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Alan Nadel, ed. "May All Your Fences Have Gates": Essays on the Drama of August Wilson. Iowa City: U of Iowa P, 1994. 270 pp. $34.95 cloth/$15.95 paper.
It is fair to say that by now August Wilson has become America's preeminent contemporary playwright. His decade-by-decade portrayals of African American historical experience, seven of which have been produced to date, have been deservedly acclaimed, their dramatic rendering of African American life permanently inserting black voice and story in the American theatrical canon. Alan Nadel's edited collection of essays on the plays of August Wilson presents a splendid array of critical approaches to Wilson's work, an annotated bibliography, and Wilson's own apparently controversial statement, "I Want a Black Director," which is discussed by Michael Awkward.
The most satisfying aspects of the collection as a whole are its theoretical and critical variety, its interdisciplinarity, and its clarity. The consensus binding the volume is the problem of historical representation; in the course of their considerations, most of the authors not only illuminate one or several of the plays, but also develop critical frameworks that are immensely suggestive for other aspects of African American literature. Ann Flecher addresses the problem implicit in Wilson's canonization: "Wilson is in danger of becoming authenticated as Great Literature," she writes (15). This is a problem because attributing transcendent meaning to his historical project occludes the question of historical consciousness which is his main concern. "History is a moment Wilson's characters can never catch up with; they have to keep going back and starting again" (12). Applying modern dramatic theory and a deconstructionist reading to questions of historical consciousness and historical blindness, Flecher examines how Wilson reveals not marginalized history but a history that has always been there and which "takes place in the unseen present," in concert with the dominant history that is always implicit (17). Craig Werner contrasts August Wilson with the musician Wynton Marsalis, seeing both as engaged in a neoclassical project that involves negotiating immersion in African American cultural expression and mastery of "classical" European musical form. His central argument is prefaced by a complex examination of the deeply rooted musicality of Wilson's plays, his use of the jazz impulse, "clarifying (blues) realities and envisioning (gospel) possibilities." It is followed...