Introduction: How to Read This Book

Summary

The unusual shape of this book comes from the shape of an idea that is at its core: dual¬ism that does not resolve (re + solvere, to loosen, release—more at “solve”) but results (re + saltare, to leap). A play and a house, a husband and a wife, a chronicle and a history, one¬ness and war: these and other binaries are brought to the reader here in one book that is two. There is no simple way to do that math, or to take in this book, which asks for a kind of binocular viewing. On the left is a sort of timeline of an extended “moment” when Long Day's Journey was written, typed, and released, and the point of that chronicle is to ground the writing act in the material and temporal reality of two people in their lives. On the right are chapters that tell the story of how the play fits in the house, in the marriage, and in history.

The diary portion of the book is filled with details, some of it trivial. The word “lunch” appears 60 times in these excerpts from Carlotta's diary, and not once does she mention what they ate. Even more maddeningly, she frequently writes something like “We read in the evening,” without saying what they read. His diary usually reports only the barest facts about his progress in writing, along with a note about a doctor visit or a swim in the pool. They both record some famous visitors, reflections on family, and deep conversations, but much of this chronicle passes like those pages of a daily calendar that flutter away to indicate the passage of time in old movies. Still, the two diaries give shape and substance to the time when a great play was written, and you can feel the upsurge of that event. Biographical notes and narrations fill out the context and gaps, but the focus is always on the intersection of time/place and play. The event chronicled here is the creation of a great play, but the argument here is that the creation comes from both author and house, and so Gene and Carlotta should be seen as, in a sense, co-creators. The chapters, on the other hand, build new interpretations that can be constructed from this intersection of play and house, husband and wife, and the past and the present.