Customer Reviews (7)

Overloaded
My review refers to the two Ten Williams volumes of the LoA.
I love the LoA. The books give me the supreme pleasure in reading. They are so beautifully printed on optimal paper in an optimal size, that I sometimes read stuff that is not worth reading.
I have read '10' for two reasons: 1. because I had bought theLoA, and 2. because I had read a lot about the 'glorious bird' in Gore Vidal's 2 volume memoirs. And then, of course, I had seen the Glass Menagerie on Stage and the Cat on the Hot Tin Roof in the movies. Can't remember what else I might have seen before I read this. I saw Suddenly Last Summer only after I read it. I never saw A Streetcar or the Iguana. Pity.
Let me say straightforward, that I love half a dozen to maximum 10 of TW's plays. They are pulp material, they are trash, they are melodrama, and they are true, and gripping, and honest, and vulgar...
And they are great.
But the early plays are plain nothing, while the last few ones are abominable.
It is impossible to draw a strict line when he started to write readable stuff and when he declined so badly that he stopped doing that. But for me it is clear: his early attempts are trash, and so are his last.
My conclusion: the LoA would have done better to restrict themselves to one volume and then focus on the main phase.
If they want to re-issue, I can offer advice as to which plays to include and which ones not.

The Lyrical Voice of Tennessee Williams
Tennessee Williams represented a major advance in American drama as he introduced a lyricism that had previously been missing.Eugene O'Neill helped the American theatre grow up, but Williams was the one who made it sing.

Williams was able to create complex, vibrant plays which gave intense life to all of the contradictions, nastiness, dysfunction and beauty of American life and families.America has never produced a more honest or sincere playwright.His characters are always searching for ways to hang on to their humanity as the forces of repression and authoritarianism threaten to swallow them up or destroy them.

But above all else, Williams' dialogue is superbly, sublimely poetic.For Williams, the drama is in language itself, and no one has ever used words to greater effect than Tennessee Williams.Both Library of America volumes of Williams' plays are essential reading for people interested in theatre, America, and/or the possibilities of hope and grace in turbulent times.

Am I allowed to review a review?
I, for one, worship the pulp Tennesse Williams typed upon, but I think Mark E. Baxter's review below might just give Tenn himself a run for his money when it comes to audaciously witty, ironic, shocking, and ultimately moving writing.At the very least, Williams (a man who was once seen at a production of "A Streetcar Named Desire" cackling "Haha, she's off to the nuthouse now!" as the curtain fell) would have enjoyed this hilariously, astonishingly off-kilter review.Brava, Mark E. Baxter!Well done!

Ho-Hum
Why American critics are so desperate to make Tennessee Williams into the "great" American playwright is beyond me -- perhaps they feel inadequate when compared to the genius that's come out of England and Continental Europe (e.g., Shaw, Shakespeare, Moliere).

The characters are seldom well-developed, and frequently, I found myself not caring what happened to them.Or rather, I hoped that Mr. Williams would kill them all off a little quicker so he could end the wretched work.

One of the greatest
Tennessee Williams is in the top ranks of American playwrights.His works are a MUST for serious students of the American theatre.Moreover, they are wonderful works for actors to read and learn from -- some of the finest characters, most poignant scenes, and brilliant insights on human nature AND theatrical staging that you can find anywhere.Cheerful?No.Uplifting? Usually not.Brilliant, stageworthy and gripping?Always.This collection, both volumes, gives you all the plays, plus some very worthwhile notes and prefaces from Williams himself. ... Read more

Product Description
Tennesse Williams in Provincetown is the story of Tennesse Williams' four summer seasons in Provincetown, Massachusetts: 1940, '41, '44 and '47. During that time he wrote plays, short stories, and jewel-like poems. In Provincetown Williams fell in love unguardedly for perhaps the only time in his life. He had his heart broken there, perhaps irraparably. The man he thought might replace his first lover tried to kill him there, or at least Williams thought so. Williams drank in Provincetown, he swam there, and he took conga lessons there. He was poor and then rich there; he was photographed naked and clothed there. He was unknown and then famous--and throughout it all Williams wrote every morning.The list of plays Williams worked on in Provincetown include The Glass Menagerie, A Streetcar Named Desire, Summer and Smoke, the beginnings of The Night of the Iguana and Suddenly Last Summer, and an abandoned autobiographical play set in Provincetown, The Parade.Tennessee Williams in Provincetown collects original interviews, journals, letters, photographs, accounts from previous biographies, newspapers from the period, and Williams' own writing to establish how the time Williams spent in Provincetown shaped him for the rest of his life. The book identifies major themes in Williams' work that derive from his experience in Provincetown, in particular the necessity of recollection given the short season of love. The book also connects Williams mature theatrical experiments to his early friendships with Jackson Pollack, Lee Krasner and the German performance artist Valeska Gert. Tennessee Williams in Provincetown, based on several years of extensive research and interviews, includes previously unpublished photographs, previously unpublished poetry, and anecdotes by those who were there. ... Read more

Customer Reviews (5)

Four Summers with the Guys
Kaplan, David. "Tennessee Williams in Provincetown", Hansen Publishing Group, 2006.

Four Summers with the Guys

Amos Lassen

I do not know how I could have missed this book being the Tennessee Williams fan that I am. I consume everything by and about him but this book seems to have slid right by me. The book looks at four summers--1940, 1941, 1944, and 1947--that the author spent in Provincetown. He was writing during that period and he also fell in love. He drank a lot and swam and danced. He was not yet famous so he could be himself and it was his practice to write every morning and write he did--some of his greatest plays were either written or begun there. His time undoubtedly influenced him and his writing a great deal and we see that during his time in P-town. he began to establish certain themes that recur in his work.
The author, David Kaplan, does not call this a biography but rather a monograph. We learn that Williams's first visit to Provincetown was in 1940 when he was 29 and it was in P-town that he met Frank Merlo, his partner of 14 years. His summers in Provincetown were those of artistic discovery and innocence as well as sexual abandon.
Kaplan includes interviews with those who knew Williams as well as some previously unpublished photographs (worth the price of the book alone). You cannot help but feel the respect and love that the author has and had for Williams and that makes the book very special. The book also is a good way to look at the way gay men lived during the World War II period but we also see that for people like Williams who were true to themselves it was a great deal different than for the persons who lived in hiding and fear.

Williams laid bare
A fascinating glimpse into Williams' formative experiences in one of this country's most enchanting and stimulating art colonies. Kaplan has struck the perfect balance between the writer's private and creative lives.

