Book Description
“Laughing wild amid severest woe” perfectly describes the fiercely ironic comedy of Christopher Durang’s Laughing Wild (which takes its title from this Thomas Gray quotation via Samuel Beckett) and the previously unpublished Baby with the Bathwater. In Laughing Wild, two comic monologues evolve into a man and a woman’s shared nightmare of modern life and the isolation it creates. From her turf battles at the supermarket to the desperate clichés of self-affirmation he learns at his “personality workshop,” they run the gamut of everyday life’s small brutalizations until they meet, with disastrous inevitability, at the Harmonic Convergence in Central Park.
Customer Reviews:
"I want Dr. Ruth and Mother Theresa to fight to the death in the Coliseum.".......2006-02-16
Always fiercely satiric, Christopher Durang fills his plays with outrage and absurdity, creating moods that vary from anger to sadness and from hilarity to the darkest, most mordant humor, sometimes within the same play. In these two plays from the 1980s, Laughing Wild (1988) and Baby with the Bathwater (1984), both said to be semi-autobiographical, Durang features a young man who speaks to the audience directly, instead of appearing in dramatic, interactive scenes with other characters, as in Sister Mary Ignatius Explains it All (1979) and in The Marriage of Bette and Boo (1985).
Laughing Wild opens with a monologue by "Woman," recently released from an institution, someone who has had a tantrum because she could not reach the tuna fish in a supermarket--a man was blocking her way. With her raucous laugh, she tells us, among other things, that she has also had an altercation with a taxi driver, has fallen in the gutter, and has not read Bleak House. Act II features a monologue by Man, a writer (played in New York by the author himself), who has recently had a confrontation with a woman in the tuna fish aisle.
As he tells about his own life and problems, his bisexuality, and the Catholic church's attitudes and pronouncements, we see him recognizing life's common absurdities. In Act III, Man and Woman reveal their identical dreams and hopes in parallel monologues. Sad, but hilariously satiric of eighties attitudes and self-help movements, Laughing Wild ultimately shows the loneliness of contemporary 1980s life.
Baby With the Bathwater begins as a farce about parenthood by two people who do not have a clue. Their little boy, named Daisy, wears dresses as a child and is unsuccessful in forming any life plans, with Durang satirizing the writer-mother, the unemployed father who crouches beside the refrigerator, and their self-absorption. Daisy is on his own in figuring out who he is and who he may become, speaking to the audience directly at the end of the play.
Over-the-top exaggerations of real life attitudes and events, farce-like humor, and biting satire make Durang's plays memorable and disquieting events, and these two plays, less famous than his Obie-award winners (Sister Mary Ignatius Explains It All, and Marriage of Bette and Boo) show his more personal, less interactive style of playwriting with its smaller, more intimate focus.
"Afterwords" for both plays provide Durang's comments on these productions. Particularly fascinating is his evaluation of the New York theater scene and his belief that "His Pontiff Rich" (NYTimes drama critic Frank Rich) has absolute power. n Mary Whipple
Two Good Plays.......2002-09-24
I would recommend this play for anyone who likes Christopher Durang. Both plays are good for any project that you would need a comedic play and/or playwrite. A must have for any drama or modern studies student.
Excellent for Student Presentations.......2001-05-23
These 2 plays are full of excellent monologues and/or scenes that work well for acting presentations. They are full of modern humor.
Through a Bath Darkly.......2001-02-21
Laughing Wild is an extraordinary journey of two people into the thinly crusted underworld of anguish and madness both they - and many of us - are struggling to keep at bay. The catalyst - an aisle in a supermarket - the weapon at hand: a tin of tuna. People negotiating with themselves, and others in a user-unfriendly environment, the overpopulated Metropolis, where normality, or at least the semblance of such, is paramount. What both characters remind us, hopefully, is the absurdity of modern life and the bravery of those social lepers who are "out there" - willing and able to access their feelings, no matter how socially unacceptable. We laugh at "the lunatic woman" - but we also envy her and wish we had the courage to voice those things we only think. The borders of what I think of as sane and loony became very blurred in this play. Thank you, Mr Durang, for that.
durang's most real play..........2000-10-22
LAUGING WILDE is the best play by Durang that I've read or seen. I usually find his plays sort of sad, with terrible bitterness at the heart of them, that, even though they're usually terribly funny, you sort of leave feeling bad that Durang is so unhappy. I've appeared as George in ACTORTS NIGHTMARE more than once, and, like most of his plays, they have these great lead ups to sort of really sad endings.
