Vendor
	Mohrbooks Literary Agency Sebastian Ritscher
Original language
English
Categories
Memoirs

BY WOMEN POSSESSED

Barbara Gelb Author Gelb

A Life of Eugene O’Neill

Celebrated for their books on Eugene O’Neill and enjoying access to a trove of previously sealed archival material, the Gelbs deliver their final volume on the stormy life and brilliant oeuvre of this Nobel Prize–winning American playwright.

This is a tour through both a magical moment in American theater and the troubled life of a genius. Not a peep show or a celebrity gossip fest, this book is a brilliant investigation of the emotional knots that ensnared one of our most important playwrights. Handsome, charming when he wanted to be: O’Neill was the flame women were drawn to—all, that is, except his mother, who never let him forget he was unwanted.

By Women Possessed follows O’Neill through his great successes, the failures he was able to shrug off, and the long eclipse, a twelve-year period in which, despite the Nobel, nothing he wrote was produced. But ahead lay his greatest achievements: The Iceman Cometh and Long Day’s Journey into Night. Both were ahead of their time and both received lukewarm receptions.

It wasn’t until after his death that his widow, the keeper of the flame, began a fierce and successful campaign to restore his reputation. The result is that today, just over 125 years after his birth, O’Neill is a towering presence in the theater, his work—always in performance here and abroad—still electrifying audiences. Perhaps of equal importance, he is the acknowledged father of modern American theater, the man who paved the way for the likes of Arthur Miller, Tennessee Williams, Edward Albee, and a host of others. But, as Williams has said, at a cost: “O’Neill gave birth to the American theater and died for it.”

Available products
Book Published 2016-11-01 by Putnam
Book Published 2016-11-01 by Putnam

Comments

“This extraordinary book is the final chapter in a fifty-year effort to help us to know and understand our greatest dramatist. Barbara Gelb and her late husband, Arthur, have given us the most important resource in illuminating the life and work of Eugene O’Neill.” —Brian Dennehy

“Besides drawing a precise and stirring portrait of the genre-defining writer’s tortured and inspired career, the Gelbs – Arthur passed away in 2014 while completing this project to which the couple dedicated both of their nearly 70-year careers – also present a fascinating account of the world of American theater in the first half of the 20th century.” —Harper’s Bazaar

A compellingly full-size portrait of a literary titan.

Arthur and Barbara Gelb cornered the market on Eugene O’Neill with their celebrated biographies O’Neill and O’Neill: Life with Monte Cristo. You wouldn’t think there’d be much more to say, but several years ago, they discovered unpublished diaries by O’Neill’s third wife, Carlotta Monterey. The result is the fascinating By Women Possessed…Not for the faint of heart…But neither, for the most part, are O’Neill’s plays.

This is a compelling examination of one of the 20th century’s most passionate and troubled minds, and a prime example of expert, diligent, and wryly editorial biographical research.

Their illuminating third volume, bolstered by his third wife Carlotta Monterey’s previously unreleased diaries, reevaluates the influence of his mother and his three wives. When his morphine-addicted mother Ella told him she wished he’d never been born, she betrayed O’Neill in a way he would never forgive. His love-hate for her shaped his work and his marriages to Kathleen Jenkins, fiction writer Agnes Boulton and Carlotta. The Gelbs describe how, after his death at 65 in 1953, Carlotta mounted productions of The Iceman Cometh and Long Day’s Journey into Night, solidifying his legendary status

The Gelbs are renowned for their Eugene O’Neill biographies, and the new one…is packed with riveting details and rich portraits of O’Neill and the people in his life, particularly third wife Carlotta. It’s also just a great read. The relationship of Eugene and Carlotta is shown as loving at times, shot through with angst and anger at others; oh, the drama!…By Women Possessedis a fine last legacy, a tribute to his and his wife’s work and their fascination with and exploration of O’Neill.