{"id":76507,"date":"2014-09-18T11:00:41","date_gmt":"2014-09-18T15:00:41","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/?p=76507"},"modified":"2014-10-31T18:11:40","modified_gmt":"2014-10-31T22:11:40","slug":"stalking-sean-ocasey","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/2014\/09\/18\/stalking-sean-ocasey\/","title":{"rendered":"Stalking Se\u00e1n O\u2019Casey"},"content":{"rendered":"

Today is the fiftieth anniversary of Irish playwright Se\u00e1n O\u2019Casey\u2019s death. Sam Stephenson tracks his appearances in W. Eugene Smith\u2019s archive. <\/em><\/p>\n

\"CCP_ag33_tape533_1\"<\/a>

The original tape box for the reel containing the Red Valens phone call. On same reel, photographer Daniel Kramer is recorded in Smith\u2019s loft discussing his photographs of Bob Dylan intended for Sensorium<\/em>. Smith met Kramer in June 1965 when both were photographing Dylan\u2019s Highway 61 Revisited<\/em> studio sessions. A Long John Nebel radio show is also recorded. The handwriting is an assistant\u2019s, not Smith\u2019s. Images courtesy of Center for Creative Photography, University of Arizona.<\/p><\/div>\n

On August 15, 1965, W. Eugene Smith was up late, as usual, in his dingy fourth-floor loft in the wholesale flower district, a neighborhood desolate after dark. He was working on the first issue of Sensorium<\/em>, his new \u201cmagazine of photography and other arts of communication,\u201d a hopeful platform free of commercial expectations and pressures. He was editing a submission by the writer E.G. \u201cRed\u201d Valens, whom he had met in 1945 when both were war correspondents in the Pacific. Despite the late hour, Smith decided to give his old friend a call.<\/p>\n

Valens\u2019s wife answered the phone just before the fifth ring. She\u2019d been asleep. She gave the phone to her husband. He\u2019d been asleep, too.<\/p>\n

\u201cGood morning,\u201d said a groggy Valens.<\/p>\n

\u201cYou don\u2019t stay up as late as you used to,\u201d joked Smith.<\/p>\n

He then apologized for calling so late. Valens wasn\u2019t irritated. He even resisted Smith\u2019s offer to call back at a more reasonable hour.<\/p>\n

Thirty-six minutes and nineteen seconds later, the pair said good-bye and hung up. We know this because Smith taped the phone call. When he died in 1978, this clip was among 4,500 hours of recordings he made from roughly 1957 to 1966. <\/p>\n

After the discussion of Valens\u2019s article concluded, the conversation turned to the habit of taking notes while reading. Smith said he couldn\u2019t read one page of Henry Miller without taking three pages of dissenting notes. Valens said he could rank his library based on the number of notes he\u2019d jotted in the margins of each book\u2014the more notes, the more favor. Smith responded by expressing adulation for an Irish writer who had passed away the previous year:<\/p>\n

\n

That seeing, thoughtful soul Se\u00e1n O\u2019Casey causes me to be \u2026 when I run out of imagination or I\u2019m just dead against a wall\u2014I can\u2019t function, I can\u2019t think right, I have no probe, if I read O\u2019Casey for a little while \u2026 I\u2019m usually back to seeing and searching, and things start pouring out. Very few writers can do that to me. Faulkner can do it to some extent. O\u2019Casey is my old standby. I always include a copy of O\u2019Casey when I go somewhere on a story.<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n

Valens then said, \u201cThat\u2019s worth a short article next time you run out of ideas for an issue [of Sensorium<\/em>]\u2014\u2018O\u2019Casey: The Traveling Man\u2019s Boon.\u2019\u2009\u201d<\/p>\n

Smith chuckled.<\/p>\n

Valens then said, \u201cNo, I\u2019m serious.\u201d<\/p>\n

Three weeks later, Smith\u2019s financing for Sensorium<\/em> fell through and another grand ambition was left unfinished. A more specific explanation of O\u2019Casey\u2019s impact on Smith\u2019s photography never emerged, either.<\/p>\n

