The Orton Diaries - Hardcover

Orton, Joe

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 0413496600 ISBN 13: 9780413496607

Publisher: Methuen Publishing Ltd, 1986

Synopsis

Physical description: [400]p ; 24cm. Subjects: Dramatists, English 20th century ; Biography. Playwrights, English - 20th century. Orton, Joe - Biography. Genre: Biography. Language: English.

About this title

From the Back Cover

"To be young, good-looking, healthy, famous, comparatively rich, and happy is surely going against nature". When Joe Orton (1933-1967) wrote those words in his diary in May 1967, he was being hailed as the greatest comic playwright since Oscar Wilde for his darkly hilarious Entertaining Mr. Sloane and the farce hit Loot, and was completing What the Butler Saw; but less than three months later, his longtime companion, Kenneth Halliwell, smashed Orton's skull in with a hammer before killing himself. The Orton Diaries, written during his last eight months, chronicle in a remarkably candid style his outrageously unfettered life: his literary success, capped by an Evening Standard Award and overtures from the Beatles; his sexual escapades - at his mother's funeral, with a dwarf in Brighton, and, extensively, in Tangiers; and the breakdown of his sixteen-year "marriage" to Halliwell, the relationship that transformed and destroyed him. Edited with a superb introduction by John Lahr, The Orton Diaries is his crowning achievement.

About the Author

The plays of Joe Orton (1933-1967),Loot, What the Butler Saw, Entertaining Mr. Sloane, and others,rank with Oscar Wilde's as some of the most outrageous and hilarious of our time. He was brutally murdered by his male lover at the peak of his career.

Edition details

• Publisher: Methuen Publishing Ltd
• Publication date: 1986
• Language: English
• ISBN 10: 0413496600
• ISBN 13: 9780413496607
• Binding: Hardcover
• Edition number: 1
• Number of pages: 400
• Editor: Lahr John