I don't impute craftiness to Huston—at the time of making the film, anyway.He took a giant first step, as large as hewas presumably permitted at the time,maybe even a bit further. Milestonesare honorable, essential: Light is a mile-stone. But—and it's not the first in-stance—suppression has helped itsreputation.

Nine to five is a comedy, it says. Incon-gruity is an essence of comedy. Whatcould be more incongruous than toquote Plato apropos of Nine to Five? Heregoes, from Book X of The Republic:

There are jests which you would beashamed to make yourself, ^nd yet onthecomic stage . . . when you hear them,you are greatly amused by them, and arenot at all disgusted at their unseemli-ness. . . . There is a principle in humannature which is disposed to raise a laugh,and this, which you once restrained byreason because you were afraid of beingthought a buffoon, is now let outagain. . . .

I guess I'm feeling guilty because Ilaughed a couple of times at this crock.

Nine to Five is not a comedy. It's an actof desperation, trying for laughs by anymeans—from comedy through farce toburlesque. The picture has one resem-blance to ComiiJg Home. Jane Fonda is inboth of them and gave the impressionbefore each that a serious subject wasto be treated seriously: in the earlierpicture, Vietnam; in this picture, themale exploitation, sexual and other-wise, of female employees and co-work-ers in business. Both films fizzled. Nineto Five is disgusting not because it's acomedy but because it is not. It's anold-style exploitation flick, exploitinganother current hot topic.

It starts with a pretty good graph ofthe territory. A huge office floor of a bigcompany is dominated by a vain male.Lily Tomlin is the knowledgeable assis-tant, cynical but competent and loyal;Jane Fonda is the newcomer, a divorceereturning to business after years in thehousehold. For a while, their problemsring true. But Dolly Parton is unbeliev-able from Moment One as the boss'spersonal aide for whom he lusts. I'veseen women in offices who were al-legedly hired for their sexual possibili-ties. It was notorious 30 years ago that abig New York book publisher alwayshad an easy lay on the staff who wasbilled as an editorial assistant; but shelooked like an editorial assistant. Partonis dressed and directed like a caricature.

And the boss's advances toward her

are caricatures. If he devises ways tosneak looks down her cleavage, OK,though Parton would have had to bementally deficient to wear dresses likethat on the job. But when he chasesher—literally—around his office, grab-bing and missing and falling, with thedoor unlocked, the picture begins to gostupid. It goes very much stupider: atone point Fonda just accidentally missesmurdering the boss with a pistol. Lack ofconviction and brains takes its toll early.The absence of both quickly convertsthe women's vengeance into a base fora lot of incredibly incredible and offen-sive "comic" shenanigans. Anyone who

laughs at the humiliation of the man inthis film is, 1 think, humiliating women,who are being exploited again in fakeexpose of their business exploitation.

It was directed by Colin Higgins, whoperpetrated Harold and Maude. He wroteit with Patricia Resnick. Fonda has nocharacter, just some novice stuff at thestart and some non-novice stuff later.Parton quickly passes from sweet vul-nerability to pneumatic nuisance. Tom-lin, who manages simultaneously tolook like an attractive woman and ahigh-spirited filly in an animated film,has real comic gifts and managed to geta few laughs out of me. Plato, forgive.

Robert Brustein on theaterCrossed Purposes

I went to Sam Shepard's True West (Mar-tinson Theater) expecting a significantevent. The evening was significant, butnot quite in the way I had anticipated.What it revealed was an importanttheater in a state of momentarydisarray.

For all its problems, the New YorkPublic Theater undoubtedly has beenresponsible for the most interestingproductions thus far this season: LeeBreuer's A Prelude to Death in Venice,JoAnne Akalaitis's The Dead End Kids,Andr^ Serban's The Sea Gull. Eveningslike these have provided what little dis-tinction currently can be found in theNew York theater, and the only groundsfor hope. At the Public, one feels theatri-cal artists throwing off inherited con-ventions, challenging the audience withnew experiences, breaking the crust ofcold earth to discover warm fertilesprings beneath.

