rule are being tortured and killed, yet he is unable to shake the contempt he feels for the impoverished. At the end of this pointless book, Shawn states that the considerable efforts of concerned parents, artists and politicians ``do not change the life of the poor,'' a conclusion that the narrator conveniently employs to alleviate his guilt long enough to allow him a decent night's rest. This work was the basis for a dramatic monologue performed in New York City. Shawn is a playwright and actor. (Mar.)Library Journal
Shawn is one of those actors we always recognize but rarely can name. He has appeared in many fine films, including Woody Allen's Manhattan and Radio Days , but is probably best remembered as the balding, squeaky-voiced intellectual in My Dinner with Andre . Shawn is also a playwright who has achieved some success off-Broadway. The Fever , which he is now performing, is a dramatic monolog in which a nameless and genderless voice attempts to deal with a guilt resulting from an anachronistic form of liberalism. The voice cannot bear being both liberal and a member of the so-called oppressing class. The result is a thin, shallow whine that might work well performed by an actor of Shawn's accomplishments but which fails in written form because the reader has read it all before.-- Vincent D. Balitas, Allentown Coll., Center Valley, Pa.Book Details
Published
January 1, 1991
Publisher
Farrar, Straus & Giroux Inc
Pages
80
Format
Paperback
ISBN
9780374522704