LAUGING... on the other hand gives us two characters (two very eighties characters, based on their references to Reagan and the Meese Commition) who's feelings, though in a dated context, are so relevent now to how so many people feel about the world.
The Woman's monolgue at the beginning is so wonderfully crazy and hysterical and sort of touching - this is a great peice for a great actress who understands levels and life - its so perfectly written. The Man's monologue is just so touchingly written, without being sappy, that it makes you really sit there and say - "yes! this is what I feel, too!"... at least I do.
And bringing them together in the second act is so well done - and by the end... well, what do you know, Durang gives us an ending that has hope. No bitterness. Hope. I love it.
Not the best play I've ever read, but really well done.
BABY... has one of the funniest first acts of any play I know, but sort of winds up with that bitter Durang ending that always makes me feel bad for him.
Despite this, he's one of the best absurdist playwrights today, its no wonder his plays are so popular.
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- Recent essays from a remarkable career
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The Baby and the Bathwater
Nina Coltart
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Slouching Towards Bethlehem
ASIN: 0823605353 |
Customer Reviews:
Recent essays from a remarkable career.......2000-04-29
Nina Coltart was a remarkable independent and able training analyst, teacher, and respected administrator at the (British) Institute of Psycho-Analysis for more that twenty years. She has written that since childhood, the thing she loved most was "listening to people telling me their stories." Her intense and fruitful intellectual engagement with her work was well known, and was matched by her commitment to her patients - their hearts and minds as well as their "stories." She specialized in, but was not limited to, consultations for diagnosis and assessment, and was renowned for her skill and sensitivity in referring more than 3,000 patients to especially suitable practitioners. In addition, she had read Modern Languages at Oxford at a young student - medicine came later - and so is a writer for whom the whole world is (sometimes) just barely big enough. All but one of these clear, well-organized essays were written in the past several years. In them she details her various philosophies and opinions, and offers compassionate, insightful, and sometimes thrilling stories from her clinical practice. (She successfully treated one patient with ulcerative colitis with psychotherapy.) She includes - and lovingly explains - many of her personal, relevant, and very interesting opinions. She illuminates her interest and commitment to Buddhism, and its helpfulness to her professional work, in "Buddhism and Psychoanalysis Revisited." In "Endings," her topics are death, the difference between worry and concern, termination of the analytic relationship - and much more. She notes, not insincerely, that one of the worst things about her own death will be her inability to write about it afterwards.
This is a fine collection which anyone with an interest in psychoanalysis will find valuable and pleasurable.
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- "We don't know what sex it is...The doctors said we could decide later."
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Baby with the bathwater
Christopher Durang
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Customer Reviews:
"We don't know what sex it is...The doctors said we could decide later.".......2006-01-30
Famous for his dark, absurdist comedies, Christopher Durang focuses on parenthood and early childhood here, creating a strange play in which John and Helen, new parents who have no clue about their own lives, try to cope with parenthood and its unfamiliar and unpleasant demands. Bringing home the baby, they argue about the father's reference to the baby as a "baked potato," the mother's demand for a divorce (her husband has blond hair and "I like men with dark hair"), the fact that they know nothing about toilet training and can't afford to hire someone to train the child, and a host other non-issues.
Suddenly Nanny arrives, unbidden, with her own set of demands and a device to get the baby to stop crying--a box from which a spring-loaded snake pops out, scaring it into silence. Further complications develop when a strange young girl arrives and decides to take the baby to Florida because her dog ate her own baby.
The first act, originally a one-act play, feels like one, with little development and farce-like, frantic activity which bears no resemblance to real life. The second act takes "baby" to adulthood, offering complications and glimpses of reality which make the play far more potent and more dramatic. "Baby," a four-year-old boy now called Daisy and dressed as a girl, enjoys challenging buses, which somehow always manage to stop in time. Helen, the mother, is trying to become a writer, having had success as the author of the Cliff's Notes for the books Princess Daisy and Scruples. John, the father, is unemployed and often crouches beside the refrigerator.
