Notes et contre-notes.

Paris, France Editions Gallimard: Collection Idees, 1966. Paperback Fine in Wraps: The pages have tanned just slightly, due to aging; else flawless: binding square and secure; text clean. Virtually 'As New'. NOT a Remainder, Book-Club, or Ex-Library. 12mo. 373pp. Mass Market Paperback. Eugène Ionesco (1909 – 1994) was a Romanian playwright who wrote mostly in French, and one of the foremost figures of the French Avant-garde theatre. Beyond ridiculing the most banal situations, Ionesco's plays depict the solitude and insignificance of human existence in a tangible way. Like Shaw and Brecht, Ionesco also contributed to the theatre with his theoretical writings. Ionesco wrote mainly in attempts to correct critics whom he felt misunderstood his work and therefore wrongly influenced his audience. In doing so, Ionesco articulated ways in which he thought contemporary theatre should be reformed. Notes and Counter Notes is a collection of Ionesco's writings, including musings on why he chose to write for the theatre and direct responses to his contemporary critics. In the first section, titled "Experience of the Theatre", Ionesco claimed to have hated going to the theatre as a child because it gave him "no pleasure or feeling of participation". He wrote that the problem with realistic theatre is that it is less interesting than theatre that invokes an "imaginative truth", which he found to be much more interesting and freeing than the "narrow" truth presented by strict realism. He claimed that "drama that relies on simple effects is not necessarily drama simplified". Notes and Counter Notes also reprints a heated war of words between Ionesco and Kenneth Tynan based on Ionesco's above stated beliefs and Ionesco's hatred for Brecht and Brechtian theatre.