Maxwell Anderson's plays have been overshadowed in the American and world theatre, alike by the canonical post-war writers of the succeeding generation and by writers such as Clifford Odets and Thornton Wilder of his own, who are felt to be more representative of the prevailing mood. Russell DiNapoli argues that it was Anderson's very atypicality which merits his reconsideration. As a playwright, he steadfastly kept to his own ideological course while influenced at the same time by the changing fashions which made for success on Broadway – the resulting creative tensions having both positive and negative effects on his contemporary as on his posthumous reputation. A New Yorker, Russell DiNapoli took his Master of Fine Arts degree in Theatre at the University of California, Los Angeles, and his doctorate in Philology at the Universidad de Valencia, Spain, where he is currently a member of the Department of English and German. He has written and directed several plays in Valencia, where he has lived since 1977, the most recent being a Spanish adaptation of the Prologue in Maxwell Anderson's Key Largo.