As Daisy grows, he has trouble in school and college, where he cannot finish a paper on Jonathan Swift for many years. He is unhappy, trying to find out who he really is, and anxious to find some peace in his life. Ultimately, he grows, unusual in an absurdist comedy, giving an emotional core to the second half of this play. The ending suggests hope for the future.
Not quite unified, the play features the same main characters in both halves of the play, but the focus of the humor changes. In Act One the humor is bold but shallow, more farce-like than in Act Two, which focuses on the damage that John and Helen have done to Daisy/Alexander and the suffering they have caused. Not as dark as The Marriage of Bette and Boo or as dramatic and satiric as Sister Mary Ignatius Explains It All, Baby with the Bathwater is Durang-Lite. n Mary Whipple
Book Description
Bob Black's 1982 review of the San Francisco-based magazine Processed World was never intended to be the opening salvo in a drawn-out conflict. The review,"Circle-A Deceit" (written for the underground newspaper Appeal To Reason), reads as a thoughtful, analytical look at the motives behind the self-proclaimed magazine "written by and for dissident office workers." Appeal to Reason's editor even offered the review to PW prior to publication for a response, but their published reaction was brutal. Incensed that Black had called their motives into question, PW began a bewildering campaign of harrassment against Black in an attempt to silence and discredit him, employing dubious police reports, engaging in a smear campaign throughout the undergound press vilifying Black in an attempt to censor his works completely, and even attempting to get a judge to prohbit Black from writing about PW at all!
A modern classic of gonzo journalism, The Baby and the Bathwater documents the conflict in full including Black's correspondence with full documentation of PW's attempts to silence their critics. This edition includes Black's recent afterword, bringing the story to its conclusion.
Book Description
This digital document is an article from Mothering, published by Thomson Gale on March 1, 2006. The length of the article is 2739 words. The page length shown above is based on a typical 300-word page. The article is delivered in HTML format and is available in your Amazon.com Digital Locker immediately after purchase. You can view it with any web browser.
Citation Details
Title: Baby and the bathwater: tub time shouldn't be a health hazard. Find out how to make sure your baby products are free of dangerous chemicals.
Author: Rachel Swain
Publication:
Mothering (Magazine/Journal)
Date: March 1, 2006
Publisher: Thomson Gale
Issue: 135
Page: 48(8)
Distributed by Thomson Gale
Book Description
This digital document is an article from Australian Journal of Education, published by Australian Council for Educational Research on November 1, 2004. The length of the article is 6267 words. The page length shown above is based on a typical 300-word page. The article is delivered in HTML format and is available in your Amazon.com Digital Locker immediately after purchase. You can view it with any web browser.
Citation Details
Title: Don't throw out the baby with the bathwater: the case for a reformed SES funding scheme.(socio-economic status)
Author: Louise Watson
Publication:
Australian Journal of Education (Refereed)
Date: November 1, 2004
Publisher: Australian Council for Educational Research
Volume: 48
Issue: 3
Page: 227(12)
Distributed by Thomson Gale
Book Description
This digital document is an article from Journal of Psychology and Theology, published by Thomson Gale on September 22, 2006. The length of the article is 2876 words. The page length shown above is based on a typical 300-word page. The article is delivered in HTML format and is available in your Amazon.com Digital Locker immediately after purchase. You can view it with any web browser.
Citation Details
Title: Hermeneutics and dialogue as tools toward integration: babies and bathwater, problems and solutions.
Author: James M. Nelson
Publication:
Journal of Psychology and Theology (Magazine/Journal)
Date: September 22, 2006
Publisher: Thomson Gale
Volume: 34
Issue: 3
Page: 276(4)
Distributed by Thomson Gale
Book Description
In a comprehensive study of four decades of military policy, Brian McAllister Linn offers the first detailed history of the U.S. Army in Hawaii and the Philippines between 1902 and 1940. Most accounts focus on the months preceding the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor. By examining the years prior to the outbreak of war, Linn provides a new perspective on the complex evolution of events in the Pacific. Exhaustively researched, Guardians of Empire traces the development of U.S. defense policy in the region, concentrating on strategy, tactics, internal security, relations with local communities, and military technology.
