Another Life (61 page)

There was a brief silence, interrupted only by a nervous giggle from Nan Talese, then Dick turned to Diller and said, with majestic aplomb: “Henry Robbins is a little … high-strung.” He paused for a moment, as if looking for some better explanation. “Actually,” he went on, “I wouldn’t want to mislead you—not all our luncheons are as exciting as this.”

Diller took the explosion calmly. He seemed, if anything, pleased and impressed, but the incident inevitably led to Robbins’s eventual resignation. Except for the acquisition of Joan Didion, who had followed Robbins from Farrar, Straus (thus sparking off a major publishing feud between Dick and Roger Straus that still survives to this day), there was little to show for Robbins’s time at S&S. If we were going to publish “serious” fiction, by major literary figures, we were going to have to do it on our own, Dick decided, not by bringing in an editor and hoping writers would follow him or her. Fortunately, just such an opportunity presented itself shortly.

G
ENIUS IN
one form of the arts seldom extends to the others, so I was skeptical when a dear friend, Billy Barnes, then an agent at International Creative Management, suggested one night over dinner that I might like to become the publisher of Tennessee Williams’s fiction. There is no American playwright whom I admire more than Williams, and at least
two of his plays are masterpieces, but of course that was not necessarily a guarantee that he could write a novel or short stories of the same quality or that S&S could publish them successfully. Indeed, his previous ventures into fiction had been published, very quietly indeed, by a small press and without much impact. This was exactly the reason, Billy explained, that Williams wanted to come to a big, commercial publisher, who could put some muscle behind the books.

This would have normally set off an alarm bell inside my head. The notion that a big publisher can sell more copies of a book than a small one is widespread but doubtful. A book that is too “special” or hard to categorize might, in fact, do far better with a smaller publisher on whose list it will have a certain importance than on that of a big, mainstream publisher, where it might disappear. Also, a lot of small publishers can bring to a book of narrow appeal a personal enthusiasm and attention that no big publisher can duplicate. In this case, however, my admiration for the author was so great that Barnes did not even have to work hard to get me on the hook. By the time our main course was served, I had agreed to publish a novel and a book of stories by Tennessee Williams, with whom Barnes promised me a meeting in the near future.

Since Williams was then living at the Elysée Hotel on East Fifty-fourth Street, Billy suggested that we meet at one o’clock at Lutèce, which was conveniently close. Besides, he said, Williams would be pleased and flattered—his previous publishers had certainly never taken him to lunch at Lutèce.

A reservation was quickly made and the proprietress, Mme. Soltner, informed of the importance of my guest. The chef, André Soltner, himself was hard to impress—many of his clients were rich and famous, after all, and unlike most of his rivals in New York, he insisted on treating everyone who dined in his restaurant with equal courtesy—still, for the French nobody takes precedence over a distinguished man of letters. For Monsieur Williams, Madame said, Soltner would insist on preparing a special menu. I should not concern myself about the luncheon—each course would be a veritable work of art, in homage to Monsieur Williams.

On the appointed day, Billy Barnes and I met at Lutèce. Madame Soltner had given us the best table in the house and from time to time came over to bring bulletins from the kitchen: The
soupe d’écrevisses
in the manner of New Orleans was coming along famously; the boned quails would not go in the oven until Monsieur Williams arrived. At intervals,
small delicacies appeared from the kitchen to whet our appetites as we sipped our kir royales. Barnes was a man of dazzling charm, as unmistakably Southern as Tennessee Williams himself, which perhaps explained the length and closeness of their relationship. Barnes was good-looking, flamboyantly gay in both senses of the word, outrageously funny, and apparently had a rare gift for jollying his most important client along at those not infrequent moments when Williams stubbornly dug in his heels and refused at the last minute to do something that Barnes had arranged for him. Tennessee, Barnes confided, could be a
little
difficult at times and needed to be handled with kid gloves. Despite a basically sunny disposition, he had dark, brooding moments when he thought everyone was plotting against him, and he suffered from a tendency to listen too carefully to people who were close to him but didn’t always have his best interests at heart, if I knew what he meant, Billy whispered to me in his most conspiratorial fashion.

