All Her Children

Doubleday, $6.95

Dan Wakefield, the novelist and journalist, is proud to be known as a fan of soap opera. Not just any soap opera, either: his favorite is the popular show All My Children, which reaches an estimated audience of 10 million daily; and his devotion to it is fond and sincere.

In All Her Children, Wakefield follows the serial’s creator, Agnes Nixon, the cast, and the staff around their daily business, demonstrating in short takes and character sketches—in other words, in the style of a soap opera—how the show is put together and by what kind of people; he finds them a closely knit band of professionals concerned about the quality of their work.

He offers some thoughts, too, on soap opera’s curious reputation, in the hope of discovering why it is so loved by the people who watch it and despised by those who don’t. A century ago, the serial story was considered a perfectly respectable form of popular art. Today’s soap operas, though, bear the double stigma of television (until recently, says Wakefield, no serious person would admit to watching anything but the news on TV), and ladies’ entertainment. In fact, Wakefield argues, the soaps offer up a steadier diet of good old-fashioned drama than any number of prime-time shoot-’em-ups could produce; and their themes of marriage, health, and friendship, banal though they may be, are the real concerns of most people—men as well as women, students, and old folks.

The book makes no large claims for itself as sociology or cultural criticism. It is instead a grateful fan letter from one viewer who found that All My Children spoke to him in a way that both surprised and touched him. Any soap addict, fullor part-time, who has ever felt a moment’s twinge of guilt at indulging a low taste in entertainment should be pleased to find in Dan Wakefield such a distinguished defender of the habit.