Long Day’s Journey Into Night (1956)
Often blurbs are not very accurate but I would agree that this play is possibly ‘the finest and most powerful play to have come out of America’ and that O’Neil is ‘one of the twentieth century’s most significant writers’ whose ‘true value to the theatre is still being discovered’. So powerfully & finely wrought are these characters whose drama not so much jumps but punches it’s way out of the book format. Like George Bernard Shaw there are long descriptive passages of the scene but thankfully without any of the pretense of teaching lessons, developing theories (with demonstration) or any other baggage that weighs down and overshadows the soul. Emotion reeks all over from every line of speech going from ‘(thickly humorous)’ to ‘(Then disgustedly)’ to ‘(Then appreciatively)’ within 38 words to create what is the metaphoric equivalent to a roller-coaster combined ghost-train. It has intensity and tension on every page; introspective neurosis and expressive rage on every other. I have 14 pages left to find out how it ends and the only reason I’m not reading it now is because I am utterly exhausted, mentally, emotionally, & almost physically, from reading the previous three acts; so although I do wish to wait I will not try to attempt finishing it off for the sake of my health.
How I could cope watching Long Day’s Journey Into Night on the stage I do not know.