Linn challenges earlier studies which argue that army officers either ignored or denigrated the Japanese threat and remained unprepared for war. He demonstrates instead that from 1907 onward military commanders in both Washington and the Pacific were vividly aware of the danger, that they developed a series of plans to avert it, and that they in fact identified—even if they could not solve—many of the problems that would become tragically apparent on 7 December 1941.
Customer Reviews:
Strategic Context for the pre-WW2 era.......2005-10-16
Linn notes that the big question of WWII is, "why, with almost four decades to prepare, these (US Army) military forces proved unable to defend the nation's Pacific possessions against Japan." The author notes that the traditional approach has been to focus on events in the short-term prior to Japan's attack on Pearl Harbor and the Philippines, however his effort is to, "offer a somewhat longer perspective through a narrative history of the U.S. Army in Hawaii and the Philippines from 1902 to 1940....its task is not to delineate the road to Pearl Harbor, but to illuminate the numerous paths the army trod in its long search for a viable Pacific defense....For years it had foreseen both the threat and its own inability to ward it off." From a strategic perspective, this book does a good job of putting America's failure into context. It points out that although the surprise attack of 7 December 1941 was not detected, from a military capabilities standpoint there was little the Army could have done. Although I believe one needs to be careful with historical parallels, a student of strategy can see how political and economic considerations drive strategy. Indeed, a similar issue between today (2004) and then was the tension between what is required to hold ground when forces are deployed vs. the ability to deploy and sustain those same forces over a great deal of distance.
Excellent, but be wary about strategy evaluation.......2005-03-31
This is a splendid and pioneering study of the Army in the Pacific, a subject badly in need of more light that it has hitherto received. It brings the Pacific Army to life in a way that no one else had even attempted.
Like any book, however, it has its limitations, and as is usually true it is the ones that author was not aware of (at least at the time) and did not flag for our attention that we must take most care of. In this case the principal limitation lies in strategic view.
The Philippines, as the author makes clear, never had any intrinsic significance for the United States (or for the earlier colonial power, Spain, for that matter) -- no riches or resources to be reaped. The sole significance of the islands lay in their position. Initially, Americans had calculated (like the Spaniards before them) that possession of Manila would provide an important advantage in gaining the rewards of the rich China trade. Luzon and the rest of the islands simply came with the deal. Almost as soon as they had been seized, however, other events eroded Manila's importance in this role greatly. (Perhaps we should say "seeming importance," as there never were the prospects which had been envisioned in 1898.) Finding themselves in possession of a colony of little value, Americans not unnaturally felt reservations about spending large sums to garrison and defend it. Thus a purely nominal force was assigned to its defense, adequate only for internal security and the assertion of sovereignty. The oft-proclaimed "bastion" of the Philippines was in reality no more than a sentry post, bound to be overrun quickly in any serious assault. To invest in a real Philippine fortress or in mobile forces strong enough to quickly relieve it would involve an expense that few Americans could see as justified.
Distant events changed all that. By the late 1930s, of course, the propensity of Japan for aggressive military expansion was manifest, but that did not seem particularly threatening in itself, given that the economic resources of the country were so small relative to those of the U.S. But the outbreak of the European War in 1939, followed by the Nazi defeat of France and threat to Britain in 1940, heightened American security concerns vastly. Then in September, 1940, Japan joined the Axis Pact, making itself an ally of Germany. Japan had intended this to change American perceptions and it did that, but not in the way that had been hoped. Japan ceased to be a disagreeable nuisance in a distant place and instead clearly became a potential part of a serious threat, to be blocked if possible and crushed if necessary. Very suddenly, the importance of the Philippines' geographic position changed dramatically.
It is this transition that Prof. Linn misses in focusing on the local realities rather than the global strategic picture that dominated the awareness of Washington decision-makers in 1940-41. This broader reality is well presented in Waldo Heinrichs, "Pearl Harbor in a Global Context," in _Pearl Harbor Revisited_, edited by Robert W. Love, Jr. (London: Macmillan, 1995) (ISBN 0312095937), and in more extended fashion in the same author's _Threshold of War: Franklin D. Roosevelt and American Entry into World War II_, (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1988) (ISBN 0195061683). For the same issue from a different perspective see Gerhard L. Weinberg, "Global Conflict: The Interaction Between the European and Pacific Theaters of War in World War II," in _Germany, Hitler, and World War II: Essays in Modern German and World History_, (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1995) (ISBN 0521474078), or his book, _A World at Arms: A Global History of World War II_, (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1994) (ISBN 0521558794).