*\u00a0 *\u00a0 *<\/p>\n

In a letter to two editors at Holiday<\/em> magazine in 1957, while pitching a layout of his extended work-in-progress on the city of Pittsburgh, Smith described the intended opus as \u201cTennessee O\u2019Neill or Wolfe O\u2019Casey.\u201d The four names refer to three playwrights and a novelist, Thomas Wolfe, who also wrote several one-act plays. Throughout his life, Smith referred to literature and theater (and to music) as the most important influences on his photography, but he rarely provided references to specific works. His professed indebtedness bears a tinge of grandiosity and reveals, too, a general feeling of inferiority within the field of photography at that time.<\/p>\n

Smith\u2019s obsession with theater registered in other ways, too. Among them, his first daughter, Marissa, was named for a dancer he met while photographing a Broadway show in 1939. In much of his classic Life<\/em> magazine work, especially 1948\u2019s \u201cCountry Doctor,\u201d his pictures resemble theater stills. He photographed the preparations and openings for original productions, such as Death of a Salesman<\/em> and A Streetcar Named Desire<\/em>, and he produced two major photo spreads on obscure theater subjects for Life<\/em>. When he began making voluminous photographs out his fourth-floor window in the late fifties, he called the frame his \u201cproscenium arch.\u201d<\/p>\n

Smith spoke of his photography assignments as \u201cstories,\u201d as he did in the phone call with Valens. He would have been closer to the truth if he\u2019d said, I always include a copy of O\u2019Casey when I go somewhere on a poem<\/em>. He never recognized or reconciled the difference between story and poem, or journalism and art, and the tension troubled him unconsciously.<\/p>\n

Photojournalism\u2014reporting from a field unseen by an audience\u2014carried a legitimacy that was important to Smith. His father had been a business leader in Wichita, Kansas, and his mother a devout, converted Catholic; the expectations for young Gene were conventional. By age fourteen, he was working on assignments for local papers. When he was sixteen, he painted W. EUGENE SMITH, PHOTOGRAPHER<\/small> on the side of his mother\u2019s station wagon, signaling his desire to venture out for stories and be known for it. He retained the label of journalist for the rest of his life, long after his work had outstripped that field\u2019s boundaries. In the margins of a book of writing by the sculptor Rodin, beside a passage about truth in art, Smith jotted, \u201cThis is the epitome of journalism.\u201d<\/p>\n

I recently came across a 1982 talk called \u201cImpossible Stories\u201d by the filmmaker Wim Wenders, in which he says, \u201cIn the relationship between story and image, I see the story as a kind of vampire trying to suck all the blood from an image. Images are acutely sensitive; like snails they shrink back when you touch their horns. They don\u2019t have it in them to be the cart horses, carrying and transporting messages or significance or intention or a moral. But that\u2019s precisely what a story wants from them.\u201d<\/p>\n

Wenders\u2019s concern for the image helped me articulate my evolving feelings about Smith over the nearly eighteen years I have been studying his life and work. Smith resigned from Life<\/em> magazine in early 1955, giving up a large salary and expense account. In doing so, he also gave up journalism once and for all. On his first freelance assignment in Pittsburgh, he befriended the young avant-garde filmmaker Stan Brakhage, whose silent films and beliefs that language numbed the senses impressed Smith. His work moved further beyond journalism than ever, further beyond story, toward image and poetry. But he couldn\u2019t shake the need for story in his public presentation. As a result, he strangled his extraordinary, lyrical Pittsburgh images by jamming them together on the page and inserting overwrought text. In one section comparing the most exclusive private club in Pittsburgh to a union beer joint, he added these words: \u201cYet at the core, down at the coiling depths of pulse and instinct, what difference here except in furnishing?\u201d<\/p>\n

I want to shake Smith. Hey, man, just let the images breathe. The image is enough.<\/p>\n

