Essays

David Radavich has published a wide range of scholarly and informal essays on drama, poetry, and contemporary literature.  Academic areas of special interest include midwestern literature and the American novelist, Thomas Wolfe (1900-38).  He also has a fascination for the politics and immediacy of contemporary writing.

Essays on Drama:

“African-American Drama from the Midwest.”  MidAmerica XXXII (2005): 95-119.
“Arthur Miller’s Sojourn in the Heartland.”  American Drama 16:2 (Summer 2007): 28-45.
“Back to the (Plutonian) Midwest: Sam Shepard’s The God of Hell.” New England Theatre Journal 18 (2007): 95-108.
“Center Stage: Midwestern Plays and Playwrights.”  Midwest Miscellany XXX (Spring 2002): 7-19.
———-.  Rpt. Agora, www.eiu.edu/~agora, May 2004.
“Collapsing Male Myths: Rabe’s Tragicomic Hurlyburly.”  American Drama 3:1 (Fall 1993): 1-16.
———-.  Rpt. New Readings in American Drama: Something’s Happening Here.  Ed. Norma Jenckes.  New York: Peter Lang, 2002.
“David Rabe.”  Ed. Phillip Yanella, American Literature in Context (Wiley-Blackwell), 2010.
“Dramatizing the Midwest.”  MidAmerica XXXIV (2007): 59-78.
“Eastern Paradox in Bernard Shaw’s Major Barbara.”  Shaw: The Journal of Shaw Studies 36:2 (2016): 256-271.
“The Heartland of Susan Glaspell’s Plays.”  MidAmerica XXXVII (2010): 81-94.
“Hurlyburly.”  Ed. Phillipe Yanella, American Literature in Context (Wiley-Blackwell), 2010.
“The Incredible Shrinking Theatre.”  The Dramatists Guild Quarterly 33:4 (Winter 1997): 37-39.
———-.  Rpt. Curtain Call IV:2 (Oct.-Nov. 1997): 4.
“Insurrection et désir dans La Folle de Chaillot.” La Folle de Chaillot 1945-1995: Lectures et métamorphoses.  Les Cahiers Jean Giraudoux 25 (1997): 119-130.
“In the Heart of the Land: Midwestern Plays and Playwrights.”  Critical Insights: Midwestern Literature.  Ed. Ronald Primeau.  Ipswich, MA: Salem P, 2013.  186-97.
“’Living Fifty-Fifty’: Gender Dynamics in the Plays of Rachel Crothers.”  MidAmerica XXXVIII (2011): 82-92.
“Man among Men: David Mamet’s Homosocial Order.”  American Drama 1:1 (Fall 1991): 46-60.
———-.  Rpt. Fictions of Masculinity: Literary Constructions of Manhood .  Ed. Peter F. Murphy.  New York : New York UP, 1994.
———-.  Rpt. David Mamet.  Ed. Harold Bloom.  New York: Chelsea House, 2003.
“Marsha Norman’s Bi-Regional Vision in ‘night, Mother.”  Mississippi Quarterly 64:1-2 (Winter/Spring 2012): 115-28.
“[Midwestern] Drama.”  The America Midwest: An Interpretive Encyclopedia. Eds. Richard Sisson, Christian Zacher, and Andrew Clayton.  Bloomington, IN: Indiana UP, 2006.
“[Midwestern] Drama.”  Dictionary of Midwestern Literature.  Vol. II.  Ed. Philip A. Greasley.  Bloomington: Indiana UP, 2016.  206-215.
“Midwestern Dramas.”  In the Middle of the Midwest: An Anthology of Creative Non-Fiction from the Heartland .  Ed. Becky Bradway.  Bloomington: Indiana UP, 2003.
“The Midwestern Plays of Tennessee Williams.”  Tennessee Williams Annual Review No. 8 (2006): 33-50.
“The Playwright’s Vision in ‘The Process.'”  The Dramatists Guild Quarterly 29:4 (Winter 1993): 13-14.
“The Psychology of Coriolanus.”  Penumbra 2:1 (Fall-Winter 1978): 19-28.
“Rabe, Mamet, Shepard, and Wilson: Mid-American Male Dramatists of the 1970s and ’80s.”  The Midwest Quarterly XLVIII: 3 (Spring 2007): 342-58.
“Reference Works: Strategic Allusion in Thornton Wilder’s Theater.”  Thornton Wilder in Collaboration: Collected Essays on His Drama and Fiction.  Eds. Jackson R. Bryer, Judith P. Hallett, and Edyta Oczkowicz.  Cambridge, England: Cambridge Scholars, 2018.  83-102.
“Regional Tensions in Tennessee Williams’s Candles to the Sun and Spring Storm.”  South Atlantic Review 72:3 (Summer 2007): 38-50.
“Tennessee Williams’s St. Louis on Stage.”  Tennessee Williams Literary Journal VI: I (Winter 2008): 10-22.
“Twain, Howells, and the Origins of Midwestern Drama.”  MidAmerica XXXI (2004): 25-42.
“Using Drama in the Composition Class.”  Kentucky English Bulletin 37:2 (Winter 1987-88): 95-105.
“War of the Wests: Saroyan’s Dramatic Landscape.”  American Drama 9:2 (Spring 2000): 29-49.
“Western Drama and the New Frontier.” American Drama 7:1 (Fall 1997): 99-120.
“Wilder’s Dramatic Landscape: Alienation Effect Meets the Midwest.” American Drama 15:1 (Winter 2006): 43-61.
“William Inge’s Dramatic Mindscape.”   South Dakota Review 42:3 (Fall 2004): 49-69.
“You Can Go Home Again: Tennessee Williams’ A Lovely Sunday for Creve Coeur.”  Midwest Miscellany XXXIII (Fall 2006): 7-21.