"Remember Me As One Of Your Lovers"
In what David Kaplan in the "Preface" calls a monograph rather than a biography, TENNESSEE WILLIAMS IN PROVINCETOWN covers four brief seasons in the playwright's life spent at what he described in his MEMOIRS as "the frolicsome tip of the Cape," 1940, 1941, 1944 and 1947. Williams was 29 when he first went to the Cape in 1940. It was there that he had his first brief love affair and also met the man he was to spend 14 years or his life with, Frank Merlo. It was a time of youthful abandon, innocence, great expectations, disciplined mornings as a writer and nights of sexual freedom that Provincetown provided.

Mr. Kaplan acknowledges that much of Williams' Provincetown story has been covered by other biographers and gives them credit, including voluminous footnotes as well as a bibliography here. He also indicates that he was able to interview several persons still living who knew Williams during this time in his life and offers new information including material published for the first time: (For instance, the poem "Request" with the lines, "Remember me as one of your lovers,/not the greatest of these, not the least,/but in some small way distinguished from all of the others/Remember me, in the end, please, as one of your lovers.")

The author also managed to uncover unpublished photographs of Williams, along with shots of his first love Kip Kiernan and his hot-blooded lover Pancho Rodriguez. According to Kaplan, as Williams became more famous, he was sought out for sex by people wanting to sleep with a rising playwright. On the other hand, he was quite a looker, as the nude photographs here indicate, and was very successful as well in trysts with strangers.

Mr. Kaplan writes of other artists Williams spent time with, Jackson Pollock, Tullulah Bankhead, Marlon Brando--who fixed the plumbing of the toilet in the Provincetown house where Williams was staying before auditioning for and getting the part of Stanley in "A Streetcar Named Desire"--Carson McCullers et al. He also gives an insightful analysis of one of Williams' later plays, "Something Cloudy, Something Clear."

Unlike some of Williams' biographers who wrote for the sensational (Kaplan names names) and critics whose homophobia oftened surfaced in their reviews, this writer approaches his task with the reverence that a writer of Williams' stature richly deserves.

Great Slice of Life
If you're familiar with the myriad bios on TW out there, you won't find many new bits here. Definitely treat yourself to reading "Something Cloudy Something Clear" alongside "TW in Provincetown". Despite never being quite certain what is autobio and what is wishful thinking in this play, it certainly gives you an invocation of the era more than "TW in Provincetown" does. As a record of gaylife in the WWII era, the book could've been a little more indepth on the subject - I'm not sure how many gay men & women were able to enjoy their lifestyles as much as TW did.

A highly admirable defense of theTennessee Williams legacy
Tennessee Williams in Provincetown sheds much needed insight on what is too often perceived as "murky" regarding Williams' accomplishments. Author David Kaplan vigorously asserts that excessive scrutiny on Williams' complicated and often chaotic life obscured his literary accomplishments. While Williams' time in Provincetown was limited, his writings bore fruit for future works including Night of the Iguana, Sudden Last Summer among others. Kaplan also advises that Tennesse Williams, struggling with whatever demons, still made the effort of regular, disciplined work throughout his life.Kaplan's descriptions of the Provincetown Williams partook of during the early 1940's is evocative and atmospheric. Among the anecdotes is a charming recounting of meeting actress Tallulah Bankhead, and their ensuing friendship. Kaplan identifies striking parallels of Williams with another Provincetown "alumnus" playwright Eugene O'Neill. This ably researched monograph results in a highly admirable brief and defense of Tennessee Williams' legacy.
... Read more

Product Description
No play in the modern theatre has so captured the imagination and heart of the American public as Tennessee Williams's The Glass Menagerie. Menagerie was Williams's first popular success and launched the brilliant, if somewhat controversial, career of our pre-eminent lyric playwright. Since its premiere in Chicago in 1944, with the legendary Laurette Taylor in the role of Amanda, the play has been the bravura piece for great actresses from Jessica Tandy to Joanne Woodward, and is studied and performed in classrooms and theatres around the world. The Glass Menagerie (in the reading text the author preferred) is now available only in its New Directions Paperbook edition. A new introduction by prominent Williams scholar Robert Bray, editor of The Tennessee Williams Annual Review, reappraises the play more than half a century after it won the New York Drama Critics Circle Award: "More than fifty years after telling his story of a family whose lives form a triangle of quiet desperation, Williams's mellifluous voice still resonates deeply and universally." This edition of The Glass Menagerie also includes Williams's essay on the impact of sudden fame on a struggling writer, "The Catastrophe of Success," as well as a short section of Williams's own "Production Notes." The cover features the classic line drawing by Alvin Lustig, originally done for the 1949 New Directions edition. ... Read more

Customer Reviews (137)

Thanks!
Fast service and book was just as described.Thank you so much...I really appreciate it!

A play from a failed writer
The book, or at least my copy of it, begins by talking about Tennessee Williams' life as a failed writer before he started writing this play. I probably should have put it down then and there; the play unfolds to be exactly that, the work of a man who never should have been a writer. Williams really needed to learn how to show, not tell. It seems to be one of the most obvious and avoidable pitfalls, but this author fell for it so badly it ruins the play. For example, the play begins with a character, the narrator, talking about the play's meaning and giving the audience background. This is something that should obviously be done through the story, and not through direct explanation, and this theme returns in just about every scene. I'd stay away from this book if I were you.

One of my favorite plays to teach!
I love The Glass Menagerie, and love teaching it, as well. The characters are so unrealistic, but so clearly defined. Read it - and the rest of Tennessee Williams, as well!

The Glass Menagerie
The script was in excellent condition and it was received quickly. And the price was fantastic as well. Terrific!Thank you!

