Read Tennessee Williams: Mad Pilgrimage of the Flesh Online

Authors: John Lahr

Tags: #Biography & Autobiography, #Literary

Tennessee Williams: Mad Pilgrimage of the Flesh (123 page)

BOOK: Tennessee Williams: Mad Pilgrimage of the Flesh
7.47Mb size Format: txt, pdf, ePub
ads
, p. 429.
553
“the very forces in our society”: Sherin, “View,” ESC.
553
“It’s not closing for good”: Kissel,
David
Merrick
, p. 429.
553
“Burn, burn, burn”: Prosser,
Late Plays
, p. 144.
553
“one of the most thrilling tragedies”: Ibid.
554
“a blazing torch”: Ibid.
554
“coup-de-disgrace”: Williams to Bill Barnes, undated, LLC.
554
“I am like some old opera star”:
Leicester Mercury
, May 11, 1978.
554
“Aside from you”: Williams to Walter Kerr, Mar. 10, 1978, LLC.
554
“Why, Roger”: Teddy Vaughn,
Washington Star
, Dec. 2, 1979.
554
“I am widely regarded”: Tennessee Williams, “I Am Widely Regarded as the Ghost of a Writer,”
New York Times
, May 8, 1977. In his “Epitaph for Tennessee Williams,” included in
Writing in Restaurants
, David Mamet wrote “his life and view of life became less immediately accessible, and our gratitude was changed to distant reverence for a man whom we felt obliged—if we were to continue in our happy feelings toward him—to consider already dead.”
554
“imminently posthumous”: Williams, interview by Dick Cavett,
The
Dick Cavett Show
, May 16, 1979.
554
“Help!”: Prosser,
Late Plays
, p. xvi.
554
“I phoned Tennessee”: Ibid.
555
“so they might hear”:
FOA
, p. 333. The leading lady and the director were Ruth Brinkmann and Franz Schafranek. “Ruth took it very badly and screamed at Tennessee. . . . Franz fell to his knees and apologized for her outburst.”
555
“The lady who produced my new play”: Peter Hall,
Peter Hall’s Diaries: The Story of a Dramatic Battle
, ed. John Goodwin (London: Oberon Books, 2555), p. 274.
555
“Tenn used death”: JLI with Dotson Rader, 2012, JLC.
555
“I saw him use it most in places”: Ibid.
555
“inordinately possessed of the past”: Richard F. Leavitt,
The World of Tennessee Williams
(New York: G. P. Putnam’s Sons, 1978), p. x.
555
plays teemed with apparitions:
Vieux Carré
;
Stopped Rocking
;
Something Cloudy, Something Clear
;
Clothes for a Summer Hotel
;
Will Mr. Merriweather Return from Memphis?
;
The Chalky White Substance
.
556
“alternate projects”: Williams to Bill Barnes, Nov. 18, 1974, THNOC.
556
“spectral country”: Tennessee Williams,
Stopped Rocking and Other Screenplays
(New York: New Directions, 1984), p. 382.
556
“No, not alone”: Ibid.
556
“No more Sunday visits”: Ibid., p. 377.
556
“utterly peaceful”: Ibid., p. 384.
556
“stone outside and in”: Williams,
Stopped Rocking
, p. 327. Rose Williams haunts
Stopped Rocking
—Farmington, the state institution to which Janet is being transferred, is the name of the state hospital where Rose spent nineteen years. Williams, like Olaf, was also increasingly haunted by his own sense of deadness and hardening heart.
557
“he told me ruefully”: JLI with John Hancock, 2012, JLC.
557
“calamari fritti”: Ibid.
557
“had written another”: Ibid.
557
“skimpy”: Ibid.
557
“I knew we were in trouble”: Ibid.
558
“The actors were stunned”: Ibid.
558
“Tennessee stirred”: Ibid.
558
“a passionate will to create”: Opening stage direction, original Ms. of
Vieux Carré
, Harvard.
558
“Once this house was alive”: Tennessee Williams,
Vieux Carré
(New York: New Directions, 1979), p. 5.
558
“(
As he first draws the door open
”: Ibid., p. 116.
559
“Old cats know how to fall”: Early draft of
Vieux Carré
, HRC; lines appear later in Tennessee Williams,
