The Playwright and the Lady From Dubuque

Philip C. Kolin, cd. Conversations with Edward Albee. Jackson: University Press of Mississippi, 1988. xxix + 223 pp. Philip C. Kolin. David Rabe: A Stage History and a Primary and Secondary Bibliography. New York: Garland, 1988. xii + 273 pp. It is difficult to determine the readership for whom Conversations with Edward Albee is intended. The reviewer who digests the book as a whole and absorbs the inevitable repetitions of twenty-seven different interviewers is far from an ideal audience. Yet if one dips into the collection casually, looking for the illuminating biographical detail or even an entertaining bit of gossip, it offers merely the mildest diversion. Despite the fact that critics have attempted to link Albee's dramas with both the difficult marriage of his adoptive parents and the playwright's homosexuality, there are only oblique references to Albee's personal life. On the other hand, Kolin seems to overstate the case for scholarly edification when he assures the reader that the very repetitiveness of the collection will provide material for useful comparisons. He himself admits that Albee resists discussion of stylistic development in his plays—"I've written five plays; each of them is in a different style" (Diehl interview), consistently describes much of the work of composition as an unconscious process that cannot be investigated too carefully, lest it "evaporate" (Flanagan interview), and displays considerable scepticism about the worth of the conversations here recorded: "It's not that I mind being interviewed. I think it's really a waste of time" (Smith interview)

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