WHERE IS EUGENE O’NEILL?

WHERE IS EUGENE O’NEILL? Terry Teachout asks where Eugene O’Neill is on David Mamet’s list. A clue is in the emphasis that Mamet gives to “poetry.” Teachout quotes Mamet: “‘It is the vulgate, and is as poetic as the sports page or the blues,’ he writes of common American speech in THEATRE.” I think that my earlier post explains what happened to O’Neill. The American vernacular of the early part of the twentieth century is very much out of fashion—considered to be almost corny. The language of O’Neill, Tarkington, Runyan, O. Henry is held against them. A problem with the use of vernacular is that language changes.