Clifford Odets

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  • "Clifford Odets." Educational Theatre Journal 28 No. 4 (December 1976): 495-500. (Excerpt from an interview in which Odets discusses his early years as an actor and director in the Group Theatre and the influences he found there.)
  • Atkinson, Brooks. "Clifford Odets Revealed as the Most Promising New American Dramatist." The New York Times (10 March 1935): VIII, 1. (Considers Odets "a new dramatist of exciting potentialities" and praises "Waiting for Lefty" and Awake and Sing!)
  • Atkinson, Brooks. Review of "Waiting for Lefty" and "Till the Day I Die." The New York Times (27 March 1935): 24. (Laudatory assessment that declares "Mr. Odets continues to be our most promising new dramatist.")
  • Atkinson, Brooks. Review of Awake and Sing! The New York Times (20 February 1935): 23. (Admiring assessment that nevertheless notes that Odets "does not quite finish what he has started in this elaborately constructed piece. Although he is very much awake, he does not sing with the ease and clarity of a man who has mastered his score.")
  • Atkinson, Brooks. Review of Golden Boy. The New York Times (5 November 1937): 18. (Asserts that Golden Boy "confirms the original convictions that Mr. Odets is an instinctive writer for the stage. He can compose dialogue with a fugue-like tossing around of themes; he can create vigorous characters; he can exploit scenes and enclose his narrative within the fullness of [a] wholly written play.")
  • Barbour, David, and Seward, Lori. "Waiting for Lefty." The Drama Review 28, No. 4 (Winter 1984): 38-48. (Describes the genesis of Odets's first play and its production, with a complete summary of plot, action, and characters, and lists the original casts from the 1935 debut and subsequent Broadway run.)
  • Bray, Bonita. "Against All Odds: The Progressive Arts Club's Production of Waiting for Lefty." Journal of Canadian Studies 25 No. 3 (Fall 1990): 106-122. (Bray includes a social analysis of Waiting for Lefty in her recounting of a controversial 1935 production of the play during tense civil times in Canada.)
  • Brenman-Gibson, Margaret. "The Creation of Plays: With a Specimen Analysis." Psychoanalysis, Creativity, and Literature: A French-American Inquiry, edited by Alan Roland, pp. 178-230. New York: Columbia University Press, 1978. (Psychoanalysis of Odets and his works that includes substantial biographical information.)
  • Brenman-Gibson, Margaret. Clifford Odets: American Playwright: The Years from 1906 to 1940. New York: Atheneum, 1981, 749 p. (Focuses on Odets' psychological characteristics, providing insight into the person behind the plays.)
  • Canby, Vincent. "Odets Waves An Olive Leaf in a Last Play." The New York Times (27 March 1994): Sec. 2, 5,32. (In a review of a modern production of The Flowering Peach, Canby analyzes the play within the context of Odets's testimony before HUAC.)
  • Cantor, Harold. Clifford Odets: Playwright-Poet. Metuchen, N.J.: The Scarecrow Press, 1978, 235 p. (Attempts to correct the "mistaken and simplistic view" that Odets is a playwright whose works no longer have relevance or validity.)
  • Choudhuri, A. D. "Golden Boy: Public Face of Illusion." In The Face of Illusion in American Drama, pp. 59-73. Atlantic Highlands, N.J.: Humanities Press, 1979. (Examines Odets' play from the perspective of the "manipulation of the concept of illusion and its conflict with reality.")
  • Demastes, William W. Clifford Odets: A Research and Production Sourcebook. New York: Greenwood Press, 1991, 209 p. (Offers exhaustive lists of works by and about Odets as well as thorough descriptions of each play, including characters, plot summary, and critical overview for each.)
  • Devlin, Diana. "Period Pieces." Drama No. 151 (1984): 48. (Reviews the collection, Clifford Odets: Six Plays, and argues why Odets's plays are important only as period pieces.)
  • Dozier, Richard J. "The Making of Awake and Sing!" The Markham Review 6 (Summer 1977): 61-5. (Compares the play in its original form and the shape it finally took with its controversial "affirmative" ending.)
  • Isaacs, Edith J. R. "Going Left with Fortune." Theatre Arts Monthly XIX, No. 5 (May 1935). (States "Waiting for Lefty" has "no clear outline or point of view except a general one of sympathy with the poor and the oppressed." Isaacs also contends that 'Till the Day I Die" "takes too much for granted in its minor roles and situations; acts too quickly … ; and is too brutal.")
  • Isaacs, Edith J. R. Review of Awake and Sing! Theatre Arts Monthly XIX, No. 4 (April 1935): 254-56. (Argues that while the play "is full of promise," it is "thin and weak in important spots and not always clear in the action.")
  • Lahr, John. "Waiting for Odets." The New Yorker (26 October 1992): 119-22. (Review of a 1992 revival of Awake and Sing! that includes an examination of Odets's work and its current relevance.)
  • Lal, Malashri. "The American Protest Theatre." The Humanities Review 2 No. 2: 16-21. (Places Waiting for Lefty and Awake and Sing! within the context of the protest theater movement of the 1930s.)
  • MacLeish, Archibald. "Theatre Against War and Fascism." New Theatre 11, No. 8 (August 1935): 3. (Favorable review of a performance of "Waiting for Lefty." MacLeish observes that "Clifford Odets and the Group and a crowded sweltering audience created among them something moving and actual and alive.")
