[Even] in Golden Boy, which is far and away better theatre fare than any other Odets play, he is still the most personal of all playwrights, still speaking for himself and listening to himself as he speaks. He is still recording rather than creating, still not quite dramatically mature, with all of his faults as plain to see in his playwriting as white figures on a blackboard. But he has vigor, a mental and spiritual pressure of ideas against his material which does not let his story down, and he is acquiring a sure sense of form. He has, moreover, that gift of rhythmic speech which is the mark of the more-than-one-play author, a gift which most little boys on any street corner possess, and which grown men seem somehow unhappily to lose before they put their pens to the pages of a play.
This gift of speech Odets has not yet quite under control. To give it full value he must either set it free or discipline it more severely, or both. Many of the most authentic and spirited passages of his dialogue still sound like phrases carefully culled from a notebook carefully documented by a playwright with a fine ear. It is some of the lush, sentimental scenes in Golden Boy, overwritten but with a clear, crisp undertone, that show how well Odets will write when he once creates freely and allows his characters to speak out of their own mouths. (p. 12)
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