13 - “Words; words... They’re such a pleasure.” (An Afterword)

Summary

My title is spoken by FAM in Albee's early short play FAM and YAM (1960), which terminates with that character's startled realization that he has just been interviewed. Albee himself has indulged in so many interviews that critics sift through his remarks for those that bolster the particular argument. I will avoid that temptation, quoting only from Albee's drama, his significant domain. Despite the source of my title, I will examine Albee's words in his published full-length plays, considered chronologically. In those plays, the very words about words in the dialogue reflect the pleasure of Edward Albee, a famous American playwright.

Albee’s early short plays already display his typical language structures and textures while they further the plot, reveal character, or enunciate theme. The Zoo Story (1959) notoriously contains Jerry’s monologal dog story as a rhythmic variant on his verbal thrusts at Peter. Jerry’s monologue exemplifies one of Albee’s main rhetorical patterns, while the other pattern is heard in Jerry’s slashes at Peter. Albee’s following one-act plays retain these dialogue structures, but the texture can vary. The Death of Bessie Smith (1960) again sports only one character with colorful language, and again that character, the Nurse, intersperses her vitriolic taunts (against Father, Orderly, Intern) with short monologues of self-disgust.2 Albee’s satiric The American Dream (1961) and The Sandbox (1960) are awash with the clich´es of middle-class America, and Grandma implies that the American family is mired in illusion.