*\u00a0 *\u00a0 *<\/p>\n

I must admit that Wenders\u2019s quote also gave me pause in my role as Smith\u2019s biographer. I can see myself working to piece together a story from the detritus of his life\u2014archives and memories and sometimes bread crumbs it feels he left behind on purpose. Too much effort to make a story from these fragments can suck the blood out of them.<\/p>\n

When Smith\u2019s archive was bequeathed to the University of Arizona, his library contained 3,750 books. Among them were two collections of\u00a0Se\u00e1n O\u2019Casey\u2019s plays, five of the six volumes of his autobiography, one essay collection, and two individual plays, Cock-a-Doodle Dandy<\/em> and Red Roses for Me<\/em>.<\/p>\n

(Smith also owned about 25,000 vinyl records, including much of the spoken-word catalog of Caedmon Records, which means that it can reasonably be assumed that he owned that label\u2019s 1952 recording of O\u2019Casey reading selections from Juno and the Paycock<\/em> and from two of the autobiographies).<\/p>\n

Who knows how many O\u2019Casey volumes Smith lost or gave away? A few jazz musicians who frequented Smith\u2019s loft in the late fifties and early sixties were known to use his bookshelves like a lending library, with many books no doubt long overdue. Others would steal his things and hock them while Smith looked the other way.<\/p>\n

A twenty-second comment by Smith about\u00a0Se\u00e1n O\u2019Casey, in a dubiously recorded, nocturnal phone call in August 1965, led me down a rabbit hole. There are other references to O\u2019Casey in the Smith annals, but none this alluring to me, the sympathy and patience for Smith demonstrated by Valens and his wife being the first thing, leading to the brief O\u2019Casey monologue.<\/p>\n

I now know a lot about O\u2019Casey. I\u2019ve read much of his work and I\u2019ve reached out to O\u2019Casey experts, such as James Moran, a professor of drama at the University of Nottingham and the author of a terrific study, The Theater of\u00a0Se\u00e1n O\u2019Casey<\/em>. There are ways to connect dots between Smith\u2019s aesthetic impulses and O\u2019Casey\u2019s.<\/p>\n

According to Smith\u2019s first biographer, Jim Hughes, Smith had an affair with a young actress who read O\u2019Casey aloud to him in 1949. Six of the books by O\u2019Casey that Smith owned were published between 1944 and 1949, and thus would have been available during the affair. O\u2019Casey had died less than a year before the 1965 taped phone call with Valens and the New York Times<\/em> ran a three thousand-word obituary. There was even a Hollywood movie\u2014Young Cassidy<\/em>, from MGM\u2014based on O\u2019Casey\u2019s autobiography that had been released earlier in 1965. The playwright reverberated in the culture then far more than he does today.<\/p>\n

But what if Smith was more or less bullshitting about O\u2019Casey? Slightly eager to grandstand in the lonely, sad-hour phone call? Knowing his tape was rolling, having enough ego to believe that a researcher would one day be listening?<\/p>\n

