Book Review: The Confessions of Edward Day

by Marx Dorrity, August 31, 2009

It is 1974 and Edward Day and his peers are being educated by Sanford Meisner, Stella Adler, and other famed authorities on acting technique. The novel touches on the polemics around the various approaches just enough to illuminate the cultural logic of the bohemia in which the characters circulate. The name of the game, though, is getting an Actors Equity card and earning a wage. As Day explains it, “When an actor has a part, he has a life, and a full one”—a rule that holds for “ethnic” Method actors and British Shakespearians alike. In Martin’s smartly-tailored conception, one’s destiny is pinned to one’s parts. Day finds his best mentor in an established actress with whom he is paired in a summer stock production of Tennessee Williams’ twisted May-December tale, “Sweet Bird of Youth.” She pulls a Tarot card and advises him to not lose his atypical coldness, warning him that Meisner will try to rid him of this special trait.