structures and irrational characters, like those in the novels of Franz Kafka, appear in the film, but the Coens insist the connection was not intended. "I have not read him since college", admitted Joel in 1991, "when I devoured works like The Metamorphosis. Others have mentioned The Castle and 'In the Penal Colony,' but I've never read them." Clifford Odets The character of Barton Fink is loosely based on Clifford Odets, a playwright from New York who in the 1930s joined the Group Theatre, a gathering of dramatists which included Harold Clurman, Cheryl Crawford and Lee Strasberg. Their work emphasized social issues and employed Stanislavski's system of acting to recreate human experience as truthfully as possible. Several of Odets' plays were successfully performed on Broadway, including Awake and Sing! and Waiting for Lefty (both in 1935). When public tastes turned away from politically engaged theater and toward the familial realism of Eugene O'Neill, Odets had difficulty producing successful work, so he moved to Hollywood and spent 20 years writing film scripts. The Coens wrote with Odets in mind; they imagined Barton Fink as "a serious dramatist, honest, politically engaged, and rather naive." As Ethan said in 1991: "It seemed natural that he comes from Group Theater and the decade of the thirties." Like Odets, Barton believes that the theatre should celebrate the trials and triumphs of everyday people; like Barton, Odets was highly egotistical. In the film, a review of Barton's play Bare Ruined Choirs indicates that his characters face a "brute struggle for existence ... in the most squalid corners." This wording is similar to the comment of biographer Gerald Weales that Odets' characters "struggle for life amidst petty conditions." Lines of dialogue from Barton's work are reminiscent of Odets' play Awake and Sing!. For example, one character declares: "I'm awake now, awake for the first time." Another says: "Take that ruined choir. Make it sing." However, many important differences exist between the two men. Joel Coen said: "Both writers wrote the same kind of plays with proletarian heroes, but their personalities were quite different. Odets was much more of an extrovert; in fact he was quite sociable even in Hollywood, and this is not the case with Barton Fink!" Although he was frustrated by his declining popularity in New York, Odets was successful during his time in Hollywood. Several of his later plays were adapted – by him