In the following essay, Meyer compares Inge's view of American ideals, as represented in Bus Stop, with that of other notable authors. The critic also addresses claims that Inge's play lacks depth, arguing that Bus Stop actually offers profound insight into small town America.

Bus Stop—both the play and the movie—is an attempt to dramatize what is pre-eminently undra-matic, viz., the evolution of small-town hyperverbality into American hypervisuality. This shift in sensibility or revolution in "taste" is an extremely difficult phenomenon to depict—the playwright, William Inge, here choosing to employ the more demonstrable theme of love/sexuality in order to express or encompass this New-World evolution. Indeed, so vital but protean and mercurial is this problem of the shift from ear to eye, from traditional authority to self-reliance, that such well-known anthologists of American culture as Blair, Stewart, Hornberger and Miller, in their The...