The Lives We Shatter
Most people have great difficulty grasping the themes, much less deciphering the symbolism and foreshadowing, embedded within great literature from "A Separate Peace" and "Catcher in the Rye" to "The Glass Menagerie."Each of these examples is an exemplary piece of art, but if for no other reason than the prolific nature of Tennessee Williams' calling compared to that of the other two authors, "Menagerie" deserves a special place on the mantle of top-notch reads -- not only literary but true brilliance with ink on mere pages of paper.
Some assign responsibility for the family's well-being on Tom's shoulders when all he longs for is a life of his own and at last arranges to flee his hellish world, aptly, via the fire escape -- whether it ends up going as he expects or not -- thereby "devastating" the others.Nonsense!Williams' ultimate points were two.The first was that Thoreau was right (in Williams' own depressed worldview) when he wrote in "Walden":
"The mass of men lead lives of quiet
desperation. What is called resignation
is confirmed desperation."
The second, which was quite a paradox to Tom's generally perceived as selfish desertion of the family, was that we all make our own lives.Tom simply chose to make his.
... Read more

Product Description
Tennessee Williams was famous for insisting he write every morning. Even during his darkest days, while mourning a lover, or abusing some substance -- and he abused most of them at one time or another -- he'd write. The stories in this volume, arranged chronologically, are from every period of his long life, and recreate the milieux Williams knew and chronicled so movingly -- from his gypsy youth in St. Louis and New Orleans to his days of celebrity in Hollywood and New York. Some are studies for his plays, and like them, their language can suddenly surprise you with a poetic image that shines like a jewel. This edition includes a useful publishing history for each of the fifty stories.
"One overpowering impression emerges from all these stories put together: Tennessee Williams knew more about the hidden life of far-flung America than any of us really suspected." -- Seymour Krim, Washington Post Book World
"By turns disturbing, moving, and funny; these stories help amplify Williams's tragic vision, for like the plays, they underline his preoccupation and insight into the conflicts of the human heart."
-- Michiko Kakutani, The New York Times
... Read more

Customer Reviews (7)

magic
Williams has a power with words.While not as lyrical as his plays, Williams captures scenes and characters as well as any writer.

As good as the plays
Williams's ear for dialogue, his eye for character, his exploration of love, longing and loneliness are as powerful in these short stories as they are in his plays.On occasion, the glimmer of a future work rises out of the text, such as the line, "But the sweet bird of youth had flown from Pablo Gonzales..."

THE REAL AUTOBIOGRAPHY OF HIS ART AND LIFE

During his career as one of America's most distinguished playwrights (The Glass Menagerie, Cat On A Hot Tin Roof, A Strretcar Named Desire), Tennessee Williams also produced four volumes of short stories.The contents of these volumes are combined with Williams's unpublished stories.

As Gore Vidal, the author of the introduction, notes these stories are "the real autobiography of Williams's art and inner life."

The stories are arranged chronologically, beginning with a vignette about his father and the Williams family.Whether written early or late in his life, the prose is pure Williams, related in his distinctive voice.

Together these pieces form a mosaic of his life and work, splendid dramas and vignettes that puzzle, surprise and enrich us.

- Gail Cooke

"All That You Need's To Be Given A Push On The Head"
Tennessee Williams: Collected Stories (1985) is a highly readable if frequently unpleasant volume by an author who, like the Scottish novelist Muriel Spark, is one of the uncelebrated masters of the short story form. Beginning with Williams' first published work and including stories written just before his death in 1983, most of the pieces, which originally appeared in literary journals, are very much of their time, and thus powerfully reflect the degree to which Williams internalized the shame and self hatred he experienced as a homosexual male in a predominantly heterosexual and anti-homosexual society.

Never less than forthright to the point of bluntness, several of the stories wantonly revel in the repulsive and the grotesque, and thus seem intended not merely to illuminate but to shock and repel. In essence, many of the pieces seem like both acts of revenge and blows against the empire, but Williams was awkwardly wielding a double-edged sword, one which did not by any means only reveal the hypocrisies of those he intended to mock and revile.

In 'Hard Candy,' for example, an obnoxious elderly man who has been a lifelong 'secret' homosexual dies by choking while on his knees during a sexual act with a young drifter he solicits. Thus the story's title refers not to the sweets the man carries in his pocket as a means of establishing an opening dialogue with attractive strangers, but to a portion of the drifter's anatomy. Williams clearly intends the irony of the title to be so blatant as to be unironic, and this doubling, reflexive quality unequivocally establishes 'Hard Candy' as a piece of dark, unabashed camp humor. But such humor will always find only a limited receptive audience, especially since most camp humor today seems like little more than a long and happily outmoded culture artifact.

Throughout Collected Stories, most of Williams' homosexual characters are depicted in caricatural fashion, whether as overly poised, somewhat brittle aesthetes or as shrill, irresponsible merrymakers whose singular goal is continual sexual interaction with as many partners as possible. Those that fit neither of these categories are poorly socialized and isolated, but never developed in other ways so that they become shadow-casting, three dimensional characters for whom homosexual responsiveness is but one factor in their existence.

Not surprisingly, it is the objects of these characters' desire whom Williams depicts sympathetically, but these men, who are usually young, handsome, muscular, and somewhat unintelligent if not brutishly stupid, are typically one dimensional caricatures as well. In his short stories, Williams was at his best when describing those "betwixt and between" men who are ostensibly heterosexual but nonetheless nonchalantly open to passive sexual intercourse with other men, especially if money is involved. Thus, 'One Arm,' the story of a boxer who loses a limb in an automobile accident and then drifts into hustling before finding himself on death row for murder, is one of the most fully realized works in the volume.

Collected Stories also includes a number of powerful stories which revolve around heterosexual characters, such as the Caldwellesque 'Kingdom of Earth' and 'Miss Conte of Green,' but in these, as in the others, brutality, coarseness, and lasciviousness are the order of the day, and qualities such as integrity, respect for others, and fundamental human decency are presented as little more than sham social hypocrisies that have little genuine presence in actuality. Also included is 'The Knightly Quest,' a brilliant, extended piece of sociological science fiction which hilariously examines governmental attempts at cultural control and world domination as Williams perceived it in the Cold War era.

A Must Own
Rarely do we assimilate Williams with short fiction, but Williams rivals Hemingway as being the greatest American short story writer.Never have I enjoyed every story in a collection before.His descriptions are concentrated and explode visions in the mind.The characters are richly unique and completely human and explore all the details of life so many never see.Good for a big time read, a partner on the beach, and as a study guide for society.A must own!! ... Read more

Product Description
Three timeless works by Tennessee Williams, the foremost American playwright of his time.

Sweet Bird of Youth
The Rose Tattoo
The Night of the Iguana ... Read more

Customer Reviews (2)

Stunningly Insightful
I hope to read this one many times.Each time will generate a new insight; a new revelation.The multi-layers of the human condition are all here in their raw glory.Williams could see well beyond the horizon from the atmospheric veranda at the Costa Verde.

Fantastic!

Classic
It's amazing how well the works of Mr. Williams have held up after all these years. Then again, when you write classics that's what they're supposed to do.

While all these plays are great, NIGHT OF THE IGUANA is by far his best.My favorite line:"Oh,God, can we please stop now."I'm paraphrasing, but you get the idea.

But the most remarkable thing about Mr. William's plays are that, while they almost always deal with the south, decay, decadence, incredible insight into the human condition, and graphic and moving looks into the human heart, they are all completely different.How much this man must have lived to have produced this varied and complex a body of work.

