The generic difference between [Le Solitaire, a novel, and Ce Formidable Bordel!, a play,] is actually slight, beyond obvious and superficial differences in form. Whether or not the generic question be judged a fruitful subject for debate aǵain matters little. The novel is full of "dramatic" techniques and over half the play is built on "non-dramatic" chunks of prose appropriate to a novel…. What I find compelling about this symbiotic pair, however, is not the havoc they play with generic labels, but the images they project of our struggle with the demons of existence. The demons have not changed appreciably since the plays of the '50s, indeed since long before that. What has changed in Le Solitaire and Ce Formidable Bordel! is the intensity, I would even say the authenticity, of the struggle. Le Solitaire and Le Personnage, Ionesco's unnamed protagonists, try very hard to understand...