Each of these productions has beenthe result of Joseph Papp's traditionalpolicy of offering space, facilities, en-couragement to imaginative radicaltheater innovators, at a time whenmoney and resources are scarce. Al-though this policy has earned for theNew York Shakespeare Festival a well-deserved reputation for generosity,Papp's motives never have been entirelyaltruistic. As a paternal theatrical bene-factor, Papp always is responsive tonew talent; as a practical producer feed-ing hungry mouths, he also needs toearn some bread. Ever since the con-ventional sources of unearned income

went dry, Papp has been looking foranother commercial oil well like A Chor-us Line, the bonanza that has kept histheater functioning. Certain recentprojects—the Wilford Leach productionof The Pirates of Penzance, for e x a m p l e —very probably were developed withBroadway in mind, just as Alice in Con-cert—the Elizabeth Swados version ofAlice in Wom/fr/dfii/, starring Meryl Streep—seems to have been undertaken as apilot stage project for an NBC televisionspectacular. On the face of it, an arcaneexperimental theater company such asMabou Mines is hardly in a position toprovide Papp with a long-running Broad-way hit, but it has been his habit first toencourage workshop productions bythe most interesting and innovativeAmerican theater people—Foreman,Leach, Serban, Swados—and then tomatch them with a commercially viableproject {Threepenny Opera, Pirates of Pen-zance. Umbrellas of Cherbourg, Runaways) inthe hope of refining crude oil intoExxon Supreme.

The procedure is similar to the waycertain large corporations underwriteresearch and development programs.By luring away some unworldly geniusfrom his university laboratory, the cor-porate executives hope to put the scien-tist's basic research to profitable com-mercial use. In industry and medicine,this process has been responsible foradvances in DNA research, for thedevelopment of the integrated circuit(or silicon wafer chip), in fact for mostof the recent breakthroughs in modern

January 31, 1981 21

scientific and technological products.What's wrong with this, aside from theway it corrupts the aims of pure science?Not much, really. The only problemarises when the corporate producer, inhis impatience to get results, begins topush his researcher a little harder thanhe wants to go.

On the premise that what's goodenough for Hi Tech groups is goodenough for theater, the same thingseems to have been happening lately atthe Public. In his eagerness to clone AChorus Line, Mr. Papp has begun tointervene in the creative process of hishouse artists, with the result that, with-in a matter of weeks, Andr^ Serban wasremoved from the production oi Alice inConcert, Robert Woodruff resigned fromthe production of True Wesi. and SamShepard repudiated his own play, de-claring that he would never again giveanother work to the Public Theater.This theatrical Saturday Night Massa-cre was unquestionably the result ofMr. Papp's effort to accelerate the pro-cess of creation. Whether it actuallyimproved the productions is a matter ofdebate, but it certainly provided deli-cious material for the media mills, mostof it speculation on the character ofJoseph Papp. This obscures the realissue, which has little to do with wheth-er Papp is kind to crippled children. Theissue, rather, is the desperate state ofthe non-profit movement, whose verysurvival has grown so dependent ongrinding out hits for Broadway.

Papp was entirely within his rights intaking over the productions of Alice andTrue Wfs(—and not just legally, the wayRichard Nixon was empowered to re-move Archibald Cox through the goodoffices of his attorney general. It is quitepossible that the productions werefoundering, and required a producer'sintervention. The confusion arises overwhether Papp is developing artists orproducing shows, whether the Public isdevoted to experimental workshops orpre-Broadway tryouts. Until Mr. Pappclarifies his own role as a producer, andthe function of his theaters, he is indanger either of alienating the talentedpeople who work there, or instilling inthem a cynical opportunism. Neitheralternative provides inviting conditions

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for serious creation.The present production of True West

is a case in point. It is heartbreaking inits failed opportunities. Not so muchmisdirected as undirected, it has thelook of a show, the feel of a workshop.Shepard and Woodruff apparently as-sumed they would give Papp the sameproduction of the play they did at theMagic Theater, including two San Fran-cisco actors in the leads, while Pappapparently assumed he was buyingsomething that would bring financialreturns, enhanced by Shepard's recentPulitzer Prize for Buried Child. Theplay rehearsed to the accompanimentof a lot of fanfare, including a longarticle about this reticent playwright inthe magazine section of the New YorkTime$; New York was primed for aserious "hit," Under these pressures,you don't go with the San Franciscoequivalent of an off-off-Broadway cast,even if the director and playwrightdemand it; you go for movie actors. Theresult? Tommy Lee Jones and PeterBoyle.