If you're a fan of Southern literature, and especially Tennessee Williams, please check out some other "finds:"OTHER VOICES, OTHER ROOMS by Capote, BARK OF THE DOGWOOD by McCrae, and AVA'S MAN by Bragg. ... Read more

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Customer Reviews (7)

Remarkable insight into the life of a genius.
As a playwright, Williams is my muse. This volume is an extraordinary window into the life and psyche of one of the greatest playwrights of the English speaking world. It is a wonderful adjunct to the biographical data both from Williams himself and those close to him who have chronicled his life and work.

A Brilliant Mind
Thornton, Margaret Bradham, ed. "Tennessee Williams Notebooks", Yale University Press, 2007.

A Brilliant Mind

Amos Lassen

What a job it must have been compiling the notebooks of Tennessee Williams. They cover almost every aspect of the playwright's life and Margaret Bradham Thornton has done an amazing job. Through his own words and Thornton's meticulous editing, we get a look into the unique life of an American literary titan. The man who penned such beautiful works for the American theatre led quite a life. He suffered from his only internalized homophobia even though he was himself a gay male--he felt somewhat out of place in a world that did not approve of his sexuality. He was haunted by his sister, Rose, and the guilt he felt about allowing her institutionalization and with these two strikes that he felt he had against himself, still managed to write some of the most endearing drama ever seen on the stage.
Williams' notebooks take us behind the scenes of the man and his writing. Williams tells us, in his own words, so much about himself that at times it is staggering to read. His view of the world fascinates and enthralls.
In reality, this is two books--one, a look at the man's private life and the other a look at the mind of a genius. Thornton provides on each page. The thoughts and the background to those thoughts placed opposite the pages of his journals. To get a glimpse of the mind of such a man of letters is a wonderful treat. The book is filled with notes and photographs, copies of poetry written by hand and entries from the diaries as well as biographies of those people that Williams had contact with. On the right hand side of the book are the notebook entries and on the left hand side are the notes. Also included are Williams' own criticisms of his dairies.
Thornton provides a very readable and detailed narrative and her research is nothing short of amazing. She does not spend a great deal of time oh is sexual proclivities with other men but neither does she ignore them. There is no question whatsoever that Williams' homosexuality influenced his writing and world view and that is all carefully explained by the editor. It is a book that you do not want to stop reading even with its 800 plus pages. And it is more than just a look at the playwright; it is a look into American culture and how all of the worlds of the arts come together.

Diary of aHorny Artist
This is one of the handsomest books I have read in years. The notes by the author/editor, who has annotated the daily diaries of playwright Tennessee Williams, are spectacularly thorough, covering virtually every actor, director, known and unknown, Williams ever met. Loads of fun reading the notes, and the diaries themselves on facing pages, with marvelous and copious photographs, goofy illustrations, maps - you name it. Williams hasn't much to say about his writing life, but lots to say about his state of mind, which is usually spinning out of control along with his life. Williams was part of that first real jet set, living in a given year in a dozen places. The first and last question on his mind was how to find "trade" by which he meant pick-ups for casual sex. Fascinating and then really boring like most pornography.

An Incredible Look into the Mind of a Literary Genius
Margaret Bradham Thornton is to be commended for compiling Tennessee Williams' journals with such painstaking attention to detail, in-depth analysis and thorough research.Her efforts afford the reader an amazing, unique glimpse into the life of an American literary giant -- a man whose plays, including The Glass Menagerie, Cat on a Hot Tin Roof, and A Streetcar Named Desire, have become classics for the ages, not to mention a man who led an intriguing life in and out of the public eye.There is no shortage of skeletons to be found in Williams' closet; his homosexuality is a particular source of angst to him in a world that did not approve of such a thing.He dallies with male prostitutes, and in one instance gets severely beaten for his troubles.Meanwhile, he is haunted by his sister, who underwent a frontal lobotomy after being institutionalized (it is his guilt over leaving her to pursue his writing that drove him to write "The Glass Menagerie," which features a very Williams-esque young man desperate to escape his dreary life with a crippled sister and needy mother in order to pursue his dreams).

Through his notebooks, Williams provides you with a backstage pass to one of the most thrilling talents Broadway has ever seen, and through extensive footnoting Thornton puts it all into a clear narrative for you to follow along.She also includes countless photographs and pieces of artwork.There are moments when what Williams writes does not match up with what other interviewees recall, forcing Thornton and the reader to speculate as to which version is closer to the truth, but in "Notebooks" Williams does nothing short of bare his soul to the reader.It is utterly fascinating to experience his artist's-eye-view of the world, and I would highly recommend this book.
Grade: A+

Excellent
Item was in mint condition, will not hesitate to buy from this seller again.
Keep up the good work ... Read more

Product Description
In this first complete, critical biography of one of America's finest playwrights, Donald Spoto reveals the intimate connections between Williams' personal dramas and his remarkably autobiographical art. From his birth into a genteel Southern family, through his success, celebrity, and wealth, Tennessee Williams lived a life as gripping as his plays. The Kindness of Strangers is "a work of honest reverence."--San Francisco Chronicle. 34 photos. ... Read more

Customer Reviews (3)

Great Book on Tennessee
I read this book after it was recommended by a good friend of mine, Colby Kullmanm, who is an English professor at Ole Miss. Colby is an expert on Mr. Williams. I found the book to be very fair to Mr. Williams. It helps to explain the pain of his childhood, the many demons he fought as an adult, the pain of writing and rejection, and his humor. I would recommend the book to anyone that want to have a good general knowledge of Williams. It opened my eyes to the fact that all humans have faults - none of us is perfect.

The Broken World of Tennessee Williams
The last words of the book, "at last there was stillness," exemplify Spoto's ability to capture the chaos of this genius's life. Although the book is somewhat fast paced and races over portions ofWilliamss life, it is meticulously researched and digs up every facet ofTennessee Williams. Spoto reveals the glory days of the pulitzer prizewinning playwright and the nightmare of his last two decades in which hewatched success wane as fastidious critics, ignorantly demanding thatWilliams continue to deliver plays in the vein of Glass Menagerie andStreetcar Named desire, beat him literally to death. One must have emotionsof steel to get through the book's later chapters, in which Williamssuffers a miserable descent into drug addiction and madness. DespiteWilliams's wealth and fame, the man lived a terribly difficult life. Fromhis chaotic childhood to his drugged, alcoholic and lonely end, Williams'slife was perhaps his greatest drama, as Spoto reveals.