Beginning with the Japanese occupation of Vietnam in July of 1941, thereby making manifest their determination to continue down the road of active alliance with Hitler, the U.S. began to rush all available military power to the Philippines, reserving only that which was essential to the security of America itself. But years of penuriousness and neglect had left the cupboard largely bare, and re-armament was yet to produce major material results. So the Philippine defenders, like the exposed sentry, became casualties of the brutally inexorable logic of war. Brian Linn's book provides a major and largely-overlooked piece of this picture, but is somewhat weak on the overall context.
There are also other sources which the interested reader may wish to consult in order to get a fuller picture. These include John J. Stephan, _Hawaii Under the Rising Sun: Japan's Plans for Conquest After Pearl Harbor_, (Honolulu: University of Hawai'i Press, 1984) (0824825500) and the article by Richard B. Meixsel, "Major General George Grunert, WPO-3, and the Philippine Army, 1940-1941," _Journal of Military History_, 59, No. 2 (Apr 1995): 303-24. Both offer insights not fully captured by Linn. In a more recent article, "Manuel L. Quezon, Douglas MacArthur, and the Significance of the Military Mission to the Philippine Commonwealth," _Pacific Historical Review_, 70, No. 2: 255-92, Meixsel introduces some new evidence regarding the events in the Philippines in the 1930s and uses it to call into question some of Linn's claims.
While I have focused on its limitations, I want to emphasize again that this is a very valuable and unique book, even taking them fully into account.
harshly critical of MacArthur.......2003-09-24
Brian Linn believes that the American annexation of the Philippines damaged rather than helped the U.S. position in East Asia. Even before the outbreak of the Second World War, American military planners knew that the Philippines were extremely vulnerable to Japanese invasion but were relunctant to raise a native force that could also be a threat to the American Army. The security problems only became worse when before the attack on Pearl Harbor, MacArthur authorized the defence of the entire Philippines and not just the Bataan peninsular. As a result of America's fear of a native force to protect the Philippines and MacArthur's overly ambitious plans, the United State suffered a humiliating defeat to the Japanese in 1942. I would reccomend this book foy anyone who believes that a new American empire would enhance national security but has ignored the disasterous example of the American experience with the Philippines.
"A brilliant work by an up and coming author...".......2001-10-18
With these words, Professor Linn introduced his American Military History class to his book Guardians of Empire. Even though we were not required to read all of the chapters, I found myself wanting to finish the book due to its captivating nature.
While perhaps lacking the dry humor and probing questions of his lectures, the book manages to provide a striking look at the interwar Army, challenging common assertions of Army doctrine and planning. In the final chapter, Dr. Linn notes that in the search for what happened in 1941, people rarely go back past 1940. This book is an attempt to do exactly that. It probes the decisions, dogma and lifestyle of the American Army in the interwar period.
Wonderfully written and solidly researched, Guardians provides the best treatment of the American interwar establishment to date.
Best book available on the subject........1999-06-17
This book is extremely well done and spells out the history of American involvement in the Pacific after 1898 much better than anything else on the market. Although Miller's WAR PLAN ORANGE is also an interesting book, but from the navy's point of view, I feel this one is much better done. Highly recommend this work to anyone wanting background on the Pacific War.
Product Description
In a comprehensive study of four decades of military power, Brian Linn offers the first detailed history of the U. S. Army in Hawaii and the Philippines between 1902 and 1940.
Book Description
This digital document is an article from Pacific Affairs, published by University of British Columbia on June 22, 1999. The length of the article is 645 words. The page length shown above is based on a typical 300-word page. The article is delivered in HTML format and is available in your Amazon.com Digital Locker immediately after purchase. You can view it with any web browser.
Citation Details
Title: Guardians of Empire: The U.S. Army and the Pacific, 1902-1940.(Review)
Author: Nicholas Evan Sarantakes
Publication:
Pacific Affairs (Refereed)
Date: June 22, 1999
Publisher: University of British Columbia
Volume: 72
Issue: 2
Page: 315(2)
Article Type: Book Review
Distributed by Thomson Gale
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