Ionesco, Eugene 1912-1994

views updated

IONESCO, Eugene 1912-1994

PERSONAL:

Born November 26, 1912, in Slatina, Romania; became French citizen; died March 28, 1994, in Paris, France; son of Eugene (a lawyer) and Marie-Therese (Icard) Ionesco; married Rodica Burileanu, July 12, 1936; children: Marie-France. Education: Attended University of Bucharest; University of Paris, Sorbonne, licencie des letters, agrege des lettres.

CAREER:

Professor of French in Romania, 1936-39; worked for publisher in France; full-time writer and painter.

MEMBER:

Academie Française.

AWARDS, HONORS:

Prix de la Critique, Tours Festival, 1959, for film Monsieur Tete; Officier des Arts et Lettres, 1961; Grand Prix Italia, 1963, for ballet version of La Leçon; Grand Prix, Theatre de la Societe des Auteurs, 1966; Prix National du Theatre, 1969; Prix Litteraire (Monaco), 1969; Austrian Prize for European Literature, 1971; International Writers' fellow, Welsh Arts Council, 1973; Jerusalem Prize (Israel), 1973; Chevalier, French Legion of Honor, 1984; Ingersoll Prize: T. S. Eliot Award for Creative Writing, 1985.

WRITINGS:

PLAYS

Theatre (includes La Cantatrice chauve [one-act; produced in Paris, France, 1950; produced as The Bald Soprano off-Broadway, 1958], La Leçon[one-act; produced in Paris, 1951; produced as The Lesson off-Broadway, 1958], Jacques; ou, La Soumission [one-act; produced in Paris, 1955; produced as Jack off-Broadway, 1958], and Le Salon de l'automobile [produced in Paris, 1953]), Arcanes (Paris, France), 1953.

Theatre, four volumes, Gallimard (Paris, France), Volume I (includes La Cantatrice chauve, La Leçon, Jacques; ou, La Soumission, Les Chaises [one-act; produced in Paris, 1952; produced as The Chairs off-Broadway, 1958], Victimes du devoir [one-act; produced in Paris, 1953; produced as Victims of Duty off-Broadway, 1960], and Amedée; ou, Comment s'en debarasser [three-act; produced in Paris, 1954; produced as Amedée; or, How to Disentangle Yourself in New York, NY, 1955]), 1954, new edition, 1970, Volume II (includes L'Impromptu de l'Alma; ou, Le Cameleon du berger [one-act; produced in Paris, 1956; produced as Improvisation; or, The Shepherd's Chameleon off-Broadway, 1960], Tueur sans gages [three-act; produced in Paris, 1959; produced as The Killer in New York, NY, 1960], Le Nouveau locataire [oneact; produced in Helsinki, Finland, 1955; produced as The New Tenant in New York, NY, 1960], L'Avenir est dans les oeufs [one-act; produced in 1957], Le Maitre [produced in Paris, 1953; produced as The Leader in London, 1970], and La Jeune fille a marier [produced in Paris, 1953; produced as Maid to Marry off-Broadway, 1970], 1958, new edition, 1970, Volume III (includes Rhinoceros [three-act; produced in Düsseldorf, 1959; produced in London, 1960; produced on Broadway, 1961], Le Pieton de l'air [ballet-pantomime; produced in Paris, 1963; produced as A Stroll in the Air on Broadway, 1964], Delire a deux [oneact; produced in Paris, 1962], Le Tableau [produced in Paris, 1955; produced as The Painting off-off-Broadway, 1969], Scene a quatre [produced in Spoleto, Italy, 1959; produced in New York, NY, 1970], Les Salutations [produced in New York, NY, 1970], and La Cholere), 1963, Volume IV (includes Le Roi se meurt [one-act; produced in Paris, 1962; produced as Exit the King in London, 1963; produced in Ann Arbor, MI, 1967], La Soif et la faim [three-act; produced in Paris, 1966; produced as Hunger and Thirst in Stockbridge, MA, 1969], La Lacune [produced in Paris, 1970; produced in New York, NY, 1970], Le Salon de l'automobile, L'Oeuf dur, pour preparer un oeuf dur [produced in New York, NY, 1970], Le Jeune homme a marier, and Apprendre a marcher [ballet scenario; produced in Paris, 1960], 1966.

