Kenneth Tynan: Letters

Spanning the years from 1949 to 1980, a collection of letters by the late critic and intellectual encompasses Tynan's correspondence with Norman Mailer, Orson Welles, John Lennon, and other literary and theatrical figures

A lively collection of the iconoclastic English theater man's correspondence. ``Critic'' is too confining a word for the wide-ranging abilities of Kenneth Tynan (192780), although from 1951 to 1963 he wrote unfailingly stimulating theater reviews for several London periodicals and for the New Yorker magazine. In 1963 he joined England's newly formed National Theatre as literary manager, shaping over the next decade (with artistic director Laurence Olivier) a varied program of classics and contemporary plays, some of a politically or sexually provocative nature that prompted confrontations with the British censors and the National Theatre's board. Tynan continued as a journalist during and after those years, primarily writing profiles of performers; he also devised the erotic revue Oh! Calcutta! His letters chronicle all this activity with the same verve, wit, and gift for invective that distinguish his criticism. His widow, Kathleen Tynan, selected the material and provided the notes and expository paragraphs before her death in 1995. This background is helpful, if sometimes unduly comprehensive. Also, too much of the text (one-fourth) is devoted to Tynan's correspondence as a teenager and Oxford undergraduate, in which he displays an unattractive arrogance and flippancy (``I would rather write amusingly and inaccurately than correctly and tediously'') that moderated as he matured. His easy manner occasionally gave the impression that Tynan was a lightweight, a notion effectively countered here by thoughtful, detailed critiques of productions he worked on and by letters voicing his strongly left-wing political and social convictions. Once past the youthful posturing, the correspondence builds by accretion of detail an appealing portrait of a warm, intelligent man passionately engaged in the arts of his time. Consistently absorbing and entertaining, though it would have benefitted from more judicious editing. (photos, not seen) -- Copyright ©1998, Kirkus Associates, LP. All rights reserved.

In his day, the early '50s through the late '70s, theater critic Tynan (1927^-80) was a prime mover. From his perch at The Observer in London, and later at the New Yorker, he championed a rising generation of angry young playwrights: John Osborne, Arnold Wesker, and their like. From his position in the '60s as the first literary manager of Great Britain's subsidized company, the National Theater, he worked with Laurence Olivier to break the conventional commercialism of the West End and its stultifying stranglehold on English-speaking theater. This collection of letters provides a fascinating but all-too-fleeting and fragmentary glimpse into the life, work, and soul of one of the century's great critics. Edited by Tynan's last wife, Kathleen, it includes letters from every stage of his development: fan letters dating from his adolescence, pseudosophisticated missives from his Oxford years, and some of the brilliant, blistering epistles he fired off regularly in his prime. It is an excellent supplement to Kathleen Tynan's rich and rewarding memoir, The Life of Kenneth Tynan (1987). Jack Helbig

Tynan was educated at Oxford and went on to become an actor, writer, director, and the behind-the-scenes mastermind of Sir Laurence Olivier's National Theatre in England. He is perhaps best known on both sides of the Atlantic as a dynamic and merciless critic. The letters here collected by his wife, Kathleen, who died in 1995, include communiques to many of the literary, film, and theater giants of the century: Arthur Miller, Ernest Hemingway, Paul McCartney, J. Paul Getty, Orson Welles, Marlene Dietrich, and Tennessee Williams, among many others. Copiously footnoted so that each letter is in context with previous letters and with replies, Mrs. Tynan (The Life of Kenneth Tynan, LJ 10/1/87) has also interspersed text explaining Tynan's personal life and the social and political events occurring at the time the letters were written. A fascinating memoir, recommended for public and academic libraries, especially those with strong film and theater collections.?Katherine K. Koenig, Ellis Sch., Pittsburgh
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