SOURCE: The New York Times, 15 December 1935, Section II, p. 1

In the following article, Odets defends his technique of constructing plays without plots.

No one will deny that all over the world today life is changing for better or worse for millions of human beings. Such changes have taken place before in history; and in each place where it has happened life has been a hell for the artist trying to express that time.

For as the established social order breaks down, the same process is working out in the artist's forms. Blithely, and with great talent, Mozart is able to spill twoscore or so symphonies on paper. Beethoven, a few years later, in a period of social flux, is able to write only nine, which means that the symphonic form was sufficiently stabilized for Mozart to keep minting out coins from the same mold, while his distinguished pupil...