A thorough life tour of "10," but with a sour thesis.
Yes, Tennesee Williams signed some of his letters as "10."That's just one of the many things you'll learn from reading Spoto's 1985 biography of this famous American playwright.More complete, thorough andsympathetic biographies have been issued since this one, but Spoto's isstill worth reading.It has the virtue of concision (it runs about 400pages, which for a crowded life like Williams had isn't long), at least.Idon't argue with Spoto's view that Williams lived a largely miserable life,sank into rampant substance abuse, and hurt most of the people who caredfor him.By the time he died, he couldn't get a good review for any newplay he wrote.No one in the theater world liked him.It took his deathfor his career to start to recover, but at this point the late plays aregetting better-reviewed productions, and the scope of his entireachievement (including his work in fiction and poetry) is finally beingassimilated.From this distance, the only American playwright of the 20thcentury who might be put into the same class is O'Neill.I would vote forWilliams.Anyone who reads this book will have to be willing to takeSpoto's unsympathetic reading of Williams's life.At times he lectures thedead subject of the book like a prim schoolmarm (he did the same in hisHitchcock biography).The book is still a gripping portrait of one of thegreatest, and saddest, literary giants America has produced.I believe thetragedy of his genius rivals Poe's. ... Read more

Product Description
For the "old crocodile," as Williams called himself late in life, the past was always present, and so it is with his continual shifting and intermingling of times, places, and memories as he weaves this story.When Memoirs was first published in 1975, it created quite a bit of turbulence in the mediathough long self-identified as a gay man, Williams' candor about his love life, sexual encounters, and drug use was found shocking in and of itself, and such revelations by America's greatest living playwright were called "a raw display of private life" by The New York Times Book Review. As it turns out, thirty years later, Williams' look back at his life is not quite so scandalous as it once seemed; he recalls his childhood in Mississippi and St. Louis, his prolonged struggle as a "starving artist," the "overnight" success of The Glass Menagerie in 1945, the death of his long-time companion Frank Merlo in 1962, and his confinement to a psychiatric ward in 1969 and subsequent recovery from alcohol and drug addiction, all with the same directness, compassion, and insight that epitomize his plays.

And, of course, Memoirs is filled with Williams' amazing friends from the worlds of stage, screen, and literature as heoften hilariously, sometimes fondly, sometimes notremembers them: Laurette Taylor, Gore Vidal, Truman Capote, Elia Kazan, Marlon Brando, Vivian Leigh, Carson McCullers, Anna Magnani, Greta Garbo, Elizabeth Taylor, and Tallulah Bankhead to name a few. And now film director John Waters, well acquainted with shocking the American public, has written an introduction that gives some perspective on the various reactions to Tennessee's Memoirs, while also paying tribute to a fellow artist who inspired many with his integrity and endurance. ... Read more

Customer Reviews (8)

At first, shocking, but then...
While my daughter was performing in Glass Menagerie, I picked up a copy of Tennessee Williams's Memoirs hoping to learn how much of his sister Rose was portrayed in Laura. That was soon answered by his comment that "Laura of Menagerie was like Miss Rose only in her inescapable 'difference,' which that old female bobcat Amanda would not believe existed." The most lasting impression from this hurly-burly book is the tenderness, almost reverence, of his feeling for Rose. Even his redoubtable mother is treated with gently barbed irony.
Yes, there is an incredible amount of sex (seven times in one night? A man with a serious heart condition?) but the tenderness comes through more and more until you just want to take care of this troubled guy, who poignantly remarks that while he often announced he was about to fall down, hardly anyone ever caught him.
Revealing, sometimes scathing portraits of theater people and others enliven the book; his loving account of Anna Magnani for example is a delight. Hemingway, he writes, "struck me as a gentleman who seemed to have a very touchingly shy quality about him."
Eccentric and informal in style, honest and probing for still deeper truths about his life and work, Memoirs leaves me with the sense that I have actually met and come to care for a rare human being.

Great Gossip
Tennessee Williams "Memoirs" are a feast for people who love theater gossip.While the info may not be entirely reliable, it is fascinating.TW was never vague about his opinions of people or shows;who would have thought that Kenneth Tynan would have introduced him to Hemingway (they hit it off) and Hemingway led him to Fidel!Great fun and useful for the Williams Centennial Fest I'm leading in Albuquerque.(This book is hard to order from the publisher, but Amazon sent it promptly and in good shape.)pkb

What a life
If you like memoirs, written by great writers about themselves, you'll love this one.

I was born in 1970, this was written not long after--my sense of being is way different than this guy.He wrote this himself in his later years, meanders here and there, but more in the end. Charming all the way thru.

I'd heard that maybe this was a little racy, but again--only in the beginning.And even then, not nearly what you see when you tune into any television station. Really, just a glimpse into what gay men of his era went through (a good glimpse).

When I realized what gold I had in my hands I slowed way down with this one--he writes in a way that makes you want to savor.It's a whole different time, you hafta listen.

Thank you older gay men, you paved the way.

An American Jewel
I think "badges of honor" (from a previous review) misses the mark. "Badges of dis-honor" would be closer to the truth. I think Williams' extremely destructive drug abuse and alcoholism are obvious escape hatches - escapes from his inner deamons, his possible self-loathing, and certainly an attempt to reconcile the loneliness that each artist has to contend with. The same isolation and deamons that Williams faced nearly destroyed Michelangelo - and they did kill Virginia Woolf, Francis Bacon, and Oscar Wilde. I still think "Iguana" and "Streetcar" are among the finest literature in the American canon, while "Suddenly Last Summer" is among the most compelling psychological (if not philosophical) horror stories ever written. In fact, it's worthy of Poe. Tennessee Williams can be difficult and disturbing, because he NEVER lies to us. Every one of his works renders him defenseless - and by extension our defenses are stipped bare as well. Only the greatest authors, artists, and poets are able to do this. No thoughtful person is quite the same after delving into the work of Tennessee Williams. I think that's an awesome power to possess - and William's never abuses it. Instead, he saved the abuse for himself. I'm still coming to terms with this.