La Niece-epouse (produced in Paris, France, 1953; produced as The Niece-Wife in London, England, 1971), in Richard N. Coe, Ionesco: A Study of His Plays, Methuen (London, England), 1971.

Les Grandes chaleurs, produced in Paris, France, 1953.

Le Connaissez-vous?, produced in Paris, France, 1953.

Le Rhume onirique, produced in Paris, France, 1953.

Impromptu pour la Duchesse de Windsor, performed for the Duke and Duchess of Windsor, 1957.

La Leçon (also see below), published with Samuel Beckett's Fin de partie, (Paris, France) 1957, translated by Donald Watson as The Lesson, Samuel French (London, England), 1958.

The Chairs, translated by Donald Watson, Samuel French (London, England), 1958, revised edition, translated by Martin Crimp, Faber & Faber (London, England), 1997.

Plays, seven volumes, translated by Donald Watson, J. Calder (London, England), Volume I (includes The Chairs, The Bald Prima Donna, The Lesson, and Jack; or, Obedience), 1958, translation by Donald M. Allen published as Four Plays, Grove (New York, NY), 1958, Volume II (includes Amedée; or, How to Get Rid of It, The New Tenant, and Victims of Duty), 1961, translation by Allen, Grove, 1958, Volume III (includes The Killer, Improvisation; or, The Shepherd's Chameleon, and Maid to Marry), 1962, Grove, 1960, Volume IV (includes Rhinoceros, The Leader, and The Future Is in Eggs; or, It Takes All Sorts to Make a World), 1963, translation by Derek Prouse published as Rhinoceros and Other Plays, Grove, 1960, Volume V (includes Exit the King, The Motor Show [radio play], and Foursome), 1963, Volume VI (includes A Stroll in the Air and Frenzy for Two), 1965, Grove, 1968, Volume VII (includes Hunger and Thirst, The Picture, Anger, and Salutations), 1968, published as Hunger and Thirst, and Other Plays, Grove, 1969.

Le Rhinoceros (three-act), Gallimard (Paris, France), 1959, edited by Reuben Y. Elliseon and Stowell C. Gooding, Holt (New York, NY), 1961, translation by Derek Prouse published as Rhinoceros, Samuel French (London, England), 1960.

(Coauthor) Seven Capital Sins (screenplay), Embassy, 1962.

La Cantatrice chauve, published with La Leçon, Gallimard (Paris, France), 1962, enlarged edition, 1964, translation by Donald Watson published as The Bald Prima Donna: A Pseudo-Play, Samuel French (London, England), 1961, Grove (New York, NY), 1965.

Le Roi se meurt, Gallimard (Paris, France), 1963, translation by Donald Watson published as Exit the King, Grove (New York, NY), 1963.

Three Plays (includes La Cantatrice chauve, La Leçon, and Les Chaises), edited by H. F. Brookes and C. E. Fraenkel, Heinemann (London, England), 1965.

La Soif et la faim, [Paris, France], 1966.

Delire a deux, Gallimard (Paris, France), 1966.

Chez le docteur, Le Cocotier en flammes, D'Isidione, Histoire des bandits, Il y eut d'abord, and Leçons de française pour americains (short plays), produced in New York, NY, 1970.

Jeux de massacre (one-act; produced in Düsseldorf, 1970; produced in Paris, France, 1970; produced as Wipe-out Games in Washington, DC, 1971), Gallimard (Paris, France), 1970, translation by Helen Gary Bishop published as Killing Game, Grove (New York, NY), 1974.

(And illustrator) Victimes du devoir, and Une victime du devoir (play and short story), edited by Vera Lee, Houghton Mifflin (Boston, MA), 1972.

Macbett (adaptation of William Shakespeare's Macbeth), Gallimard (Paris, France), 1972.

Rhinoceros (screenplay; based on his play), 1973.

Ce formidable bordel!, Gallimard (Paris, France), translation by Gary Bishop published as A Hell of a Mess, Grove (New York, NY), 1975.

L'Homme aux valises, Gallimard (Paris, France), 1975, adaptation by Israel Horovitz translated by Marie-France Ionesco as Man with Bags, Grove (New York, NY), 1977.

Voyages chez les morts; ou, Themes et variations, Gallimard (Paris, France), 1981, translated by Barbara Wright as Journeys among the Dead, Calder (London, England), 1985.

Theatre complet, Gallimard (Paris, France), 1991.

