SOURCE: “Ionesco’s Later Plays: Experiments in Dramatic Form,” in The Two Faces of Ionesco, edited by Rosette C. Lamont and Melvin J. Friedman, The Whitson Publishing Company, 1978, pp. 101-18.

In the following essay, Brée studies three Ionesco plays from the 1960s, A Stroll in the Air, Exit the King, and Hunger and Thirst, in relation to his essays of the same period, and argues that the dramas constitute an effort on the part of the playwright to communicate, via the state, a view of life as “provisional, sincere, problematic, yet positive. ”

Découvertes (Discoveries), one of Ionesco’s more recent essays, came out in 1969 in the semi-de-luxe series entitled “The paths of creation” published by Skira. The over-all title of the series is self-explanatory. Writers—Aragon, Butor, Prévert—and critics—Barthes, Caillois, Starobinski, Picon—approach the topic from various, personal angles. Ionesco...