(IN THIS
ISSUE)
LETTER TO THE EDITOR
February 19, 1986
My admiration for Jordan Y. Miller knows no bounds,
and I agree with much of what he says in praise of Judith Barlow's
Final Acts: The Creation of Three Late O'Neill Plays (review
in Winter 1985 issue). But I must take exception to both Miller and
Barlow in their view of A Moon for the Misbegotten as a
"flawed masterpiece." I have not been able to perceive the flaws.
Barlow objects to the emphasis given Phil Hogan's
intrigues in a work which ultimately concentrates on the pathos of
confession and the miracle of forgiveness. Phil's intrigues are no
flaw. Nor do they make the play "tedious," if they are understood in
the light of O'Neill's consummate artistry. I explore the
relationship between Phil's intrigues and the Jim-Josie action in my
article "O'Neill's Transcendence of Melodrama in A Touch of the
Poet and A Moon for the Misbegotten" (Comparative
Drama [Fall 1982], 238-250). By juxtaposing two such
diametrically opposed moods and types of dramatic action, O'Neill is
commenting on the whole history of drama's popularity, including the
popularity of his own earlier drama. He teases and entices his
audience with Phil's antics--the humiliation of the "Standard Oil
millionaire" and the plot to trap Jim Tyrone into marriage--before
he lets the play give way to the gargantuan outpouring of feeling by
the lovers. In doing so, O'Neill is in effect saying to his
audience: "What you come to the theatre for is not what theatre is
really about. You come to be entertained and mystified by the
engaging superficialities of comic and serious melodrama. What you
should be coming for is what the Greek tragedians and Shakespeare
provided so well--a wrenching of your innermost feelings and a
severe challenge to you lives' meanings, and to life's meaning."
Phil Hogan's come-on traps the audience into
thinking it will not have to feel anything, that it will only be
entertained. But as the action unfolds, that audience is made to
feel very deeply indeed, as the audiences of Oedipus and
Lear were made to feel. The early portions of the long Jim-Josie
exchange--in which Josie is thinking about trapping Jim while Jim is
trying to find the courage to confess--are a brilliant transition
between one (fascinating but trivial) kind of drama and another
(painful but all-important) kind of drama.
Sincerely,
Michael Manheim
Univ. of Toledo
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