OTHER

(Translator, with G. Gabrin) Pavel Dan, Le Vieil Urcan, Jean Vigneau (Paris, France), 1945.

Ionesco: Les Rhinoceros au theatre (includes a short story and selections from his journal), R. Juilliard (Paris, France), 1960.

La Photo du colonel (narratives; includes "Oriflamme," "La Photo du colonel," "Le Pieton de l'air," "Une Victime du devoir," "Rhinoceros," "La Vase," and "Printemps, 1939"), Gallimard (Paris, France), 1962, new edition, 1970, translations by Jean Stewart and John Russell published as The Colonel's Photograph, Faber & Faber (London, England), 1967, Grove (New York, NY), 1969.

Notes et contre-notes (essays and lectures), Gallimard (Paris, France), 1962, new edition, 1970, translation by Donald Watson published as Notes and Counter-Notes, Grove (New York, NY), 1964.

(Author of notes) Joan Miró, Quelques fleurs pour des amis, Societe Internationale d'Art (Paris, France), 1964.

Journal en miettes (autobiography), Mercure de France (Paris, France), 1967, translation by Jean Stewart published as Fragments of a Journal, Grove (New York, NY), 1968.

Story Number 1: For Children under Three Years of Age, illustrated by Etienne Delessert, translated by Calvin K. Towle, Harlin Quist (New York, NY), 1968.

Present passe, passe present (autobiography), Mercure de France, 1968, translation by Helen R. Lane published as Present Past, Past Present, Grove (New York, NY), 1971, reprinted, Da Capo (New York, NY), 1992.

(And illustrator) Decouvertes (essay), Skira (Geneva, Switzerland), 1969.

(With Michael Benamou) Mise en train: Premiere année de français (textbook), Macmillan (New York, NY), 1969.

(Author of script) Jan Lenica, Monsieur Tete (animated film), Bruckmann (Munich, Germany), 1970.

Story Number 2: For Children under Three Years of Age, illustrated by Etienne Delessert, Harlin Quist (New York, NY), 1970.

(Author of text) Gerard Schneider, Catalogo (exhibit catalogue), [Turin, Italy], 1970.

Story Number 3: For Children over Three Years of Age, illustrated by Philippe Corentin, translation by Ciba Vaughan, Harlin Quist (New York, NY), 1971.

(With Jean Delay) Discours de reception d'Eugene lonesco a l'Academie française et reponse de Jean Delay, Gallimard (Paris, France), 1971.

Le Solitaire, Gallimard (Paris, France), 1972, translation by Richard Seaver published as The Hermit, Viking (New York, NY), 1974.

(With Claude Bonnefoy) Entre la vie et le reve, Belfond (Paris, France), 1977.

Antidotes (essays), Gallimard (Paris, France), 1977.

Un Homme en question (essays), Gallimard (Paris, France), 1979.

Variations sur un même theme, Gallimard (Paris, France), 1979.

Le Blanc et le noir, Gallimard (Paris, France), 1985.

Non, Gallimard (Paris, France), 1986.

Viata grotesca si tragica a lui Victor Hugo: Hugoliade, translation from Romanian into French by Dragomir Costineanu and Marie-France Ionesco, Gallimard (Paris, France), 1982, translation from French into English by Yara Milos published as Hugoliad: The Grotesque and Tragic Life of Victor Hugo, Grove (New York, NY), 1987.

La Quete intermittente (autobiography), Gallimard (Paris, France), 1988.

Ruptures de silence: Rencontres avec Andre Coutin, Mercure de France (Paris, France), 1995.

Litterature roumaine: Suivi de grosse chaleur, Fata Morgana (Saint-Clement-la-Riviere, France), 1998.

Work represented in anthologies and critical studies, including Absurd Drama, edited by Martin Esslin, and New Directions, edited by Alan Durrand. Contributor to periodicals, including Lettres nouvelles, Lettres françaises, Encore, Figero, L'Express, Le Monde, Evergreen Review, Mademoiselle, Tulane Drama Review, Theatre Arts, Commentary, London Magazine, and Partisan Review.

ADAPTATIONS:

The New Tenant was filmed for Encyclopaedia Britannica Educational Corporation, 1975; Delirium for Two was filmed in Russian as Bred Vdvoyom, 1995.