Sam Stephenson<\/a> is a writer and a partner in Rock Fish Stew Institute of Literature and Materials, a documentary enterprise based in Durham, North Carolina. He is the author of <\/em>The Jazz Loft Project<\/a> and is at work on a biography of W. Eugene Smith for Farrar, Straus and Giroux.<\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Today is the fiftieth anniversary of Irish playwright Se\u00e1n O\u2019Casey\u2019s death. Sam Stephenson tracks his appearances in W. Eugene Smith\u2019s archive. On August 15, 1965, W. Eugene Smith was up late, as usual, in his dingy fourth-floor loft in the wholesale flower district, a neighborhood desolate after dark. He was working on the first issue […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":101,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[1667],"tags":[199,2655,3877,100,12108,9460,15239,3455,44,1550,2474],"class_list":["post-76507","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-notes-from-a-biographer","tag-biography","tag-henry-miller","tag-life-magazine","tag-photography","tag-playwriting","tag-sean-ocasey","tag-sensorium","tag-stan-brakhage","tag-theater","tag-w-eugene-smith","tag-wim-wenders"],"acf":[],"yoast_head":"\nStalking Se\u00e1n O\u2019Casey<\/title>\n<meta name=\"description\" content=\"Today is the fiftieth anniversary of Irish playwright Se\u00e1n O\u2019Casey\u2019s death. Sam Stephenson tracks his appearances in W. Eugene Smith\u2019s archive.\" \/>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/2014\/09\/18\/stalking-sean-ocasey\/\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"Stalking Se\u00e1n O\u2019Casey by Sam Stephenson\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:description\" content=\"September 18, 2014 \u2013 Today is the fiftieth anniversary of Irish playwright Se\u00e1n O\u2019Casey\u2019s death. Sam Stephenson tracks his appearances in W. Eugene Smith\u2019s archive. On August\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:url\" content=\"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/2014\/09\/18\/stalking-sean-ocasey\/\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:site_name\" content=\"The Paris Review\" \/>\n<meta property=\"article:publisher\" content=\"https:\/\/www.facebook.com\/parisreview\/\" \/>\n<meta property=\"article:published_time\" content=\"2014-09-18T15:00:41+00:00\" \/>\n<meta property=\"article:modified_time\" content=\"2014-10-31T22:11:40+00:00\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:image\" content=\"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2014\/09\/tape.jpg\" \/>\n\t<meta property=\"og:image:width\" content=\"1960\" \/>\n\t<meta property=\"og:image:height\" content=\"994\" \/>\n\t<meta property=\"og:image:type\" content=\"image\/jpeg\" \/>\n<meta name=\"author\" content=\"Sam Stephenson\" \/>\n<meta name=\"twitter:card\" content=\"summary_large_image\" \/>\n<meta name=\"twitter:creator\" content=\"@parisreview\" \/>\n<meta name=\"twitter:site\" content=\"@parisreview\" \/>\n<meta name=\"twitter:label1\" content=\"Written by\" \/>\n\t<meta name=\"twitter:data1\" content=\"Sam Stephenson\" \/>\n\t<meta name=\"twitter:label2\" content=\"Est. reading time\" \/>\n\t<meta name=\"twitter:data2\" content=\"9 minutes\" \/>\n<script type=\"application\/ld+json\" class=\"yoast-schema-graph\">{\"@context\":\"https:\/\/schema.org\",\"@graph\":[{\"@type\":\"Article\",\"@id\":\"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/2014\/09\/18\/stalking-sean-ocasey\/#article\",\"isPartOf\":{\"@id\":\"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/2014\/09\/18\/stalking-sean-ocasey\/\"},\"author\":{\"name\":\"Sam Stephenson\",\"@id\":\"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/#\/schema\/person\/069118efbd3cd858f2678f83bd0cfc8c\"},\"headline\":\"Stalking Se\u00e1n O\u2019Casey\",\"datePublished\":\"2014-09-18T15:00:41+00:00\",\"dateModified\":\"2014-10-31T22:11:40+00:00\",\"mainEntityOfPage\":{\"@id\":\"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/2014\/09\/18\/stalking-sean-ocasey\/\"},\"wordCount\":1788,\"commentCount\":2,\"publisher\":{\"@id\":\"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/#organization\"},\"image\":{\"@id\":\"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/2014\/09\/18\/stalking-sean-ocasey\/#primaryimage\"},\"thumbnailUrl\":\"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2014\/09\/tape-1024x519.jpg\",\"keywords\":[\"biography\",\"Henry