Beyond the Horizon (Further Reading)

Further Reading

• Black, Stephen A., Eugene O’Neill: Beyond Mourning and Tragedy, Yale University Press, 2002.

  Black is an English professor and a psychoanalyst, and he uses both of these skills in this exhaustively researched biography of O’Neill. Starting with his mother’s addiction to morphine as a result of O’Neill’s birth, the playwright’s life was plagued by a number of tragedies, including alcoholism, family strife, a string of unhappy marriages, many deaths, and the estrangement of his children.

• Brietzke, Zander, The Aesthetics of Failure: Dynamic Structure in the Plays of Eugene O’Neill, McFarland & Company, 2001.

  Although some of O’Neill’s plays are considered great works of art, other critics have noted the lack of quality in many of his published works. Brietzke examines this fact in light of O’Neill’s own theory that tragedy requires failure. The book includes a chronological listing of O’Neill’s plays, including production history, characters, and plot summaries.

• Finch, Christopher, In the Market: The Illustrated History of Financial Markets, Abbeville Press, Inc., 2001.

  In Beyond the Horizon, Andy tries his luck at investing in the commodities market, the latest of humanity’s marketplaces. Finch’s engaging book details the history of financial marketplaces from 3500 B.C. to the present. The book includes a time line of historical events, a glossary of financial terms, and more than one hundred short biographies of famous and infamous men and women in the financial world.

• Liu, Hai-Ping, and Lowell Swortzell, eds., Eugene O’Neill in China: An International Centenary Celebration, Greenwood Publishing Group, 1992.

  During the centennial celebration of O’Neill’s birth, O’Neill scholars from around the world met in China to present their latest findings. This book collects some of the notable papers that were presented at the conference. Topics include the influence of Taoism on O’Neill’s art, O’Neill’s work in relation to the work of other playwrights, O’Neill’s characterizations of women, and an examination of international productions of O’Neill’s plays.

• Shafer, Yvonne, ed., Performing O’Neill: Conversations with Actors and Directors, Palgrave, 2000.

  For this volume, Shafer, one of the leading O’Neill scholars, conducted interviews with eleven famous actors and directors who have interpreted O’Neill’s plays during the last century. Both actors and directors discuss the challenges they faced when bringing O’Neill’s gritty visions of life to the stage. The stellar list of interviewees includes James Earl Jones, Jason Robards, Theresa Wright, Theodore Mann, and Jane Alexander.

• Shaughnessy, Edward L., Down the Nights and Down the Days: Eugene O’Neill’s Catholic Sensibility, University of Notre Dame Press, 2000.

  Due to O’Neill’s renunciation of his Catholic faith as a teenager, most critics have ignored this aspect of the playwright’s life as an influence on his work. Shaughnessy, however, argues that O’Neill’s Irish-Catholic upbringing influenced the moral quality of his work and examines this idea while discussing several of O’Neill’s plays.

• Siebold, Thomas, ed., Readings on Eugene O’Neill, Greenhaven Press, 1998.

  This accessible, diverse collection of O’Neill criticism includes offerings from literary analysts, psychologists, playwrights, and reviewers. The book gives a broad perspective on O’Neill’s work without getting bogged down in specific critical debates.