Time Is Ripe Loth - Hardcover

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Clifford Odets kept a journal only in 1940, an important year for the playwright. After a decade of successes, the year began with the failure of Night Music . Odets's private life also reflected the world's anxiety in that year. His journal shows a gigantic ego lavishing severe judgment on friend and enemy alike, and an overactive libido seeking the perfect woman (he had access to a breathtaking array of them). Although Odets was hard on everyone, he judged himself most severely. This journal records the dark journey of a life and time out of joint yet seeking their proper form. Interspersed are glimpses of major figures in modern American theater and film. Thomas E. Luddy, Salem State Coll., Mass.
Copyright 1988 Reed Business Information, Inc.

When Odets kept this diary in 1940, his best plays were behind him, his drama Night Music had just failed, the Group Theatre was falling apart and so was his marriage to movie star Luise Rainer, from whom he had separated. This egotistical journal is introspective but lacks self-insight. The author of Waiting for Lefty bitterly writes that one can "never trust an American audience to understand" a complex character. He smolders with resentment toward "neurotic" Rainer and rhapsodizes about his girlfriend Bette Grayson, who would soon become his wife; he pans director Harold Clurman's "lamentable bungling"; philosophizes about Beethoven and projects his own misery onto Berlioz, Mozart and Leopold Stokowski. The diary is mainly of interest for its gossip about Fay Wray, Elia Kazan, Theodore Dreiser, Louis Nizer, George Balanchine, Walter Winchell, others. Photos. First serial to American Film.
Copyright 1988 Reed Business Information, Inc.