Miller\",\"Life Magazine\",\"photography\",\"playwriting\",\"Sean O'Casey\",\"Sensorium\",\"Stan Brakhage\",\"theater\",\"W. Eugene Smith\",\"Wim Wenders\"],\"articleSection\":[\"Notes from a Biographer\"],\"inLanguage\":\"en-US\",\"potentialAction\":[{\"@type\":\"CommentAction\",\"name\":\"Comment\",\"target\":[\"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/2014\/09\/18\/stalking-sean-ocasey\/#respond\"]}]},{\"@type\":\"WebPage\",\"@id\":\"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/2014\/09\/18\/stalking-sean-ocasey\/\",\"url\":\"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/2014\/09\/18\/stalking-sean-ocasey\/\",\"name\":\"Stalking Se\u00e1n O\u2019Casey\",\"isPartOf\":{\"@id\":\"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/#website\"},\"primaryImageOfPage\":{\"@id\":\"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/2014\/09\/18\/stalking-sean-ocasey\/#primaryimage\"},\"image\":{\"@id\":\"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/2014\/09\/18\/stalking-sean-ocasey\/#primaryimage\"},\"thumbnailUrl\":\"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2014\/09\/tape-1024x519.jpg\",\"datePublished\":\"2014-09-18T15:00:41+00:00\",\"dateModified\":\"2014-10-31T22:11:40+00:00\",\"description\":\"Today is the fiftieth anniversary of Irish playwright Se\u00e1n O\u2019Casey\u2019s death. Sam Stephenson tracks his appearances in W. Eugene Smith\u2019s archive.\",\"breadcrumb\":{\"@id\":\"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/2014\/09\/18\/stalking-sean-ocasey\/#breadcrumb\"},\"inLanguage\":\"en-US\",\"potentialAction\":[{\"@type\":\"ReadAction\",\"target\":[\"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/2014\/09\/18\/stalking-sean-ocasey\/\"]}]},{\"@type\":\"ImageObject\",\"inLanguage\":\"en-US\",\"@id\":\"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/2014\/09\/18\/stalking-sean-ocasey\/#primaryimage\",\"url\":\"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2014\/09\/tape.jpg\",\"contentUrl\":\"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2014\/09\/tape.jpg\",\"width\":1960,\"height\":994,\"caption\":\"There will be some text here but I don't have it yet.\"},{\"@type\":\"BreadcrumbList\",\"@id\":\"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/2014\/09\/18\/stalking-sean-ocasey\/#breadcrumb\",\"itemListElement\":[{\"@type\":\"ListItem\",\"position\":1,\"name\":\"Home\",\"item\":\"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/\"},{\"@type\":\"ListItem\",\"position\":2,\"name\":\"Stalking Se\u00e1n O\u2019Casey\"}]},{\"@type\":\"WebSite\",\"@id\":\"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/#website\",\"url\":\"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/\",\"name\":\"The Paris Review\",\"description\":\"The best prose, interviews, poetry, and art. Since 1953.\",\"publisher\":{\"@id\":\"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/#organization\"},\"potentialAction\":[{\"@type\":\"SearchAction\",\"target\":{\"@type\":\"EntryPoint\",\"urlTemplate\":\"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/?s={search_term_string}\"},\"query-input\":{\"@type\":\"PropertyValueSpecification\",\"valueRequired\":true,\"valueName\":\"search_term_string\"}}],\"inLanguage\":\"en-US\"},{\"@type\":\"Organization\",\"@id\":\"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/#organization\",\"name\":\"The Paris Review\",\"url\":\"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/\",\"logo\":{\"@type\":\"ImageObject\",\"inLanguage\":\"en-US\",\"@id\":\"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/#\/schema\/logo\/image\/\",\"url\":\"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/04\/tpr-hadada-roundell-logo-square.png\",\"contentUrl\":\"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/04\/tpr-hadada-roundell-logo-square.png\",\"width\":696,\"height\":696,\"caption\":\"The Paris