  • Mendelsohn, Michael J. Clifford Odets: Humane Dramatist. Deland, Fla.: Everett/Edwards, 1969, 138 p. (Standard biographical material supplemented by personal interviews and correspondence with Odets.)
  • Miller, Gabriel. "The Chekhovian Vision." In his Clifford Odets, pp. 29-61. New York: The Continuum Publishing Company, 1989. (Aligns Awake and Sing! and Paradise Lost with Anton Chekhov's plays on several points, then uses the comparisons to analyze Odets's plays thematically.)
  • Miller, Gabriel. Clifford Odets. New York: Continuum, 1989, 253 p. (Seeks to "present Odets as a playwright who experimented with dramatic form while giving significant thematic and social concerns that evolved over the course of his career.")
  • Murray, Edward. Clifford Odets: The Thirties and After. New York: Frederick Ungar Publishing Co., 1968, 229 p. (Maintains that "Clifford Odets is the only American dramatist, with the possible exception of Edward Albee, worthy to be considered in the same class with Eugene O'Neill, Arthur Miller, and Tennessee Williams.")
  • Odets, Clifford. "Genesis of a Play." The New York Times (1 February 1942): IX, 3. (Offers extracts from his journal regarding the composition of Clash by Night in order to "demonstrate how certain remote thoughts and feelings collect themselves around a theatrical spine and become a play.")
  • Odets, Clifford. "Two Approaches to the Writing of a Play." The New York Times (22 April 1951): II, 1-2. (Discusses the difference between creating a play to express "a personal state of being" and merely "fabricating" one.)
  • Odets, Clifford. The Time is Ripe: The 1940 Journal of Clifford Odets. New York: Grove Press, 1988, 369 p. (An in-depth look at one year in the playwright's life, in which he surveys the creative process, his mind-set, and his career to date.)
  • Odets, Nora and Walt Whitman. "Hollywood and its Discontents." American Film XIII No. 7 (May 1988): 28-34. (Excerpt from Odets's 1940 journal that chronicles Odets in Hollywood and his thoughts on "selling out," the movie business, and his interactions with movie stars.)
  • Pearce, Richard. "'Pylon,' 'Awake and Sing!' and the Apocalyptic Imagination of the 30's." Criticism XIII No. 2 (Spring 1971): 131-41. (Examines Awake and Sing! in the context of certain literature of the 1930s which reflected "a feeling of sense-lessness and a threat of apocalypse.")
  • Pells, Richard H. "The Radical Stage and the Hollywood Film in the 1930s." In his Radical Visions and American Dreams: Culture and Social Thought in the Depression Years, pp. 252-91. Middletown, Conn.: Wesleyan University Press, 1984. (Considers how Odets' plays were intimately related to the political and social conditions of the 1930s.)
  • Review of Golden Boy. Time XXX, No. 20 (15 November 1937): 25-6. (Admires the "swift mounting of scenes [and] the extravagance of dramatic energy" in Golden Boy.)
  • Shuman, R. Baird. "Thematic Consistency in Odets' Early Plays." Revue des Langues Vivant XXXV No. 4 (1969): 415-420. (Explores themes of "nonfulfillment, personal isolation, and loneliness," which permeate Odets's early plays and inform his later works.)
  • Shuman, R. Baird. Clifford Odets. New York: Twayne Publishers, 1962, 160 p. (Argues that Odets' later plays are as important as his earlier work and explores allegorical significance in all his writings.)
  • Simon, John. "From Broadway to Berlin." New York 24, No. 3 (21 January 1991): 55-6. (Discussion of the plot and characters in The Country Girl in a review of a modern production of the play.)
  • Styan, J. L. "Realism in America: Early Variations." In his Modern Drama in Theory and Practice, Volume 1: Realism and Naturalism, pp. 122-36. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1981. (Examines Odets' use of realism in staging his agitprop plays.)
  • Vernon, Grenville. "Clifford Odets." The Commonweal XXIX, No. 8 (16 December 1938): 215. (Contends that, regardless of their stated ethnic background, Odets' characters are "always Jewish in mode of thought, in emotion, and in expression.")
  • Warshow, Robert. "Poet of the Jewish Middle Class." Commentary 1, No. 7 (May 1946): 17-22. (Explores aspects of Jewish culture and experience in Odets' works.)
  • Weales, Gerald. "Clifford's Children: It's a Wise Playwright Who Knows His Own Father." Studies in American Drama, 1945-Present 2 (1987): 3-18. (Analyzes the settings, language, and ideology of Odets' plays.)
  • Weales, Gerald. Odets the Playwright. New York: Methuen, 1985, 205 p. (Studies all of Odets' writings, from stage plays to screen plays, and includes newspaper interviews, reviews, and memoirs.)
  • Willett, Ralph. "Clifford Odets and Popular Culture." The South Atlantic Quarterly LXIX, No. 1 (Winter 1970): 68-78. (Argues that Odets' stage plays are as immersed in popular culture as his film scripts.)
  • Young, Stark. "Lefty and Nazi." The New Republic LXXXII, No. 1062 (10 April 1935): 247. (Positive evaluation of "Waiting for Lefty" and "Till the Day I Die" that focuses on the controversial nature of their content.)

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