Going Places: A Play - Softcover

Good, Merle

Softcover

ISBN 10: 1561481351 ISBN 13: 9781561481354

Publisher: Good Books, 1969

Synopsis

A play in three acts follows a Mennonite family in Lancaster, Pa through the controversies and dislocations of the 1960s, 1970s, and 1980s

About this title

From Library Journal

Good's play belongs to the genre of "painfully autobiographical American drama"-this time with a Mennonite flavor. The play focuses on the lives of the four children (three boys and a girl) of the Zimmerman family, Mennonites growing up in rural Pennsylvania. The family is shown at ten-year intervals: during the Vietnam War, after the Three Mile island nuclear accident, and while the Berlin Wall is coming down. Each child not only reacts to these external events but also to his or her place within the Mennonite community. The problem is that the characters come across not as people but as ideas. One leaves the church, one stays with the church, one becomes a fundamentalist, one becomes a minister, but nowhere do they take on a life of their own. Recommended only for libraries with an interest in religious drama.
Barry Mills, Burlingame P.L., Cal.
Copyright 1994 Reed Business Information, Inc.

From Booklist

Good's new play presents a warmhearted portrait of a Mennonite family in Lancaster, Pennsylvania, as they go through the changes of the tumultuous years between 1969 and 1989. In three acts, each set in a different decade, we watch the Zimmermans suffer through the controversies and dislocations that beset virtually all American families in the 1960s, 1970s, and 1980s. One Zimmerman son becomes a radical, another a conservative. The Zimmerman daughter decides, to her family's consternation, not to get married. What makes this play especially interesting is the artful way Good uses solid Mennonite traditions to throw this family's problems into sharper relief and to indicate how much we have become lost in our rootless culture. It's a shame Good mars an otherwise strong play with a tendency to overwrite scenes, and a needlessly abrupt and unfulfilling ending. Jack Helbig

About this edition

• Publisher: Good Books
• Publication date: 1969
• ISBN 10: 1561481351
• ISBN 13: 9781561481354
• Binding: Paperback
• Number of pages: 96