Essays on Thomas Wolfe:

“Fertile Frame: Thomas Wolfe and the American Midwest.”  The Thomas Wolfe Review 41: 1-2 (2017): 26-43.
“Genre Interactions in Thomas Wolfe’s I Have a Thing to Tell You.”  The Thomas Wolfe Review 40: 1-2 (2016): 7-22.
“Meditation: On Going Home.”  The Thomas Wolfe Review 37:1-2 (2013): 136-45.
“’A Stone, a Leaf, a Door’: The Narrative Poetics of Thomas Wolfe.”  The Thomas Wolfe Review 35:1-2 (2011): 7-21.  Winner of the Zelda and Paul Gitlin Literary Prize for best essay published on Thomas Wolfe in 2011.
“Thomas Wolfe’s Expressionism and The Party at Jack’s.”  The Thomas Wolfe Review 37:1-2 (2013): 7-22.  Winner of the Zelda and Paul Gitlin Literary Prize for best essay published on Thomas Wolfe in 2013.

Essays on Poetry:

“‘Elegy for Jane’: The Nature of Grief.”  A Field Guide to the Poetry of Theodore Roethke.  Ed. William Barillas.  Athen, OH: Ohio UP, 2021.
“On Leadership.”  Pine Whispers Summer 2015: 2.
“On Music and Poetry.”  Pine Whispers Spring 2016: 2.
“On Poetry and Pain .”  A View from the Loft 24:6: 3-6, 17.
———-.  Rpt. The Muse Apprentice Guild (on-line), August 2002.
———-.  Rpt. Agora (on-line) XXVIII (Sept. 2002).
“On Poetry Readings.”   The Muse Apprentice Guild (on-line), Winter 2003.
“Poetry as Civic Witness.”  Pine Whispers Winter 2015: 2.
“Poetry, Beginnings to 1820.” The Companion to Southern Literature.  Eds. Joseph M. Flora and Lucinda H. MacKethan.  Baton Rouge: Louisiana State UP, 2002.  655-58.
“Poetry as Play.” Poet and Critic Winter 1983-84: 37-40.
“Recycling Poems.” Orbis (UK) 65/66 (Summer-Autumn 1987): 41-43.
“Returning to Rhyme.”  Red Room, www.redroom.com, May 2012.
“Toward a Less Primitive Prosody: Some Propositions.”  Series of five articles.  Counterpoint (UK), Summer 1977 to Spring 1979.
“Unity of Vision in T.S. Eliot’s Waste Land.”  The Kaw Valley Literary Review 1:2 (Spring 1978): 11-16.
“What’s Wrong with Contemporary American Poetry?”  A View from the Loft 11:2 (Sept. 1988): 1, 16-17.