Review\"},\"image\":{\"@id\":\"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/#\/schema\/logo\/image\/\"},\"sameAs\":[\"https:\/\/www.facebook.com\/parisreview\/\",\"https:\/\/x.com\/parisreview\",\"https:\/\/www.instagram.com\/parisreview\"]},{\"@type\":\"Person\",\"@id\":\"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/#\/schema\/person\/069118efbd3cd858f2678f83bd0cfc8c\",\"name\":\"Sam Stephenson\",\"image\":{\"@type\":\"ImageObject\",\"inLanguage\":\"en-US\",\"@id\":\"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/#\/schema\/person\/image\/\",\"url\":\"https:\/\/secure.gravatar.com\/avatar\/ae3eebdfb760ee56047a01e71d2ab4d166449c66a4af60457f49d287c0b9faf0?s=96&d=mm&r=g\",\"contentUrl\":\"https:\/\/secure.gravatar.com\/avatar\/ae3eebdfb760ee56047a01e71d2ab4d166449c66a4af60457f49d287c0b9faf0?s=96&d=mm&r=g\",\"caption\":\"Sam Stephenson\"},\"url\":\"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/author\/sstephenson\/\"}]}<\/script>\n<!-- \/ Yoast SEO Premium plugin. -->","yoast_head_json":{"title":"Stalking Se\u00e1n O\u2019Casey","description":"Today is the fiftieth anniversary of Irish playwright Se\u00e1n O\u2019Casey\u2019s death. Sam Stephenson tracks his appearances in W. Eugene Smith\u2019s archive.","robots":{"index":"index","follow":"follow","max-snippet":"max-snippet:-1","max-image-preview":"max-image-preview:large","max-video-preview":"max-video-preview:-1"},"canonical":"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/2014\/09\/18\/stalking-sean-ocasey\/","og_locale":"en_US","og_type":"article","og_title":"Stalking Se\u00e1n O\u2019Casey by Sam Stephenson","og_description":"September 18, 2014 \u2013 Today is the fiftieth anniversary of Irish playwright Se\u00e1n O\u2019Casey\u2019s death. Sam Stephenson tracks his appearances in W. Eugene Smith\u2019s archive. On August","og_url":"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/2014\/09\/18\/stalking-sean-ocasey\/","og_site_name":"The Paris Review","article_publisher":"https:\/\/www.facebook.com\/parisreview\/","article_published_time":"2014-09-18T15:00:41+00:00","article_modified_time":"2014-10-31T22:11:40+00:00","og_image":[{"width":1960,"height":994,"url":"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2014\/09\/tape.jpg","type":"image\/jpeg"}],"author":"Sam Stephenson","twitter_card":"summary_large_image","twitter_creator":"@parisreview","twitter_site":"@parisreview","twitter_misc":{"Written by":"Sam Stephenson","Est. reading time":"9 minutes"},"schema":{"@context":"https:\/\/schema.org","@graph":[{"@type":"Article","@id":"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/2014\/09\/18\/stalking-sean-ocasey\/#article","isPartOf":{"@id":"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/2014\/09\/18\/stalking-sean-ocasey\/"},"author":{"name":"Sam Stephenson","@id":"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/#\/schema\/person\/069118efbd3cd858f2678f83bd0cfc8c"},"headline":"Stalking Se\u00e1n O\u2019Casey","datePublished":"2014-09-18T15:00:41+00:00","dateModified":"2014-10-31T22:11:40+00:00","mainEntityOfPage":{"@id":"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/2014\/09\/18\/stalking-sean-ocasey\/"},"wordCount":1788,"commentCount":2,"publisher":{"@id":"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/#organization"},"image":{"@id":"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/2014\/09\/18\/stalking-sean-ocasey\/#primaryimage"},"thumbnailUrl":"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2014\/09\/tape-1024x519.jpg","keywords":["biography","Henry Miller","Life Magazine","photography","playwriting","Sean O'Casey","Sensorium","Stan Brakhage","theater","W. Eugene Smith","Wim Wenders"],"articleSection":["Notes from a Biographer"],"inLanguage":"en-US","potentialAction":[{"@type":"CommentAction","name":"Comment","target":["https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/2014\/09\/18\/stalking-sean-ocasey\/#respond"]}]},{"@type":"WebPage","@id":"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/2014\/09\/18\/stalking-sean-ocasey\/","url":"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/2014\/09\/18\/stalking-sean-ocasey\/","name":"Stalking Se\u00e1n O\u2019Casey","isPartOf":{"@id":"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/#website"},"primaryImageOfPage":{"@id":"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/2014\/09\/18\/stalking-sean-ocasey\/#primaryimage"},"image":{"@id":"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/2014\/09\/18\/stalking-sean-ocasey\/#primaryimage"},"thumbnailUrl":"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2014\/09\/tape-1024x519.jpg","datePublished":"2014-09-18T15:00:41+00:00","dateModified":"2014-10-31T22:11:40+00:00","description":"Today