Ronald Hayman – författare

Few playwrights write as much of their lives into every work as did Tennessee Williams, and few had lives that were so obviously theatrical.  Growing up amid abusive alcoholism, genteel posturing, and the incipient madness of his beloved sister, Rose, Williams produced plays in which violence exploded into rape, castration, and even cannibalism, projecting dramatic personal traumas.  In this frank, compelling study, the distinguished biographer and critic Ronald Hayman explores the intersection of biography and art in one of the most exuberantly autobiographical dramatists of the American theater. By the time he died, in 1983, Williams’ reputation had seriously declined.  More than twenty years of drug and alcohol addiction, coupled with devastating openness about his promiscuous homosexuality, had all but destroyed one of America’s greatest playwrights, and Williams’ new works were increasingly unsuccessful.  In recent years, however, Broadway revivals and amateur productions have testified to his enduring greatness as one of the shapers of the American theater.  The major plays such as The Glass Menagerie, Cat on a Hot Tin Roof, and A Streetcar Named Desire, never disappeared from American theatrical consciousness.  Their heroes—Tom Wingfield, Brick Pollitt, even Blanch Du Bois—are portraits of the artist as a very troubled man. Hayman explores the life and writings of Tennessee Williams and shows how they were linked.  More than any previous biographer, he unmasks the compulsive, driven man behind the characters and lays bare the pain that engendered Williams’ violent apocalypses.  Tennessee Williams will change the way lovers of drama experience and understand some of Williams’ finest achievements.

In a ramshackle theatre, August Strindberg directs two actors in an autobiographical play detailing his difficult, stormy relationship with his first wife. This drama about a sensitive, driven, turbulent and mystical playwright uses a fictional play-within-a-play device to create the environment within which its director/subject - Strindburg - works out his relationships with his lovers and his cast. "Playing the Wife" was first presented at the Chichester Festival in 1995, with Derek Jacobi as Strindburg.

Thomas Mann, author of "Death in Venice", "The Magic Mountain", and "Buddenbrooks" was a man with secrets. This biography offers a portrait of the Nobel Prize-winning German novelist, drawing on Mann's unexpurgated diaries. It uncovers a brilliant writer's mask to reveal the private man: his bisexuality, his obsession with preserving appearances and the deep guilt which plagued him for nearly fifty years. The sanitized self-image Mann strove to maintain is revealed as a fragile veneer. Drawing on the diaries that he stipulated should remain under seal for twenty years after his death, and on interviews with Mann's children, the author depicts a man subject to nervous trembling, convulsive sobbing and moments of sexual embarrassment. When his novels are reread from this perspective, new meanings emerge and interconnections between the problems of the author and his characters become apparent. As Mann wrote to a friend, he devised "novelistic forms and masks which can be displayed in public as a means of relaying my love, my hatred, my sympathy, my contempt, my pride, my scorn and the accusations I want to make".Ronald Hayman is the biographer of Proust, Sartre, Kafka, Nietzche, Brecht and Sylvia Plath.

Carl Jung's theories made him one of the world's most influential analysts. With a combination of charisma, simplicity and brutal outspokenness, he inspired in his patients deep hatred and overpowering love in equal measure. Some he saved from psychosis, while he drove others to despair. Yet up until his death in 1961, he initiated groundbreaking ideas, but only trusted his impulses. With impeccable research - including access to unpublishing and previously unused material - Ronald Hayman reveals what went on during Jung's sessions with patients, and explores the great man's own sanity. Other biographers have either celebrated him as an idol or condemned him for his failings. In Jung, Hayman neither ignores his faults nor exaggerates them. The result is a rare insight into how Jung's revolutionary ideas grew out of his own extraordinary experiences.

Not a convential biography, this book offers an explanation of Sylvia Plath's death in 1963. The author looks back on Plath's life in an attempt to offer an objective account of why she killed herself. It discusses her life with her husband Ted Hughes, who had control of all her copyright works, as she killed herself without making a will.This edition brings the story full circle, as it includes the pubilcation of Birthday Letters, the death of Ted Hughes and Elaine Feinstein's biography of him, along with Erica Wagner's book Ariel's Gift, the Al Alvarez autobiography which includes new material in Lucas Meyers's new book Crow Steered Bergs Appeared.

Originally published in 1970, this account of Tolstoy’s achievement as a novelist concentrates on the best known of his works, in particular the two masterpieces Anna Karenina and War and Peace. Extracts are, however, taken from all the major novels and are arranged chronologically to demonstrate the development of his technique. The main part of the book is concerned with narrative method and analyses Tolstoy’s treatment of character, landscape and dialogue together with his use of satire and irony. The range of subject matter throughout the novels is then discussed. In this way, Tolstoy’s genius is seen to lie in his unique gift for penetrating deeply into the individual lives of his characters and at the same time embracing their actions within a complete framework of social and political life.