An Act of Defiance by a Great Gay Author
If you are looking for a well organized overview of TW's life and career, look somewhere else.For someone truly interested in Tennessee Williams, I would suggest first reading a biography of him, and if you are still interested, read this to find out what made this man tick, what made this man get out of bed each day and write, and what a (....) guy he was. This is a nitty-gritty, confessional look inward at the personal aspects and thoughts of the life of a very talented writer.
I am sure what shocked his public when it was published in 1975 was his frank description of his love life and sexual affairs. For Ernest Hemingway it was okay to describe his love life because he was straight, but for a gay man it was (and still largely is) expected to be kept discreetly sub-rosa.But Tennessee was not ashamed of his nature and not ashamed of his life and in that way this memoir (and his life itself) is an act of cultural defiance. It pours out in a fairly disjointed stream of recollections. To be honest, it reads like a rough-draft that needs a lot of editing and filling in. But all-in-all, the inherent drama, passion and thirst for life itself jump out of the page and carry one through to the end and you can't help but be touched by his humanity and his passion and his drive to express himself through his art. ... Read more

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Here are four plays by one of the giants of 20th-century American drama... ... Read more

Customer Reviews (1)

Great Value - Portrait of a Playwright at the Height of his Powers
Although I do not share the opinion that the quality of Tennessee Williams' plays suffered greatly after 1961's NIGHT OF THE IGUANA, it is true that his work lost favor with the public as he began to abandon conventional narratives in favor of more experimental and absurdist forms, as opposed to the expressionism and Southern Gothic melodrama that first put him on the map with THE GLASS MENAGERIE and A STREETCAR NAMED DESIRE in the mid-1940s.This collection from Signet Classics brings together four plays from this decade-and-a-half "golden era" in Williams' career, a period that most would call his best and all would agree was his most successful critically and financially.

SUMMER AND SMOKE (1948) is the first play and it comes on the heels of the massive successes of MENAGERIE and STREETCAR.As a result, it is a work that continues in this expressionistic vein, with careful and detailed production notes recalling the former and the sexual angst and human drama of its characters quoting the latter.ORPHEUS DESCENDING (1957) is a remarkably effective reworking of an earlier apprentice play, and it updates the Greek myth within a rural Southern backdrop.In my opinion, it is not only the best play in this collection but one of the playwright's five best works in his entire canon.Next up, and almost just as good, is SUDDENLY, LAST SUMMER (1958), a tremendous psycho-drama that features a climactic monologue that is among the most gripping and nightmarish in American drama.The only real misstep in this collection is PERIOD OF ADJUSTMENT (1960), a shamelessly commercial romantic comedy... it is quite inconsequential.

Despite my indifference to the final play of this collection, the value of this small paperback is indisputable.There is more to Tennessee Williams than STREETCAR and MENAGERIE.While his later plays are less accessible (but quite underrated!), this collection is a great and inexpensive way to introduce yourself to more of this fascinating playwright's work.ORPHEUS and SUDDENLY, LAST SUMMER, in particular, are essential. ... Read more

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Gentlemen Callers provides a fascinating look at America's greatest twentieth-century playwright and perhaps the most-performed, even today. Michael Paller looks at Tennessee Williams's plays from the 1940s through the 1960s against the backdrop of the playwright's life story, providing fresh details. Through this lens Paller examines the evolution of mid-twentieth-century America's acknowledgment and acceptance of homosexuality. From the early Cat on a Hot Tin Roof and one-act Auto-da-Fé, through The Two-Character Play and Something Cloudy, Something Clear, Paller's book investigates how Williams's earliest critics marginalized or ignored his gay characters and why, beginning in the 1970s, many gay liberationists reviled them. Lively, blunt, and provocative, this book will appeal to anyone who loves Williams, Broadway, and the theater.
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Customer Reviews (4)

Fascinating reading
I had read Lyle Leverich's Tom: The Unknown Tennessee Williams several years ago and consider it the definitive biography of the playwrights (or at least of his early years), so I figured I'd be fairly well acquainted with all the information in Paller's Gentlemen Callers. But I quickly discovered Paller could still surprise me.

Gentlemen Callers is a hybrid of a book - part biography, part social history. If you're looking for biographical info on Williams, stick to his biographies; but if you want to understand how he went from the writer of the lyrical "Glass Menagerie" and the ground-breakingly frank "Streetcar Named Desire" to the "failed" playwright of his later years, this is the book you want to read.

Growing up in the '70s, I remember Williams having a reputation as a washed up writer with a drug and alcohol problem. He was also one of the only "out" celebrities I was aware of. Williams spanned the time from when homosexuality still was mostly "the love that dare not speak its name" to the post-Stonewall years of gay liberation. Paller's book shows how Williams' own gay identity played a role in his plays (even when homosexuality was only a subtext rather than an open theme). I'm grateful that Paller produced this book. It has helped me understand how Tennessee Williams went from being ahead of his times in the '40s and '50s to being behind the times during the turbulent '60s and '70s. Truly a fascinating read!

New insight into the work of America's greatest playwright
So much of the critical reaction to the work of Tennessee Williams was colored by the prevailing social attitudes toward homosexuality.Michael Paller’s GENTLEMEN CALLERS: TENNESSEE WILLIAMS, HOMOSEXUALITY, AND MID-TWENTIETH-CENTURY DRAMA provides a fascinating critical study of Williams’s work in the context of his sexual orientation and the particular time in which he lived.In the 50s he was criticized for being too gay.By the 1970s, he was criticized for being not gay enough and was labeled as a “self-loather.”Mr. Paller’s book puts the arguments into perspective and provides a calm, well-documented argument that Williams never denied that he was gay and never wrote male characters disguised as females.He presented the American theatre of the 1950s’ only unapologetically gay character in CAMINO REAL.While the unsavory homosexual character in his grim 1970 play SMALL CRAFT WARNINGS was such a “smoking gun” for the scathing criticism of Williams from gay critics, Paller convincingly argues that the heterosexual characters in that play fare no better.

Parts of the book I consider brilliant, especially the section analyzing Williams's neglected one-act "Something Unspoken," which portrays a power struggle between two latent lesbians.(Now I want to see this play performed!)This section alone makes the book essential reading for any serious scholar of Williams's work, but the whole book offers one eye-opening passage after another.I would highly recommend this book to any theatre artist planning to direct or act in a Williams play as well as to lovers of Williams's work in general.Five stars.

Williams in the context of his homosexuality
Gentlemen Callers is a penetrating look at the work of Tennessee Williams in the context of his homosexuality and the pervasive homophobia in the midst of which he grew up and created some of the most moving and significant works of drama in the English language.Gentlemen Callers describes in all its chilling reality the emergence of intense homophobia in the mid-20th century, intentionally fostered by government agencies, and discusses how this homophobia impacted his life and his work.Author Paller makes a particular effort to point out the wrongmidedness of latter day gay liberationist critics who pilloried Williams for supposedly creating characters from an internalized homophobia, criticism which failed to appreciate the process of artistic creation and the characters themselves in their dramatic settings.Paller analyzes a number of the most developmentally significant of Williams' plays in the light of the homosexuality that was such an important motif in his oeuvre.Gentlemen Callers is an engaging study, and the most substantial examination of this writer in the context of the homosexuality that so signficantly informed his work.