I nodded. No genius was easy to deal with or altogether predictable, and there was no reason why Williams should be an exception. Much as I enjoyed Billy Barnes’s company, I had the sense that time was flying, and, indeed, when I looked at my watch, I saw that it was already a quarter to two. I also noticed from the corner of my eye that Soltner was leaning out of the kitchen giving frantic hand signals to Madame. Might it not be a good idea, I suggested to Barnes, to give Williams a call, just to make sure there had been no mix-up about the date. But no, Barnes had telephoned him in the morning, and Williams had been eagerly looking forward to meeting me. He was an artist, that was all, and like all artists he was unpunctual. Not only that, Barnes whispered, as if he was imparting a great secret to me, Tennessee was not exactly a morning person. He went to bed and got up late, so for him one o’clock was early in the day.

I was about to ask why, if that was the case, Barnes had set the luncheon for one when the unmistakable figure of Tennessee Williams appeared. Madame Soltner rose from behind the
caisse
, while Soltner himself, his face broadly beaming, emerged from the kitchen, wiping his hands on his apron, to greet Williams. Williams, smiling shyly, looked mildly confused, I thought, as if he was not altogether sure what he was doing here or even if this was the place he was supposed to be. He was dressed neatly in gray flannel slacks, a tweed sports jacket, and a long wool scarf wound loosely around his neck over his shirt and tie—not exactly the elegance of the average Lutèce client but altogether
the outfit of Sartre, say, appearing for lunch at the Café Flore, on the Left Bank. The one alarming note was that his thick horn-rimmed glasses were askew on his nose, tilted at a steep angle so that one eye was looking over the top of them and the other peeking out the bottom. “
Bonjour, cher maître
,” both Soltners called out to Williams at just the moment that he shuffled forward and, missing the fact that there were two or three steps in front of him, took a nosedive straight to the floor, landing in a heap just short of our table.

All of us, Soltner first, rushed to get him on his feet again. Williams seemed unhurt, though his glasses were more skewed than ever. Full of concern, the Soltners brushed him down, Madame removed his scarf, and he was gently guided to his seat. Would he take a little something to restore himself? Soltner inquired solicitously. Williams nodded in slow motion. Perhaps a dry sherry, Soltner suggested, or a glass of white wine? Williams thought about it for a while, eyes half closed, like a man listening to distant music. “Ah believe ah’ll have a vodka,” he said at last. He thought some more. “Better make that a double,” he added.

Billy Barnes introduced me, and we shook hands. We chatted a while and were soon on a first-name basis. Tennessee was genial to a fault, and he apologized for being late. “Ah overslept, baby,” he explained. “Ah woke up with this
sinus headache
? Ah think ah may be comin’ down with this
cold
?” He rubbed his nose hard between thumb and forefinger, as if in pain.

He drained his glass and asked for another as the waiter brought the first course. Tennessee sipped his drink while we ate. Madame and her husband hovered over his shoulder anxiously, waiting for him to taste the soup, but Tennessee didn’t appear to be hungry. Gradually, he became aware of their presence. He just wasn’t up to eating today, he told them, it was all the cold medicine he had been taking. It cut the appetite, that was all. If he could have just a simple omelet? The Soltners masked their disappointment. But of course, Soltner said, beaming, as if making an omelet was the ambition of a lifetime, and went off to the kitchen. But when the omelet came, Tennessee didn’t touch that either; he had another drink instead.

By now, it was becoming apparent that my newfound friend was drunk and determined to get drunker. It was apparent to Barnes, too, who was talking at a fever pitch to cover the long silences from Tennessee. By the time Tennessee had ignored all four courses of the meal,
plus his omelet, and was calling for a postprandial cognac, he had slipped so far down in his chair that his face was close to the top of the table. Suddenly, in a kind of panic, he glanced at his watch (just like the White Rabbit, I thought, and I wondered if he was going to dip it in his glass), cried out, “I had no ide-ah how late it is!” and in an attempt to rise to his feet slumped to the floor instead.

Barnes and I, with the help of the staff, managed to walk him up the stairs and out the door to a taxi, into which Barnes bundled him briskly, while Tennessee wallowed in the back, eyes revolving, like somebody who fears they are being kidnapped but can do nothing to prevent it. Barnes leaped into the cab beside his client and slammed the door shut. “Don’t you worry,” Barnes shouted out to me, as the cab sped off. “He’s terrific on the tube.”