is the fiftieth anniversary of Irish playwright Se\u00e1n O\u2019Casey\u2019s death. Sam Stephenson tracks his appearances in W. Eugene Smith\u2019s archive.","breadcrumb":{"@id":"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/2014\/09\/18\/stalking-sean-ocasey\/#breadcrumb"},"inLanguage":"en-US","potentialAction":[{"@type":"ReadAction","target":["https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/2014\/09\/18\/stalking-sean-ocasey\/"]}]},{"@type":"ImageObject","inLanguage":"en-US","@id":"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/2014\/09\/18\/stalking-sean-ocasey\/#primaryimage","url":"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2014\/09\/tape.jpg","contentUrl":"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2014\/09\/tape.jpg","width":1960,"height":994,"caption":"There will be some text here but I don't have it yet."},{"@type":"BreadcrumbList","@id":"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/2014\/09\/18\/stalking-sean-ocasey\/#breadcrumb","itemListElement":[{"@type":"ListItem","position":1,"name":"Home","item":"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/"},{"@type":"ListItem","position":2,"name":"Stalking Se\u00e1n O\u2019Casey"}]},{"@type":"WebSite","@id":"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/#website","url":"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/","name":"The Paris Review","description":"The best prose, interviews, poetry, and art. Since 1953.","publisher":{"@id":"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/#organization"},"potentialAction":[{"@type":"SearchAction","target":{"@type":"EntryPoint","urlTemplate":"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/?s={search_term_string}"},"query-input":{"@type":"PropertyValueSpecification","valueRequired":true,"valueName":"search_term_string"}}],"inLanguage":"en-US"},{"@type":"Organization","@id":"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/#organization","name":"The Paris Review","url":"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/","logo":{"@type":"ImageObject","inLanguage":"en-US","@id":"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/#\/schema\/logo\/image\/","url":"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/04\/tpr-hadada-roundell-logo-square.png","contentUrl":"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/04\/tpr-hadada-roundell-logo-square.png","width":696,"height":696,"caption":"The Paris Review"},"image":{"@id":"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/#\/schema\/logo\/image\/"},"sameAs":["https:\/\/www.facebook.com\/parisreview\/","https:\/\/x.com\/parisreview","https:\/\/www.instagram.com\/parisreview"]},{"@type":"Person","@id":"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/#\/schema\/person\/069118efbd3cd858f2678f83bd0cfc8c","name":"Sam Stephenson","image":{"@type":"ImageObject","inLanguage":"en-US","@id":"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/#\/schema\/person\/image\/","url":"https:\/\/secure.gravatar.com\/avatar\/ae3eebdfb760ee56047a01e71d2ab4d166449c66a4af60457f49d287c0b9faf0?s=96&d=mm&r=g","contentUrl":"https:\/\/secure.gravatar.com\/avatar\/ae3eebdfb760ee56047a01e71d2ab4d166449c66a4af60457f49d287c0b9faf0?s=96&d=mm&r=g","caption":"Sam Stephenson"},"url":"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/author\/sstephenson\/"}]}},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/76507","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/101"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=76507"}],"version-history":[{"count":20,"href":"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/76507\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":76962,"href":"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/76507\/revisions\/76962"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=76507"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=76507"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=76507"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}