Glen Campbell’s life is a journey. My life too. With Joseph Campbell
it should be "life is a journey", in quotes.
----- Original Message -----
*From:* Andy Amago <mailto:aamago@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>
*To: *lit-ideas <mailto:lit-ideas@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>
*Sent:* 12/26/2005 9:56:04 PM
*Subject:* [lit-ideas] Six Characters in Search of an Author
I finished reading Six Characters in Search of an Author. I want
to say that the following are simply notes, quick thoughts and
direct quotations without credit from the Internet, although I do
indicate when I’m plagiarizing. It’s written with total stylistic
abandon.
I can’t say I loved the play, but, I did get a sense of the
surrealism in it. I couldn’t help but notice that it’s a play that
had to be written in the 1920’s and not, for example in the 1820’s
or even the 1890’s. It was revolutionary for its time, like much
of the literary and artistic work of the early 20th century.
Audiences actually rioted when it was first produced.
The early 20th century had to be a wonderful time to be in
literature and the arts. The atomic age was dawning; Einstein’s
relativity had just come along, together with Heisenberg and his
principle of uncertainty. The Industrial Age had a tremendous
impact on architecture. The Heisenberg principle alone explains
the inevitability of surrealism. I want to say this sounds
obvious, but I’ve never heard it expressed on this list, so maybe
it’s not so obvious.
Six Characters also is consistent with the discovery of
unconscious motivation by Freud, and it foreshadows the discovery
of post traumatic stress disorder (my words) as well as the work
of Joseph Campbell (my words). Quoting from the Internet:
“Six people arrive in a theatre during rehearsals for a play. But
they are not ordinary people. They are the characters of a play
that has not yet been written [Joseph Campbell’s life is a
journey]. Trapped inside a traumatic event from which they long to
escape [a veritable definition of PTSD], they desperately need a
writer to complete their story and release them [contemporary
psychotherapy, indeed the whole New Age thing is about telling
one’s story; Toni Morrison was mentioned recently]. Intrigued by
their situation, the director and his company of actors listen as
the characters begin to describe and argue over the key events of
their lives...One of the most extraordinary and mysterious plays
of the 20th century, Six Characters speaks directly to an age of
uncertainty: where do we come from, where are we going, how do we
become what we want to be?”
More from the Internet: "Pirandellian themes like the relativity
of truth [very early and mid 20th century], the constantly
changing nature of personal identity, or the difficulty of
distinguishing between reality and illusion or between sanity and
madness all have a common thread—they all point to uncertainty as
a significant part of human experience. As John Gassner has
observed, Pirandello was consistently "expressing a conviction
that nothing in life is certain except its uncertainty.'"
I can’t at the moment see how this play is seminal per se,
however. Its concepts sprang out of and reflected much of the
early and mid 20th century, but I can’t think of any works that it
would have directly influenced or spawned. Anybody have any ideas?
Other than the Twilight Zone or Woody Allen’s movie where the
character comes off the screen? Or even indirectly?
