Pirandello, Six Characters in Search of an Author: Renee Gladman's Houses of Ravicka is divided into two parts, the first of which concerns a comptroller who is looking for a house that does not seem to exist; the character paints himself as far as possible into a corner, and then the part ends and the characters are never referenced again. In her essay on the book, she writes that she was stuck on how to end that part for a long time, and then realized that if the character had no way of resolving his problem, why should she, the author, be able to resolve it for him? I found that to be a satisfying explanation--it is metafictional, but the story works just fine if you don't know that explanation at all.
I think I would've loved the Pirandello when I was younger--it's groundbreaking, anarchic, and a little stupid. But there's just too much cleverness in the text, and I'm not sure I can submit as a reader to the idea of the author having these characters and part of a story but no real sense on how to put it together. I do suspect it would work much better as an actual performed play than as a text.
Arthur Miller, Death of a Salesman: speaking of "better as a performed play than as a text". The emotional heft, such as it is, seems like it depends entirely on the right kind of staging (that the staging is innovative is taken as a given). Otherwise, better to just go read August Wilson's Fences.
[Side note: "I revered my father so much that learning he was a liar destroyed my life" seems like a very American type of disillusionment only possible with a very American amount of naivete, which is perhaps the point]
August Wilson, The Piano Lesson: I'll admit I was not expecting the ghost to actually do anything. My bad.
Tennessee Williams, A Streetcar Named Desire: well, for one, it turns out the Simpsons episode was actually a pretty good summary of the plot. Stanley's a brute, but not exactly wrong that his life was perfectly fine before Blanche showed up. Mitch's ideas of how women should behave explain why he's not married. Blanche is right that watching people die is harder than turning up for funerals, and one gets the sense that she watched a lot of people die, with no help, and so it's not surprising she can't manage herself anymore. Stella was right, but cowardly, to get out of the way once it became clear what was going to happen at home. And so there you have it: a perfectly balanced machine.
This is maybe a rare example where the obvious attention-grasping character is so very obviously wrong that there's no risk of identifying with him? Streetcar is Stanley because of Brando, but there's no cult of 'Stanley was right' as there is with other, similar properties, and not just because young people don't go to the theater or watch black-and-white movies. There's plenty of ambiguity but none about whether Blanche has been failed. Why can't they all be like this?
[Because most writers are not this skilled, nor their ideas this good. Even Tennessee Williams was not always this skilled, nor his ideas this good.
I am grateful for my aughts tv habits of Lost and How I Met Your Mother; both were shows that taught me that writers could have good ideas but not have the ability to execute them in writing, and also that writers who have good ideas can also have bad ideas and not be able to tell which are which.]
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