Fuegi, John

New York. 1994. Grove Press. 1st Edition. Very Good in Dustjacket . 0802115292. 732 pages. hardcover. Jacket design by Rick Pracher. keywords: Drama Literature Germany Brecht. FROM THE PUBLISHER - In this first full biography of the Brecht circle, John Fuegi confirms Brecht's rank as a world-class theater director, but also shows why much of the writing can no longer be attributed to Brecht alone. Brecht's first violent, homoerotic plays, though noisily provocative failures at the box office, brought him praise from adventurous critics. In Berlin in the 1920s, Brecht found someone who would change not only his life but world theater: Elisabeth Hauptmann, who wrote over 80 percent of The Threepenny Opera in exchange for time in Brecht's life and in his bed. Yet her name often disappeared from the printed text, as well as from other plays and poems. Disappointed and disaffected, Hauptmann was supplanted by the passionate, tubercular Margarete Steffin, who contributed crucially to such classics as Mother Courage and The Good Woman of Setzuan. With Steffin's death in 1941, Brecht's career as a playwright virtually ended, though other works, begun with her, were finished with the aid of the uninhibited and politically committed Danish director and author Ruth Berlau. Fuegi traces the evolution of Brecht's parasitic relationships and aggressive ambition through close analysis of diaries, letters, and drafts of the literary works, revealing a man who was personally dazzling, a genius at assembling and directing the plays created in his workshop, but ultimately lacking in literary stamina, for which he depended on his lovers. His need for control and fame led him to dominate-and betray-nearly everyone supported and loved him. The story of Brecht's artistic thefts is told against a backdrop of his equivocal politics through turbulent times: from the 1932 New Year's party with members of Germany's virulent right wing, to his refusal to acknowledge Stalin's murderous purges, to his shocking break before the House Un-American Activities Committee, to his frequent anti-Semitism, to the privilege and ease he enjoyed in a repressive East Germany. inventory #21612 ISBN: 0802115292.