Essays on Contemporary Writing:

“Authors Wanted (Inquire Within).”  Vocabula, www.vocabula.com, June 2011.
“Beyond Self-Expression.” A View from the Loft 21:1 (August 1998): 4, 10.
“Caveat Emptor: A Comment on Creative Writing Programs.”  A View from the Loft 9:3 (Nov. 1986): 8-9.
“Comment” on creative writing programs.  College English 56:2 (Feb. 1994): 219-220.
“Creative Writing in the Academy.”  Profession 1999: 106-112.
“The Intimate Kinship of Genres.”  Charlotte Center for the Literary Arts, www.charlottelit.org, Oct. 2020.
“The Literary Grants Climate in Illinois.”  IWI Newsletter July 1990: 1, 3.
“The New Regionalism.”  A View from the Loft 13:3 (Oct. 1990): 5, 16.
“On Poetry and Religion.”  IWI Newsletter May 1992: 1.
“On Writing and Wisdom.”  A View from the Loft 10:1 (Aug. 1987): 1, 6.
“Patronage and the Arts.”  A View from the Loft 12:4 (Nov. 1989): 6, 14-15.
“Publishing’s Publishing for A’ That.”  A View from the Loft 14:9 (April 1992): 7, 20-21.
“Rethinking Creative Writing.”   Electronic Book Review (on-line), May 2001.
“Species of Literary Fraud.”  A View from the Loft 15:10 (May 1993): 6-7, 17.
———-.  Rpt. Carousel , Vol. 16, No. 6, Nov./Dec. 1993, pp. 1, 10.  Rpt. Author World (on-line), 2000.
“Take Time to Punctuate.”  eMuse, 1 July 2022.
“Writing and the Self-Expression Industry.”  A View from the Loft12:1 (Aug. 1989): 3, 18.

Other Essays:

“A Catalogue of Works Based on the Apocryphal Book of Judith: From the Mediaeval Period to the Present.”  Bulletin of Bibliography 44:3 (Sept. 1987): 89-92.
“Graduate student unions won’t destroy higher education.”  Champaign News-Gazette 14 March 2001.
“The Hidden Enemy.”  Journeyman l: 1 (Winter 1991): 8-10.
“The Other Side of Cancer.”  Touch: Healing in the Arts 1 (Fall 2006): 10-14.
“The Proud Virtues of Defeat.”  U.S. News and World Report 24 Aug. 1987: 5.

Reviews:

Review of Between Question & Answer: Selected Poems of Ute von Funcke.  Trans. Stuart Friebert.  Trans-Lit2 XXV: 1 (Frühjahr 2019): 91-93.
Review of Deep Words and Epiphanies: Haikus and Word Magic, by Albrecht Classen.  Trans-Lit2 XXX:1 (Frühjahr 2024): 80-81.
Review of Die Party bei den Jacks, by Thomas Wolfe.  Trans. Susanne Höbel.  Thomas Wolfe Review 35:1-2 (2011): 146-9.
Review of Don’t Die, by Michael Blumenthal.   Trans-Lit2 XXVIII: 2 (Frühjahr 2022): 95-97.
Review of Floating Heart, by Stuart Friebert.  Trans-Lit2 XXI: 1 (Frühjahr 2015): 93-94.
Review of The Man and the World: Selected Essays and All Tables of Contents from the Thomas Wolfe Newsletter and Review 1977-2000. Eds. Takashi Kodeira and Hiroshi Tsunemoto.  The Thomas Wolfe Review 29:1-2 (2005): 108-111.
Review of Mortal Diamonds by Durs Grünbein.  Trans-Lit2 XX: 1 (Frühjahr 2014): 70-71.
Review of My Father’s Hands, by Thomas Wolfe.  Ed. David Strange.  The Thomas Wolfe Review 30: 1-2 (2006): 153-55.
Review of The Napkin Manuscripts: Selected Essays and an Interview, by Michael McFee.  Knoxville: U Tennessee P, 2006.  Mississippi Quarterly 60:2 (Spring 2007): 427-29.
Review of Oktoberfest, by Thomas Wolfe.  Trans. Irma Wehrli.  The Thomas Wolfe Review 34:1-2 (2010): 159-62.
Review of Out of the West: Notes from Thomas Wolfe’s Final Western Journey, ed. Mark Canada et al.  The Thomas Wolfe Review 38: 1-2 (2014): 122-3.
Review of Thinking in Tristichs: Original Poems Inspired by Thomas Wolfe’s Stories, by Martin Wasserman.  Xlibris, 2019.  The Thomas Wolfe Review Vols. 42-43, Nos. 1 & 2 (2018-19): 216-28.
Review of Votives: Selected Poems from the Literary Remains, by Kuno Raeber.  Trans. Stuart Friebert; ed. Christiane Wyrwa.  Trans-Lit2 XXIV: 1 (Fruehjahr 2018): 97-98.