SIDELIGHTS:

Romanian-born French playwright Eugene Ionesco was one of the prominent voices of what is known as the Theatre of the Absurd, a movement of the 1950s and 1960s that blended surrealism with existential thought and vaudevillian clowning. Although he persistently discredited the label—preferring instead "theatre of derision"—Ionesco, along with fellow absurdists Samuel Beckett, Jean Genet, Arthur Adamov, and Edward Albee, wrote plays that were highly experimental for their time in which traditional plots, structures, and language were replaced with more fragmented, contradictory, and oftentimes nonsensical dialogue, images, and situations. His repeated use of black humor to capture the absurd essence of the human condition and its alienation, its inability to communicate, and its struggle to overcome modern society's destructive forces mark a distinctive trait in Ionesco's early plays, which are often considered his best.

Although labeled an absurdist, Ionesco considered himself a proponent of pataphysics—the science of imaginary solutions popularized by French playwright Alfred Jarry in his Ubu Roi. In the pataphysical universe, "every event determines a law, a particular law," which, as Richard N. Coe asserted in Ionesco: A Study of His Plays, "is the same as saying there is no law, neither scientific, nor moral, nor aesthetic." Therefore, all things become equal, the sensical and the nonsensical alike. Man finds the nonsensical more preferable of the two because it allows him more freedom to think. This, then, is why Ionesco's plays appear to be nonsensical and absurd: in a world where there are no absolutes save truth, humans must invent such things as love, God, and goodness. The result for a playwright like Ionesco is to create the bizarre, the illogical, the nonrealistic because that is what humans find easiest to accept when they cannot agree to accept anything at all.

Though comic and seemingly without surface meaning, Ionesco's early plays often carry a biting social and political commentary, notwithstanding his repeated claims to be apolitical. Nowhere is this better exhibited than in his first two plays, The Bald Soprano and The Lesson, where his central theme is the absurdity of language and both its inability to provide us with competent tools for communication and its manipulative qualities which can turn it from a tool to a weapon. In The Bald Soprano, which Ionesco reportedly wrote because he wanted to learn English, viewers meet two couples: Mr. and Mrs. Smith, who speak in clichés and platitudes, and Mr. and Mrs. Martin, who appear at first as strangers at the Smiths' home but realize later that they share the same child and the same home. The dialogue among these four characters gradually disintegrates into nonsensical gibberish and finally into meaningless sounds, and the only change comes when in the end the two couples swap identities, and the play begins again where it started. Ionesco saw the play as an attack against the bourgeois and conformity.

In The Lesson a professor tutors his young female student in subjects ranging from basic math to complex philology. As the lesson progresses and the student, complaining of a toothache, fails to comprehend the professor's lengthy—and ultimately meaningless—diatribe on the functioning of language, he becomes increasingly agitated. The play reaches its climax when the professor, repeating the word "knife," stabs the girl to death. We soon discover she was the fortieth student he killed that day. Like The Bald Soprano, The Lesson ends where it begins, and the forty-first student is brought into the professor's chamber, presumably to face the same fate.

The cyclical endings of these early plays reflect a sense of hopelessness and a pessimistic view of the fate of humankind: history will always repeat itself no matter how horrible the event, no matter how widespread public disapproval is. Part of that hopelessness comes from the impotency of language, the most significant attribute/invention of human beings. How can we share thoughts, ideas, love, etc. if we ultimately cannot communicate with one another? Moreover, since language is so imprecise, it can also be misinterpreted and misused, especially upon those who take words at their face value alone. In The Lesson, for instance, when the maid discovers the professor has killed his fortieth student for the day, she tells him to wear a Nazi swastika armband so that no one will question what he has done. It is through this one action that the play takes on strong political overtones, marking the first of many criticisms Ionesco would level against the Nazis and the totalitarian regimes of his native Romania.