Originally published in 1970, this account of Tolstoy’s achievement as a novelist concentrates on the best known of his works, in particular the two masterpieces Anna Karenina and War and Peace. Extracts are, however, taken from all the major novels and are arranged chronologically to demonstrate the development of his technique. The main part of the book is concerned with narrative method and analyses Tolstoy’s treatment of character, landscape and dialogue together with his use of satire and irony. The range of subject matter throughout the novels is then discussed. In this way, Tolstoy’s genius is seen to lie in his unique gift for penetrating deeply into the individual lives of his characters and at the same time embracing their actions within a complete framework of social and political life.

Günter Grass is one of the writers who grew up in a Germany already in the grip of Nazism. None of them has found better ways than his of translating the sordid history of the movement into fiction; none has looked more critically at the ‘denazification’ and reconstruction of Germany. In this important study, originally published in 1985, Ronald Hayman scrutinizes Grass’s development and assesses his achievement. He finds that Grass’s more recent work does not fulfil the promise of the The Tin Drum and his other early novels. While this study focuses mainly on the fiction, it also takes into account the poetry, plays, political writing, criticism and graphic work. Grass is important not only as an exemplar of the guilt-laden German conscience but as one of the most ambitious and accomplished living fabulists.

Günter Grass is one of the writers who grew up in a Germany already in the grip of Nazism. None of them has found better ways than his of translating the sordid history of the movement into fiction; none has looked more critically at the ‘denazification’ and reconstruction of Germany. In this important study, originally published in 1985, Ronald Hayman scrutinizes Grass’s development and assesses his achievement. He finds that Grass’s more recent work does not fulfil the promise of the The Tin Drum and his other early novels. While this study focuses mainly on the fiction, it also takes into account the poetry, plays, political writing, criticism and graphic work. Grass is important not only as an exemplar of the guilt-laden German conscience but as one of the most ambitious and accomplished living fabulists.

Originally published in 1973, this book investigates the power and the pressures behind English theatre in the late 20th Century, analysing its structure and systems, and the way that money and motives flow through it. On the one hand there are the organisations: the big national companies, the West End managements, the regional repertory theatres, the ‘fringe’ groups, the trade unions, the Arts Council. On the other are the individuals: actors, directors, playwrights, agents, administrators. Ronald Hayman’s challenging book illuminates the conflicts and contradictions in the set-up. It is a mine of information about how theatres are run, how shows pay their way, and what happens when they don’t.

Originally published in 1973, this book investigates the power and the pressures behind English theatre in the late 20th Century, analysing its structure and systems, and the way that money and motives flow through it. On the one hand there are the organisations: the big national companies, the West End managements, the regional repertory theatres, the ‘fringe’ groups, the trade unions, the Arts Council. On the other are the individuals: actors, directors, playwrights, agents, administrators. Ronald Hayman’s challenging book illuminates the conflicts and contradictions in the set-up. It is a mine of information about how theatres are run, how shows pay their way, and what happens when they don’t.

Originally published in 1969, this was the first book of its kind: an attempt to describe the different approaches that the actor needs to make to different media – theatre, film and television – and to show how the art of acting, which never stops evolving had entered into a new phase of growth in the sixties. Ronald Hayman examines questions which are basic, but had often been ignored: What exactly goes on inside the actor’s mind while (s)he is preparing a part? How much do actors vary in their approach? Where does personality stop and technique begin? This wide-ranging study of the actor at work is based partly on what outstanding actors have said about their methods but chiefly on close analysis of actual performances in plays, films and on television. Laurence Olivier, Helene Weigel, Jeanne Moreau and many others are both examined in close-up and viewed in perspective against the giants of the past like Bernhardt and Salvini.

Originally published in 1969, this was the first book of its kind: an attempt to describe the different approaches that the actor needs to make to different media – theatre, film and television – and to show how the art of acting, which never stops evolving had entered into a new phase of growth in the sixties. Ronald Hayman examines questions which are basic, but had often been ignored: What exactly goes on inside the actor’s mind while (s)he is preparing a part? How much do actors vary in their approach? Where does personality stop and technique begin? This wide-ranging study of the actor at work is based partly on what outstanding actors have said about their methods but chiefly on close analysis of actual performances in plays, films and on television. Laurence Olivier, Helene Weigel, Jeanne Moreau and many others are both examined in close-up and viewed in perspective against the giants of the past like Bernhardt and Salvini.

'God is dead', announced Nietzsche - before going on to abolish himself.Envious contemporaries of Nietzsche ridiculed him as a mad man - and yet they came closer than they knew in characterising a philosopher in whose thought ambivalence approximated to disintegration of the self.While the nineteenth century's coherent, consistent systems of certainty came crashing down ingloriously at the very first touch of the twentieth, Nietzsche's discourses survived. He was more modern, it seemed, than the moderns.In this stimulating and provocative guide, Hayman reveals how Nietzsche's work is more contemporary and relevant than ever in a new postmodern age.