The Red Room

The Red Room is a satire on life in Stockholm, on life everywhere. The pathetic struggle of the artistic and literary career, its follies and pretenses, the fatuity of politics, the dishonesty of journalism, the disillusion that awaits the aspiring actor, all these things run riot through the lively pages. Strindberg's satire is severe, it is sometimes hard, but it is not mean. He has a large if rather distant sympathy for the poor fellows whose aspirations, failures, dissipations, and friendships he portrays. Of two young critics he says: ìAnd they wrote of human merit and human unworthiness and broke hearts as if they were breaking egg-shells.î He writes of their unconscious inhumanity and blindness in a way that reveals his own clearness of vision and fundamental humanity.