Ionesco's next two plays, Jack; or, The Submission and The Chairs, are complementary in that the first play leads up to the beginning of a marriage and the second describes, in part, the ending of one. Again, both plays exploit the impotency of language to effectively communicate and the alienation of modern society. The title character of Jack is being coerced by his family—all members of which bear names that are variations of Jack—in finding a wife. They want offspring so that their race will be preserved. In the end, after a courtship that ends with a frenzied discussion where every noun is renamed "cat," Jack chooses Roberte II, a woman with three noses and nine fingers on one hand. Conversely, the Old Man and the Old Woman in The Chairs reflect the disintegration of a marriage. Throughout the play they bring in chairs for their several guests who will be attending a speech given by an Orator—a speech the Old Man has prepared as his final commentary on humanity. Gradually, they greet the invisible guests as they arrive, and the chairs—like many objects in Ionesco's plays—proliferate and begin to crowd the now-claustrophobic stage. At the end of The Chairs, the Orator, whom the Old Man has entrusted to deliver his message to the people, is able only to utter "the guttural sounds of a mute"; oral language has failed. When the Orator next attempts to communicate by writing an obscure word on the blackboard, its letters finally formulate the word "Adieu"—French for "good bye." Rosette C. Lamont, writing in Ionesco's Imperatives: The Politics of Culture, noted that The Chairs "is a twentieth-century morality play which does not preach. The message of the play is an anti-message: speech, art, communication of any sort, are the illusions man needs while there is breath."

Ionesco gives many of his characters nondescript names, doing so to show how nonconformists are always at odds with a society that will repeatedly take the easiest path and conform. Ionesco does not focus on individual differences but rather on the basic identity of most people. Nowhere is this better illustrated than in a series of four plays Ionesco began writing in the late 1950s. Here he pursued his literary attack on the Nazis and the totalitarian regimes George Orwell criticized so well in Animal Farm and 1984. These plays center on a man named Berenger, a modern-day Everyman, though Berenger is not the same character in each of the four plays. The first of these plays is The Killer, a Kafka-esque play where Berenger seeks out the Killer who is terrorizing the Radiant City because everyone, including the police and the city's totalitarian Architect/Doctor/Chief of Police proves incompetent. When Berenger confronts the Killer, he attempts to reason with him, but fails to offer any cogent argument as to why the Killer should not indiscriminately kill people. "The more he talks," Lamont contended, "the more reasons he finds for killing, or rather being killed. Though he is armed, Berenger knows that he, a humanist, will not be able to bring himself to shoot even an enemy who means to destroy him." He learns all too late that the Killer kills without reason. To rationalize with the irrational, Ionesco suggests here, is to fight a losing battle.

The second and certainly most famous of the Berenger plays is Rhinoceros, first produced in 1959. As the play opens, Berenger is conversing with his friend Jean when a rhinoceros charges by. Though dismissed at first as an oddity of nature, everyone gradually accepts the animals' presence and, by the play's end, even decides to become one themselves, leaving Berenger to contemplate whether he too should join the herd or not. In the final act, Berenger must fight not only rhinoceritis but his desire to join the herd with his fellows. When he decides in the end to fight them, he becomes a singular hero who challenges the mob mentality and mindless conformity. When we realize that the inspiration for this play came from Ionesco's reaction, as noted in his diary of 1940, to an antifascist friend's gradual acceptance of and ultimate conversion to Nazi fascism, the play takes on a much deeper, political meaning.

Although the next Berenger play, A Stroll in the Air, continues the attack against totalitarian regimes, Ionesco moves on to greater philosophical heights with the final Berenger play, Exit the King. This play addresses humankind's need to understand its own existence, its own mortality. Like King Lear or Hamlet in Shakespeare's great tragedies, Berenger asks, "Why was I born if it wasn't for ever?" Such metaphysics echo the existential musings of Jean-Paul Sartre and Albert Camus: the questioning of the meaning—or meaninglessness—of life. Having lived for over 500 years, and in that time invented steel, balloons, airplanes, the telephone, built Rome, New York, Paris, and Moscow, and wrote The Iliad, The Odyssey, and all of Shakespeare's tragedies, King Berenger is Everyman: his death is the death of all humanity; in his acceptance of his mortality are the seeds of our own metaphysical grapplings with life's inherent meaninglessness.

Ionesco wrote other successful plays in the 1950s and 1960s, including the 1952 radio play Motor Show, Maid to Marry, The Leader, and Victim of Duty, the last another play about ruthless authoritarianism. Considered one of his best plays of this period is his first full-length play, Amedée. Drawn from a line in T. S. Eliot's poem The Waste Land, the play is about a couple's inability to confront their marital problems and to work through their pasts. In fact, Amedée and Madeleine have such difficulty in burying their troubled pasts—Madeleine's infidelity and Amedée's guilt for not having saved a drowning woman—that they remain at the forefront of the couple's present. Ionesco manifests this latent guilt in them by having the couple share their home with the corpse of Madeleine's lover, whom Amedée killed years before but never buried. Now, the couple work effortlessly to keep people and the police from entering their home, no easy task since the corpse is growing larger and larger each day until its physical presence literally fills the entire house. The corpse as metaphor for the growing distance between Amedée and Madeleine is an appropriate one for Ionesco, who relates the corpse to original sin and its growth to the passage of time. The dead body is a constant reminder of the couple's mutual sins, and its unabated growth reflects the mounting guilt they both must contend with for not having loved each other and for having tried to bury, instead of confront, their pasts.