E VEN WHEN such actors deliver, asPeter Boyle does splendidly, the

purpose of the presentation getsclouded. The production has no unity,no style, no control. It's a wonder theactors aren't bumping into each other.Even so, the first act of True )Neit comesthrough, largely because of Shepard'sstubborn neo-Pinteresque power. It is adazzling piece of writing—terse, sug-gestive, mystifying, intense. In the sec-ond act, however, when Shepard's in-spiration flags, the faults of the pro-duction become glaring. Like Seduced,Shepard's recent play about HowardHughes, True West has the feeling of afirst draft, Shepard rarely revises any ofhis work extensively, but at his best (inBuried Child, for example), the initialrush can carry him through. In TrueWest, his impulse is not sustained; theplay looks thin, even emaciated, like ahealthy organism turning anorexic be-fore your eyes.

The play is about role reversal. Aus-tin, a successful Hollywood screen-writer, lives comfortably in his moth-er's house, while his brother Lee—ashambling, paranoid, lopsided drifter—spends his time in the desert, emergingoccasionally to steal appliances out ofsuburban homes. Just when Austin isabout to sell a script to a Hollywoodproducer. Lee interrupts to describe ascript idea of his own based partly onhis experience, partly on an old Kirk

Douglas movie. Lonely Are the Brave.When the bedazzled producer unac-countably offers a munificent advancefor this bizarre Western, and drops hisoption on Austin's work. Lee forcesAustin to write the script. At the sametime that Lee is turning his eyes onHollywood, Austin is turning his eyestoward the desert and, to prove howliberated he is from middle-class values,steals 10 toasters from the homes of hisneighbors. The two of them get drunkand wreck their mother's kitchen. Whenshe returns, she witnesses her two sonsengaged in an epic battle during whichAustin almost strangles Lee to deathwith a telephone cord. The play endswith the brothers locked in deadly em-brace under a crescent moon.

True West is fascinating as long as itsdesign is hidden; finally, its very sym-metry undermines its mystery, I sus-pect the work will ultimately be ofinterest mainly to Shepard's biogra-phers, for it is possible to detect in thetension between the two brothers apersonal meaning for the playwright. Ihave a feeling that Lee and Austinrepresent two aspects of Shepard'scareer —the increasingly renowned play-wright and movie actor on the onehand, the freewheeling coffeehousewriter and carefree musician on theother. It may be that Shepard is work-ing something out in this play, a kind ofnostalgia for his past life, which heassociates with the real or true West, asopposed to "shopping in the Safeway,riding on the Freeway," the suburbantraps in which "There's nothing realdown here anymore—least of all me."

The real Shepard is certainly not ondisplay at the Public, and that, too, maybe the price he is paying for his fame.Peter Boyle aione gives us a glimpse ofauthentic Shepard, moving through thespace of the Martinson Theater like ahuge tramp steamer pushing clumsilyinto port—his jaw slack, his hair lank,hisbody lumpy asif he had been pouredinto his clothes. It is he alone who pro-vides the danger and menace of theplay. Tommy Lee Lones, on the otherhand, playing his entire part on a singlenote, never departs from his cool moviepersona, even when he is supposed tobe drunk, and thus never convinces usthat he shares any blood with Boyle,David Gropman's set is appropriate inits characterless neatness, and HankWilliams's Country and Western songsprovide a proper musical background —but the evening generally seems to bean exercise in sloppiness, without

22 The New Republic

even the excuse of being a work inprogress.

And that, ultimately, is the reallypathetic thing about this exercise—thatone of the few genuine dramatic writ-ers of our time should have been soshamefully mishandled, I share JosephPapp's doubts about the professionalcapacities of Robert Woodruff and Isuspect that, under the circumstances,he was probably correct in interveningwhen he did. But it is one thing tolaunch a fully professional production

of this play, aimed for the commercialmarket; it is quite another to pretend tooffer the conditions of a workshop,where the process of development is asimportant as the results. At present,Mr. Papp is confusing the purposes andthe personnel of the experimentaltheater with those of the commercialstage, and thereby serving neither Godnor Mammon well. Perhaps now thatPirates of Penzance has proved a gusher, hewill be able to relax the pressures on hisartists and let them do their work.

