Brecht and Company: Sex, Politics, and the Making of the Modern Drama

by John Fuegi

Book Overview

The result of twenty-five years of research on three continents, Brecht and Company is a revolutionary portrait of one of the world's greatest theater artists -- and the people upon whom he built his... This description may be from another edition of this product.

• Format: Hardcover
• Language: English
• ISBN: 0802115292
• ISBN13: 9780802115294
• Release Date: January 1994
• Publisher: Grove Press
• Length: 732 Pages
• Weight: 2.50 lbs.
• Dimensions: 2.3" x 6.3" x 9.3"

Customer Reviews

Readable, Provocative Bio

I read this book when it first came out, and was blown away by it. I've read (and dearly love) some of Brecht's plays and poems, but I'm not a Brecht scholar by any means, so I'm not qualified to judge its accuracy. However, as a piece of writing, the book is superb. Its portrayal of Brecht and his (alleged) thievery and (definite) all-round knavishness is stunning. Its common-sensical and jargon-free analysis of Brecht's contriubtions to theater is refreshing. If the book is inaccurate, though, all of that must go by the wayside. Still, two questions: 1) Why hasn't any comparably epic-sized, thorough, attention-getting book on Brecht been published in the past dozen years as a corrective to this book? (If one has been published, it's escaped my notice.) 2) Don't you think the negative reaction to this book has something to do with politics? Brecht is an icon of the Left, and people get mad when their idols are smashed. And a final thought: Why haven't more bios of Brecht's alleged female collaborators been written in the wake of this book?