A
CTUALLY
,
THE
question of whether or not Tennessee Williams was terrific—or at any rate, would remain sober—on television was not my main concern. My first concern was whether he would stay sober enough to finish his novel, which was called, despite many attempts on my part to talk him out of the idea,
Moïse and the World of Reason
. The pages I saw at first made no sense at all, but I put that down to the fact that it was early days and that the ways of genius are not like those of ordinary men. It seemed to me that there was no plot as such in what I read, but whenever I brought the matter up in calls to Tennessee he simply chuckled and said, “I know, I
know
, baby, but it’ll come, don’t fret.” Criticism, at any rate, did not disturb him. Genius or not, like most playwrights he was used to rewriting things at the request of the director or the actors and took it all in his stride, with a good nature fueled, I had no doubt, by his favorite cold remedy.

As we became closer, I began to appreciate more and more the genuine sweetness of Tennessee Williams. It is not a word I normally apply to anyone, but it seems the only one to describe him. Yes, Tennessee could be difficult, certainly he had a temper when he felt himself betrayed, but the core of him was one of essential simplicity and sweetness. There was a gentleness and a capacity for trust in him that comes out so strongly in the characters in his plays he clearly loved best: Blanche in
Streetcar
, Laura in
The Glass Menagerie
—indeed, in most of
his women. Pursued as he was by his own demons—an unhappy childhood, an attachment to his unfortunate sister, Rose, alcoholism, pill dependency on a heroic scale (mostly Seconal, Nembutal, Doriden, and amphetamines), a desperate need to be loved, and a taste for rough trade—he remained a true romantic about people, always trusting them until proven wrong, and sometimes, with dismaying effects, long afterward.

Shortly after S&S acquired his novel, I attended a black-tie dinner in his honor at the National Arts Club, at which he was to receive an award. The dinner was an elegant and star-studded occasion—literally, for many of the stars who had appeared in the Broadway productions of Tennessee’s plays over the years were present, as well as a glittering crowd of his admirers and various mandarins from the worlds of culture and high fashion. Tennessee himself sat on the dais, a shy smile on his face, his glasses again askew, and his black bow tie at an angle. To his left sat the mayor; to his right, smiling vacantly, a tiny, fragile-looking, elfin gnome of a woman in her late fifties, dressed in blue, with silver hair cropped short and a strangely unlined face like that of a china doll. As dinner was served, I noticed that Tennessee merely picked at his food, hardly eating a thing. From the expression on his face, I judged that he had been fighting off another cold with his favorite remedy.

Once dinner was over, the speeches began, each one more admiring than the one before. The mayor claimed Tennessee for New York City, various speakers from the National Arts Club claimed him for American culture, one after another actors and actresses rose to praise him or to relate intimate, affectionate anecdotes about him. The emotional temperature of the room was rising to a crescendo. Everywhere I looked there were people crying, by no means all of them actors. There were actual
civilians
crying—even my own eyes were moist with tears. Tennessee Williams was not just admired—he was
loved
as perhaps no other American playwright has ever been.

Throughout all of this display of emotion, Tennessee sat as motionless and gently smiling as a bronze Buddha, his mind possibly elsewhere, while his diminutive, silent companion—who had eaten all of her dinner and a good deal of his—stuffed herself on the petits fours. Tennessee’s eyes were glassy. I wondered if he had prepared for the evening by taking Ritalin, the virtues of which he had preached to me once but for which he was a poor advertisement.

At last, the moment came for Tennessee himself to speak. With unfeigned shyness he stayed in his seat while everybody else—except the woman sitting next to him—rose to their feet applauding and calling for him to speak. Tennessee blushed modestly and finally rose to his feet, swaying slightly. He waved for silence, and, as the room grew still, he leaned toward the microphone. In his musical Southern drawl, enunciating very slowly, even hesitantly, but by no means quietly, he said: “I would like to introduce you all to mah beloved sister, Rose …” He paused to indicate the small woman seated beside him, who seemed to be totally unaware of the fact that he was talking about her. Tennessee smiled down at her, his expression full of sympathy but somehow puckish. He took a deep breath and went on: “… who had the first
pre
-frontal lobotomy in the state of Alabama.”