The Magic Tower and Other One-Act Plays
(New York: New Directions, 2011), p. 236.
559
“None of us saw Tennessee”: Donald Spoto,
The Kindness of Strangers: The Life of Tennessee Williams
(Boston: Little, Brown, 1985), p. 324.
559
“I am as frightened as ever”: Williams to Arthur Seidelman, May 1977, LLC.
559
“It developed that the backers”: Williams to Andrew Lyndon, May 22, 1977, LLC.
560
“Tennessee Williams’s voice”: Walter Kerr, “A Touch of the Poet Isn’t Enough to Sustain Williams’s Latest Play,”
New York Times
, May 22, 1977.
560
“body snatching”: Brendan Gill, “Body Snatching,”
The New Yorker
, Apr. 7, 1980
.
560
“We are simply being told”: Walter Kerr, “The Stage: ‘Clothes for a Summer Hotel’; People Out of Books,”
New York Times
, Mar. 27, 1980.
560
“In a sense all plays are ghost plays”: Tennessee Williams
, Clothes for a Summer Hotel
:
A Ghost Play
(New York: New Directions, 1983), p. 84.
561
“Zelda is the type”: Michiko Kakutani, “ ‘Ghosts’ of the Fitzgeralds Rehearsing under the Watchful Eye of Williams,”
New York Times
, Jan. 8, 1980.
561
“the brutality of the unconscious”: As quoted in Tennessee Williams, “In Masks Outrageous and Austere” (unpublished), JLC.
561
“In Tennessee’s work”: Kakutani, “ ‘Ghosts,’ ” Jan. 8, 1980.
561
“Scott used Zelda’s life”: Ibid. Walter Kerr on Geraldine Page’s Zelda: “She looks like a gypsy moth that’s been put through a shredder, leaving only her pink ballet dancing slippers more or less intact.” (
New York Times
, Mar. 27, 1980
.
)
561
“Is that really you, Scott?”: Williams,
Clothes for a Summer Hotel
, p. 9.
561
“
What was important to you
”: Ibid., p. 11.
561
“Mr. Fitzgerald . . . seems to believe”: Charles E. Shain,
F. Scott Fitzgerald
(St Paul: University of Minnesota Press, 1961), p. 31.
562
“The will to cry out remains”: Williams,
Clothes for a Summer Hotel
, p. 50.
562
“Call it a ring of”: Ibid., p. 12.
562
“ZELDA:—I’m approaching him”: Ibid., p. 48.
563
“The gates are iron”: Ibid., p. 77.
563
appropriation of Fitzgerald’s life for his own short stories: In
The Notebook of Trigorin
, Williams’s free adaptation of Chekhov’s
The Seagull
, which was commissioned by the University of British Columbia, in Vancouver, and staged there in 1981, Williams continued his meditation on self-destruction and the appropriation of others for art. As Williams’s retitled play implies, the famed Trigorin makes a myth of writing—“A writer’s a madman—probationally released,” he says—and is a testament to the smug brutality of the artistic temperament. (Williams,
The Notebook
of Trigorin
(New York: New Directions, 1997), p. 45.) He uses his literary legend to seduce and to betray the aspiring young actress, Nina. Trigorin’s obsessive need to write drains his experience of all meaning. Trigorin doesn’t understand his brutality; Williams did. The year that
Trigorin
was staged, Williams was interviewed by Studs Terkel, who started to define his talents in the following exchange (from a transcribed tape):
Terkel: Lyricist, poet, storywriter, playwright.
Williams: Playwright, yes. Is it all right to say son-of-bitch? (Laughs)
Terkel: I suppose that’s an art form in itself, isn’t it?
Williams: It’s something you learn in show business.
563
“You see, I can betray”: Williams,
Clothes for a Summer Hotel
, pp. 67–68.
564
“write yourself a new book”: Ibid., p. 77.
564
“He said he wanted to fly away”: JLI with Dotson Rader, 2011, JLC.
564
“hung on for ten years”: Ibid.
566
“He seemed nervous”: Dotson Rader,
Tennessee: Cry of the Heart