The Man, The Time, and Life in America
This book is kind of a mixture. Partly it's a biographical sketch of Tennesee Williams, partly it's a review of the struggles gay and lesbian people had during the 1940's and '50's, partly it's an analysis of the homosexuality in Williams plays, partly it's an analysis of the critics writing about his plays. And all of that is a lot to put in one rather small book.

Strangely enough, even with all that in the book, Mr. Paller pulls it off quite well. He is able to describe the gay-bashing of the time, and the tremendous internal struggles that this created in Williams. His descriptions of the critics analysis of the plays tells us a lot about the critics themselves, more about them than the plays.

It's too much to say that this is a book that you can't put down. Instead I found it's a book that you read for a while, and then you want to think about what you've read before you go on.

Tennessee Williams is probably America's foremost playwright. Some like Cat on a Hot Tin Roof, The Glass Menagerie,A Streetcar Named Desire and more are still among the best plays ever done. The anguish in the writer in facing first his own discovery of his homosexuality and then finding it in the opressive eyes of the time make for quite a story. ... Read more

Product Description
John DiLeo s Tennessee Williams and Company: His Essential Screen Actors examines the films based on the works Tennessee Williams. The focus is on the eleven actors who appear in more than one of the Williams movies, an unofficial stock company of repeat players. Several of these names, such as Marlon Brando and Geraldine Page, should come as no surprise, since they had performed roles by Williams on the stage. Others, such as Anna Magnani and Vivien Leigh, both foreign-born, could hardly have been foreseeable as brilliant interpreters of such a distinctly American writer. Also included are the two most famous screen-acting couples of Williams Hollywood heyday: Paul Newman and Joanne Woodward, and Elizabeth Taylor and Richard Burton.This critical look at these eleven actors, bonded by their sustained artistic and professional association with Williams. The results include some of the more remarkable performances in movie history, from Anna Magnani in The Rose Tattoo (1955) to Geraldine Page in Sweet Bird of Youth (1962). Everyone remembers how magnificent Marlon Brando and Vivien Leigh are in A Streetcar Named Desire (1951), but what about their second Williams appearances, Brando s in The Fugitive Kind (1960) and Leigh s in The Roman Spring of Mrs. Stone (1961)? Richard Burton is brilliant in The Night of the Iguana (1964), yet wretched in Boom (1968), while Elizabeth Taylor scores in Cat on a Hot Tin Roof (1958) but is just as awful in Boom as Burton is. ... Read more

Product Description
The definitive text of this American classic—reissued with an introduction by Edward Albee (Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf? and A Delicate Balance) and Williams' essay "Person-to-Person."

Cat on a Hot Tin Roof first heated up Broadway in 1955 with its gothic American story of brothers vying for their dying father's inheritance amid a whirlwind of sexuality, untethered in the person of Maggie the Cat. The play also daringly showcased the burden of sexuality repressed in the agony of her husband, Brick Pollitt. In spite of the public controversy Cat stirred up, it was awarded the Pulitzer Prize and the Drama Critics Circle Award for that year. Williams, as he so often did with his plays, rewrote Cat on a Hot Tin Roof for many years—the present version was originally produced at the American Shakespeare Festival in 1974 with all the changes that made Williams finally declare the text to be definitive, and was most recently produced on Broadway in the 2003-04 season. This definitive edition also includes Williams' essay "Person-to-Person," Williams' notes on the various endings, and a short chronology of the author's life.

One of America's greatest living playwrights, as well as a friend and colleague of Williams, Edward Albee has written a concise introduction to the play from a playwright's perspective, examining the candor, sensuality, power, and impact of Cat on a Hot Tin Roof then and now. ... Read more

Customer Reviews (2)

What a play!
There must be a price to pay for honesty. This "cat" says what she wants to say no matter how much this may hurt her family. She admits she's an opportunist and thats how one should live in a postmodern life as this play took place. Money and wealth are tools how she and other characters can survive in the "hot tin roof" and society in larger extant. Pride and prestige are goals the characters aim to shoot at. Lies and flattery are ways to achieve the goals and set all dreams on track. At the end, people just cant believe finding out being cheated even by their beloved ones. And the "cat" is indeed a winner from all the drama...
"At least, Im honest", she said. Guess, these values of the play are because they are all everlasting lessons everybody has experienced in today's life. Willims is just too bold to put them together in such powerful play. So honest so that I dont even realize I have already felt such stories in my daily life...

Misery
Ok, so it is an American Classic. None-the-less, it is still a story about a family of mean, miserable people. If you like that kinda think then read it. Williams has some great dialogue & vivid characters. Still, can there be at least one good person in the story?? ... Read more

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The spellbinding last full-length play produced during the author's lifetime is now published for the first time.Christmas 1982: Cornelius and Bella McCorkle of Pascagoula, Mississippi, return home one midnight in a thunderstorm from the Memphis funeral of their older son to a house and a life literally falling apart--daughter Joanie is in an insane asylum and their younger son Charlie is upstairs having sex with his pregnant, holy-roller girlfriend as the McCorkles enter. Cornelius, who has political ambitions and a litany of health problems, is trying to find a large amount of moonshine money his gentle wife Bella has hidden somewhere in their collapsing house, but his noisy efforts are disrupted by a stream of remarkable characters, both living and dead.

