Volume 16, Number 10 · June 3, 1971
Alienating Brecht
By Nigel Dennis
Brecht: The Man and His Work
by Martin Esslin
Doubleday, 400 pp., $1.95 (paper)
The Collected Works of Bertolt Brecht: Volume I, Plays
edited by Ralph Manheim, edited by John Willett
Pantheon, 441 pp., $2.95 (paper)
Saint Joan of the Stockyards
by Bertolt Brecht
Indiana University, 128 pp., $1.95 (paper)
It is nice to see a new edition of Martin Esslin's Brecht: The Man and His Work. This book has always provided the first essential of a critical biography, which is plain statements of fact about the life and work of the man concerned. When a biographer withholds such factual information or glosses it over—which he usually does because he finds it damaging to his hero or his own arguments—the result is always as untrustworthy as a lawyer's plea or a lover's vows, though, of course, like these it may have the charms of audacity and romance.
Review, 3592 words
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