(Garden City, N.Y.: Doubleday, 1985), p. 333.
566
“Eli was the first to grab him”: Dotson Rader to John Lahr, Sept. 8, 2012, JLC.
566
“I have had it all my life”: Rader,
Tennessee
, p. 336.
566
“Slender Is the Night”: Jack Kroll, “Slender Is the Night,”
Newsweek
, Apr. 7, 1980.
566
“ ‘Clothes’ Needs Some Tailoring”: Clive Barnes, “ ‘Clothes’ Needs Some Tailoring,”
New York Post
, Mar. 27, 1980.
567
“There is nothing necessary”: John Simon, “Damsels Inducing Distress,”
New York
, Apr. 7, 1980.
567
“The action is set in the 1940s”: Robert Brustein, “Advice for Broadway,”
New Republic
, May 3, 1980.
567
“This is an evening at the morgue”: Rex Reed,
New York Daily News
, Mar. 27, 1980.
567
“ ‘Clothes’ was a victim”: Williams to Elia Kazan, July 5, 1980, Harvard.
567
“Couldn’t the son of a bitch”: Bruce Smith,
Costly Performances: Tennessee Williams: The Last Stage: A Personal Memoir
(St. Paul, Minn.: Paragon House, 1990), p. 158.
567
“critical homicide”: Earl Wilson, 1980, LLC.
567
induction to the American Academy of Arts and Letters: Williams took Chair 19 vacated by the death of the sculptor Alexander Calder.
567
“a playwright in the way”: Elia Kazan, Kennedy Center Honors speech, 1979, WUCA.
567
“shaped the history”: President Jimmy Carter, “Presidential Medal of Freedom Remarks at the Presentation Ceremony,” Jan. 9, 1980, The American Presidency Project, www.presidency.ucsb.edu/ws/?pid=45389#axzz2ikgS3SEj.
568
“I will never recover”: Williams to Mitch Douglas, Apr. 14, 1980, LLC. “UNSPEAKABLEY DISGUSTED AND APPALLED!” Williams wrote to Christopher Isherwood and Don Bachardy about the critical reception of
Clothes
. (Williams to Christopher Isherwood and Don Bachardy, Mar. 29, 1979, LLC.)
568
“Tennessee was difficult”: JLI with Mitch Douglas, 2012, JLC.
568
“Well, that would be difficult”: Ibid.
568
“Mitch, the windows are filthy”: Ibid.
568
“You guys play so fucking good”: Ibid.
569
“time runs short”: Michiko Kakutani, “Tennessee Williams: ‘I Keep Writing. Sometimes I Am Pleased,’ ”
New York Times
, Sept. 23, 1981.
569
“level with each other”: Williams to Mitch Douglas, undated, Harvard.
569
“Let’s do”: Mitch Douglas to Williams, July 27, 1981, Harvard.
569
“You’ve been quoted in the press”: Ibid.
571
“I wish you luck”: Williams to Mitch Douglas, Aug. 1981, LLC. In the same letter, Williams added, “Mitch, I’m winding things up and not with too much regret. I mean the career side of my life. . . . I like you. I admire you. I respect you. But I have entered a stage in my life that you should not have to cope with.”
571
“Can you place me in the hands”: Williams to Milton Goldman, Dec. 18, 1981, LLC.
571
“I will not again open an envelope”: Ibid.
571
his review of
Clothes
: Harold Clurman, “Theatre,”
Nation
, Apr. 19, 1980.
571
“There are periods in life”: Williams to Oliver Evans, Jan. 12, 1981, Harvard.
571
“that stands for ‘The Beast of the Apocalypse’ ”: Williams to Elia Kazan, July 5, 1980, Harvard.
571
hung over her bed: JLI with Mitch Douglas, 2012, JLC.
571
“a long, long stretch of desolation”:
N
, Spring 1979, p. 739.
572
“When I am very ill”: Williams to Oliver Evans, Jan. 12, 1981, Harvard.
BOOK: Tennessee Williams: Mad Pilgrimage of the Flesh
7.47Mb size Format: txt, pdf, ePub
ads

Other books

The Bride Wore Scarlet by Liz Carlyle
Sleepwalker by Karen Robards
Cherringham--Playing Dead by Neil Richards
Super Human by Michael Carroll
Camilla by Madeleine L'engle
Blazer Drive by Sigmund Brouwer
Child of the May by Theresa Tomlinson
The Widow of the South by Robert Hicks