Edward Albee (Magill’s Literary Annual 2000)
At a glance:
- Author: Mel Gussow
- First Published: 1999
- Type of Work: Literary biography
- Time of Work: 1928 to 1998
- Setting: New York City, Westchester County, and Montauk, New York; Houston, Texas
- Principal Characters: Edward Franklin Albee III, Frances Loring Cotter Albee, Reed Adelbert Albee, Laura Smith Albee, William Flanagan, Terrence McNally, Jonathan Thomas
- Genres: Criticism, Nonfiction, Biography
- Subjects: North America or North Americans, Northeast, U.S., United States or Americans, Gay men, Homosexuality or homosexuals, Twentieth century, New York City, Literature, West, U.S., Texas, Plays or playwrights
- Locales: New York, NY, Houston, TX, Montauk, NY, Westchester County, NY
The Edward Albee presented by Mel Gussow is at once prickly, deeply troubled, alienated, sentimental, and extremely vulnerable. Gussow, a longtime friend and associate of the playwright, knows him perhaps as well as anyone does. In this well-written and compelling biography, however, he consistently maintains the objectivity necessary for the worthwhile presentation of a life.
The first clue to Albee’s vulnerability comes in Gussow’s decision to begin his biography with a reference to James Agee’s A Death in the Family (1957), in which Agee writes about Knoxville,...
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