Virginia Woolf in her last letters.

Enemies Within and Withoutby Edwin J, Kenney Jr.

Volume VI of Virginia Woolf's Letters,which contains letters written between1936 and 1941, completes the publica-tion of The Letters of Virginia Woolf, editedby Nigel Nicolson and Joanne Traut-mann. Just as this final volume is only apart of the collected Letters, so too it isonly a partial record of the years 1936to 1941. To be properly understood, theletters must be read not only as a com-plement to Woolf's public writings ofthis period—her novels The Years andBetween the Acts, her biography of RogerFry, and her feminist pamphlet. ThreeGuineas—but also as a counterpoint toher diary, which is now being publishedin its entirety under the editorship ofAnne Olivier Bell, and to her autobio-graphical memoirs composed duringthis time, some of which have been pub-lished as Moments of Being, edited byJeanne Schulkind. Such a context isnecessary to define and understand thepeculiar nature of Woolf's letters andtheir relation to the final act of her life,her suicide.

Over the years of publication of theindividual volumes of The Letters of Vir-ginia Woolf, many reviewers have praisedthem as"vibrant,""brilliant,""enchant-ing," and "wicked." But the most perva-sive characteristic of the collected Lettersis their ordinariness. Woolf's is not aliterary correspondence, for she doesnot openly discuss her fiction; it is not

Edwin }. Kenneif jr. teaches literature atColby College, Maine, and is the authorof Elizabeth Bowen (Bucknell UniversityPress),

philosophical, and it certainly does notdemonstrate any historical or politicalcomprehension of world events. How-ever, this ordinariness is so powerfulthat it must be understood not as alapse, which a few critics have charged,but as an achievement, an act of will.

In Moments of Being Woolf reveals thatshe always felt life on two distinct lev-els, which she called "being" and "non-being." She defined non-being as the"nondescript cotton wool" of daily life.She considered the painful "sledge-hammer" blows of fate as "being," notonly because they were intense, butalso because she believed that suchblows were "tokens of some real thingbehind appearances," Virginia was am-bivalent about both non-being andbeing. Non-being might be nondescriptappearance, but it was safe and re^assur-ing; being might he the "revelation ofsome order," but the revelation wasthreatening and the order was uncer-tain. In non-being the self was theauthor of the action. In being the selfwas only an actor, only a part of a workof art, whose creator and whose endwere unknown, for "certainly there isno God."

In her letters more than in any of herother writing, Virginia Woolf confinedherself to the cotton wool of daily life,without discussing her "mountain sum-mit moments" of revelation. In this wayshe demonstrated almost daily to herfriends and herself that everything wasall right and that she was all right—safeand normal. This deliberate limitationof scope is especially apparent in the last

volume of letters, written during thetime of Virginia's mourning the deathsof her friend Roger Fry and her nephewJulian Bell, her anxieties at the destruc-tion of Britain during the war, and hergrowing fears of insanity. In her lettersWooif characteristically and obsessivelyfocuses on the minor irritations of dailydomestic life: the getting of lunch anddinner, the buying of garters, the sever-ity of the cold, the noise of workmen,the aches of the flu, the interruption ofvisitors, the pruning of the yews, thebreeding of pets. Woolf is crotchety andoften funny about these matters, butthe overwhelming impression is thatshe is willfully restricting her attentionto the ordinary to avoid "blows" thatwere terrible and deeply felt. The readerof the Letters knows that somethingmore was going on, for on March 28,1941, Virginia Woolf filled her pocketswith stones and drowned herself in theicy Sussex Ouse, But with a few tellingexceptions and the suicide notes to herhusband and sister, most of her lettersprattle on. If one did not know thatWoolf killed herself, one would notconsider these letters those of a deeplydisturbed person. But in hindsight, theknowledge that these letters lead up toand end with her stTicide hoth allows

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