SOURCE: "The Road from Marxist Commitment: Clifford Odets," in Drama and Commitment: Politics in the American Theatre of the Thirties, Indiana University Press, 1964, pp. 169-212.

In the excerpt below, Rabkin examines Odets' incorporation of elements of agitprop into his writings of the 1930s.

Clifford Odets scrawled his name across the page marked 1935 in American dramatic history. In the course of that year he had five plays produced, four of them on Broadway: "Waiting for Lefty," "Till the Day I Die," Awake and Sing!, and Paradise Lost. His short monologue, "I Can't Sleep," was produced at a union benefit, and the aforementioned "Lefty" began a theatrical career that was to carry it, not only from one end of the United States to the other, but all over the world. The name of Odets became the number one topic of literary conversation, and the hitherto unknown and struggling young actor...