his best, The Iceman Cometh and Long Day's Journey
into Night.
The rigors of wartime made life at semi-rural Tao House
difficult; O'Neill was plagued by ill health, and by 1944
the O'Neills had sold the house, sold the furniture back
to Gump's and left for New York, to resume "the rootless
life he loathed." McClatchy concludes:
"He had lived in Tao House longer than in any one place
his whole life, but it was not to be his final harbor. O'Neill
died in a Boston hotel room on November 27, 1953,
and his last recorded words were, "Born in a hotel room,
and God damn it, died in a hotel room."
As with Edith Wharton, loss and dislocation attended
O'Neill's life, a sad comment on any writer's attempt to
live from and in an establishment perfect and permanent.
Nothing is permanent, nothing is perfect, as I learned at
great expense, but as Satan famously said in Milton's
Paradise Lost, "The mind is its own place." Faute de
mieux, I might add.
As for me, I again have a room of my own which I am
just beginning to decorate, frugally. Until I can afford a
Mount, or better yet a Tao, it is enough. H Lisa Zeiger
American Writers At Home
Written by JD McClatchy
Photography by Erica Lennard
Publshed by Library of America
ISBN-10: 1931082758
HYLAND