Whether discouraged by the lack of cause celebre his later plays received, or feeling he had said in dramatic voice all he needed to say, Ionesco turned later in life to collecting and publishing nonfiction essays, lectures, addresses, criticism, and memoirs. Fragments of a Journal and Present Past, Past Present, his 1967 and 1968 autobiographies, confirmed his commitment to battle social and political oppression. Antidotes, a collection of essays that focus on the corruption of the so-called civilized world, appeared in 1977. The playwright's daughter, Marie-France Ionesco, translated her father's 1934 work No, a series of essays on Romanian culture, the demolition of Romanian literary idols, and the role of literature in life. A year later Hugoliad appeared, his youthful and scurrilous attack on French literary giant Victor Hugo, which Ionesco had also written during the 1930s. The Intermittent Quest is an eloquent and passionate tribute to the two women in Ionesco's life: his wife, Rodica, and his daughter, Marie-France. He devoted most of his remaining years to painting and exhibiting his artwork and lithographs, and died in 1994.

Although Ionesco's plays were once considered avant garde, they have since been reviewed in a less-revolutionary light. However, many of his plays, especially Rhinoceros, are still performed and still hold relevance for postmodern audiences. As A. J. Esta noted in a theatre review of a 2002 performance of Rhinoceros, Ionesco's "vision of the futility of maintaining one's individuality in the face of conformity is as pertinent as today's headlines."

BIOGRAPHICAL AND CRITICAL SOURCES:

BOOKS

Bonnefoy, Claude, Conversations with Eugene Ionesco, translated by Jan Dawson, Faber & Faber (London, England), 1970, Holt (New York, NY), 1971.

Coe, Richard N., Ionesco, Grove (New York, NY), 1961, revised and enlarged edition published as Ionesco: A Study of His Plays, Methuen (London, England), 1971.

Coll, Toby, editor, Playwrights on Playwriting, Hill & Wang (New York, NY), 1961.

Contemporary Literary Criticism, Gale (Detroit, MI), Volume 1, 1973, Volume 4, 1974, Volume 6, 1975, Volume 9, 1977, Volume 11, 1978, Volume 15, 1980, Volume 41, 1986, Volume 86, 1995.

Dobrez, Livio A. C., The Existential and Its Exists: Literary and Philosophical Perspectives on the Works of Beckett, Ionesco, Genet, and Pinter, Athlone (London, England,) 1986.

Duckworth, C., Angels of Darkness, Barnes & Noble (New York, NY), 1972.

Esslin, Martin, The Theatre of the Absurd, Doubleday (New York, NY), 1968.

Grossvogel, David I., Four Playwrights and a Postscript: Brecht, Ionesco, Beckett, Genet, Cornell University Press (Ithaca, NY), 1962.

Grossvogel, David I., The Blasphemers, Cornell University Press (Ithaca, NY), 1965.

Hayman, R., Eugene Ionesco, Heinemann (London, England), 1972.

Jacobson, J., and W. R. Mueller, Ionesco and Genet, Hill & Wang (New York, NY), 1968.

Kitchin, Laurence, Mid-Century Drama, Faber & Faber (London, England), 1960.

Kluback, William, and Michael Finkenthal, The Clowns of the Agora: Conversations about Eugene Ionesco, P. Lang (New York, NY), 1998.

Lamont, Rosette C., and Melvin J. Friedman, The Two Faces of Ionesco, Whitston (Troy, NY), 1978.

Lamont, Rosette C., Ionesco's Imperatives: The Politics of Culture, University of Michigan Press (Ann Arbor, MI), 1993.

Lane, Nancy, Understanding Eugene Ionesco, University of South Carolina Press (Columbia, SC), 1994.

Moore, Harry T., French Literature since World War II, Southern Illinois University Press (Urbana, IL), 1966.