PARTISAN REVIEW
blS
WHEN WE WERE YOUNG
RUN-THROUGH: A MEMOIR.
By
John Houseman. Simon and Schuster.
$9.95.
THE NEW DEAL ART PROJECTS. AN ANTHOLOGY OF MEMOIRS.
Edited by Francis V. O'Connor. Smithsonian Institution Press. $12.50.
John H ouseman's memoir is unintimate and unconfessional
for all its candor, and although we are told essentially what the author
did or had done to him between his birth in Bucharest in 1902 and the
beginning of World War II, his "education," like that of Henry Adams,
is neatly circumscribed and judiciously reticent. A short "Overture"
takes care of his adolescence and youth. It might be called "The Shaping
of Jacques H ouseman." The following three sections or "Acts" form an
engaging and observant chronicle of Houseman's experiences in the
theatrical world of the 1930s.
The little polyglot cosmopolite, Jacques Haussmann, habitue of
Vienna, Berlin, Paris, Rome and numerous continental resorts and spirit–
ually akin to Candide, Felix Krull , and Augie March, would seem to
have little in comn-wn. with John Houseman, impresario. Yet the dis–
crepant episodes of his European years determined his later blunders
and successes. How lucky for him that his British-born mother insisted
that he learn modern languages, that he acquired an English public
school education along with a proper accent and social ease. A whirl in
the grain market after an intercontinental apprenticeship almost made
him a tycoon in his twenties. Fortunately for the American theater, it
ended in spectacular failure, but adventl!res in money-making were not
utterly wasted on the future director. Artist Houseman - fiction writer,
critic, music lover - responded unerringly to what was original and
audacious on the stage. Businessman Houseman after his fiasco in trade
demonstrated unusual capacity for what he calls "collective collabora–
tion," an ability to coordinate the business as well as the technical and
personal details of theatrical production.
Read simply as a historical record of the Depression decade,
Run–
Through
is far superior to most recollections of the period, largely
solipsistic exercises casting colored lights on disremembered events.
Houseman had made a practice, he tells us, of "relating my theatrical
activity to the historical moments of the time." He is sensitive to social
nuances, peppers his book with evocative impressi,ons of places - most
notably Chicago, Harlem, Kansas City - and when he mentions any–
one, whether celebrated or unimportant, the name is never left dangling;
it is inva riably linked with an illustrative fact or quotation or conversa–
tion. The result is in part a selective and subjective "history" of the