While Williams often used drama to convey hope and desperation in human hearts, it was through this dark, expressionistic comedy, which he called a "Southern gothic spook sonata," that he was best able to chronicle his vision of the fragile state of our world. ... Read more

Customer Reviews (1)

"House Not Meant to Stand" Does
Tennessee Williams called his last major play, "A House Not Meant to Stand." "a Gothic Comedy," and it is, in parts, hilariously funny. It's a play and to really appreciate it as the author intended, it's best seen and heard, not read. Still, Williams' ability to draw fascinating and eccentric characters, while at the same time keeping them accessible (by calling to mind bits of people we have known) comes across even on the page. Though in two acts, the movement is continuous and act two picks up just where act one drops off. The action takes place during a single night, set in the leaky, old Pascagoula home of Cornelius McCorkle and his wife Bella. For the duration of the play, a particularly long and noisy thunderstorm rages outside. The old couple returns home after a trip to Memphis for their eldest son's funeral. Cornelius is a big-mouthed bully and a failed politician and Bella is a fat old woman who fades in and out of what we used to call `senility.' Doesn't sound like the ingredients for comedy, but Williams does it, though not without some preachiness (the most dated part of the play) along the way. The naked girl at the top of the stairs helps you pay attention, too. Published in 2008 by New Directions, the book has an excellent introduction, titled "A Mississippi Funhouse," by Thomas Keith. ... Read more

Customer Reviews (1)

Some of Williams Best
I love all three plays. William's characters are driven byenthrolling energy and emotion. Also, the power stuggles of the characters adds a lot to the play. He relies heavily on the stereotypes of Southern people, but does not overdo it. All the plays leave the reader with a bundle of emotions on their hand ... Read more

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A raw display of private life. ... Read more

Product Description

Tennessee Williams (1911-1983) remarked on several occasions that the farther south one went in America, the more congenial life became. Though he sojourned elsewhere, he embraced the South, the region of his birth, as his creative homeland. Few writers have been more closely connected with it than he.

Combining his words with photographs, this biographical album reveals Williams's closeness with the American South, and especially with his beloved New Orleans. Williams was born in Mississippi and lived there with his family until he was seven. Thomas Lanier Williams, who became "Tennessee," absorbed much of his creative material from this Mississippi home place. Many of his ancestors were distinguished Tennesseans, a fact in which he took considerable pride. Although he grew to maturity in St. Louis, it was to the South that he continually returned in his memory and in his imagination. It was in New Orleans and Key West that he chose to spend a large part of his later years.

This book underscores that intimate connection by featuring photographs of people and places that influenced him. Enhanced with a long essay and captioned with quotations from Williams's plays, memoirs, and letters, more than one hundred pictures document the keen sense of place that he felt throughout his life and career.

Customer Reviews (4)

Take A Walk On The Wild Side
The first couple of paragraphs here have been used as introduction to other plays written by Tennessee Williams and reviewed in this space.

Perhaps, as is the case with this reviewer, if you have come to the works of the excellent American playwright Tennessee Williams through adaptations of his plays to commercially distributed film you too will have missed some of the more controversial and intriguing aspects of his plays that had placed him at that time along with Eugene O'Neill and Arthur Miller as America's finest serious playwrights.Although some of the films have their own charms I want to address the written plays in this entry first (along with, when appropriate, commentary about Williams' extensive and detailed directing instructions).

That said, there are certain limitations for a political commentator like this reviewer on the works of Williams. Although his plays, at least his best and most well-known ones, take place in the steamy South or its environs, there is virtually no acknowledgement of the race question that dominated Southern life during the period of the plays; and, for that matter was beginning to dominate national life. Thus, although it is possible to pay homage to his work on its artistic merits, I am very, very tentative about giving fulsome praise to that work on its political merits. With that proviso Williams nevertheless has created a very modern stage on which to address social questions at the personal level like homosexuality, incest and the dysfunctional family that only began to get addressed widely well after his ground-breaking work hit the stage.

On reading "Orpheus Descending", Williams' take on the old Greek legend in modern grab I was struck by the similarity in the character of the Orpheus figure, Val ,and Nelson Algren's Dove Linkhorn in " A Walk On The Wild Side. Both are loners, outsiders, have checkered pasts and are ready for anything from deep romantic love to murder and mayhem. And because they are capacity of that range of emotions and reactions they are also as capable of getting burned by a complacent society that does not take kindly to those that it cannot control. Val drifts into town, gets a job at a store by the enigmatic Lady and then the wheels begin to turn and to deal out his fate. Could he have stopped and turned away? Although that is a question that drives many dramatic efforts it is not always resolvable in a play- or in life. Lady's terminally ill husband lurks in the background with nothing to lose, once the romantic sparks start to fly. I do not understand why this play was not more successful in its earlier manifestations as was pointed out in the introduction, especially as this is a culture that has made space, if only grudgingly and symbollically, for the outsider to tempt the fates.

Williams's Orpheus Descending
Tennessee Williams (1911 -- 1983) currently is getting a great deal of attention in Washington, D.C.The Kennedy Center is presenting three of his major dramas performed by marquis stars. The Washington Opera is presenting an operatic version of "A Streetcar Named Desire" with music by Andre Previn.But another Washington theatre, the Arena Stage, is taking a more adventurous approach.It is reviving Williams's little-known work "Orpheus Descending".It was my good fortune to see this production.It lead me to read the play and to think about it, about Tennessee Williams, and about passionate and romantic theatre.

Orpheus Descending was first presented on Broadway in 1957 where it enjoyed a brief run and only modest success.The play is a rewrite of an early Williams effort, "Battle of Angels" which was written in 1940 and poorly received. Williams was attached to Orpheus and to the effort it cost him.When the play appeared in 1957, he wrote that "[o]n the surface it was and still is the tale of a wild-spirited boy who wanders into a conventional community of the South and creates the commotion of a fox in a chicken coop.But beneath that now familiar surface it is a play about unanswered questions that haunt the hearts of people and the difference between continuing to ask them, ... and the acceptance of prescribed answers that are not answers at all."

The play is a retelling of the Orpheus legend and deals, in the most elemental fashion, with the power of passion, art, and imagination to redeem life and return it to meaning.The story is set in a dry goods store in a small southern town marked, in the play, by conformity, sexual frustration, narrowness,and racism.Into the scene steps Val, a young man with a guitar,a snakeskin jacket, a past and undeniable animal and erotic energy and appeal.He gets a job in the dry goods store run by a middle-aged woman named Lady whose elderly husband is dying.Lady has a past and passions of her own and she is attracted to Val and to life as an antidote to her loveless marriage.The play describes the awakening of passion, love, and life -- and its tragic consequences for Val and Lady.

The play deals with passion, its repression and its attempted recovery.For Williams, I think it is about trying to live bravely and honsetly in a fallen world.The play is replete with lush, poetic dialogue and imagery.On the stage, the production seems in the opening sections somewhat lacking in dramatic movement, but it picks up power as the characters are developed and the play moves to its climax.Val as Orpheus, represents the force of energy and eros which buried as they are in compromise and in humdrum everydayness have the tragic power to make life anew.

I felt lucky to have the opportunity to see this play.It shows, I think, how much remains to be explored in the world of art when we look just a bit below the surface.Those not in a position to see the play themselves will still have the joy of discovery in reading this obscure work by a great romantic American dramatist and poet.

it was great
i felt that the book was among the best i've read.

it was great
i felt that the book was among the best i've read. ... Read more