This is as close as the public will come to an autobiography,
although its presentation in play form will perhaps mislead some
potential readers. Written in 1940, now posthumously published,
this autobiographical play shows the famous playwright grappling
with the raw material of his youth and home surroundings. It is
starkly realistic, gloomy to the point of desperation, often dull
and formless - but it is a brave attempt to face the implications
of a difficult heritage. These were indeed discouraging:- a
swashbuckling Irish father, who had attained a certain prosperity
as a handsome actor, who was given to alternate ??uts of drunken
br??g??doce to and sentimentality; an older brother, of the ne'er
de well type, given to drink, whoring and sloth, who showed
"Edmund" (the consumptive protagonist of the play- presumably
O'Neill himself) a baffling, Janus-faced love and jealousy; and a
mother, worn out both by conflict with these male characters and a
homeless; up-rooted life, who becomes a hopeless drug addict. It is
impossible to say that O'Neill has fashioned a real play out of the
Ibaenc??que facts. He has merely told his story in conversational
form, his accustomed medium, devoid- this time of his poetic
language. Certainly this is not stage material. Let us hope the
little theatres will not claim it as their own. Rather it is
material for biographers and psychologists, particularly those
seeking clues to genius. For a selected audience, and definitely
not for bed- time reading. (Kirkus Reviews)
A true modern classic from one of the twentieth century's most
significant writers, Long Day's Journey into Night is an intensely
autobiographical, magnificently tragic portrait of the author's own
family - a play so acutely personal that he insisted it was not
published until after his death. One single day in the Tyrones'
Connecticut home. James Tyrone Snr is a miser, a talented actor who
even squanders his talent in an undemanding role; eldest son Jamie
is an affable, whoremongering alcoholic and confirmed ne'er-do
well; youngest son Edmund is poetic, sensitive, suffering from a
respiratory condition and deep-seated disillusionment; and their
mother Mary, living in a haze of self-delusion and morphine
addiction. Existing together under this roof, and the profound
weight of the past, they subtly tear one another apart, shred by
shred. 'Set in 1912, the year of O'Neill's own attempted suicide,
it is an attempt to understand himself and those to whom he was
irrevocably tied by fate and by love. It is the finest and most
powerful play to have come out of America' Christopher Bigsby
Eugene O'Neill's play Long Day's Journey into Night was written in
1939-41, and first published in 1956 (after O'Neill's death in
1953). It was first performed at the Royal Dramatic Theatre,
Stockholm, in February 1956, and had its first American production
at Helen Hayes Theater, New York, in November that year. It won the
Tony Award for Best Play, and O'Neill was posthumously awarded the
1957 Pulitzer Prize for Drama. This edition includes a full
introduction, biographical sketch and chronology.
General
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