The biographer of Nietzsche, Kafka, Brecht, Sartre, Proust and de
Sade takes on Tennessee Williams with intelligent, neatly weighed
but uninspired results. Hayman mentions that he was commissioned by
Yale to write this book, which otherwise might never have been
written. Since very little original research has gone into it -
it's mostly a too-smooth reshuffling of already familiar stuff - a
reader of earlier lives of Williams might wonder why anyone should
pursue this one. Still, Hayman's weighing of his subject's life
brings a lively, not overly academic sensibility to bear on work a
new generation might not be familiar with and offers as well a
history of productions of Williams plays that often had his
wavering imprimatur. The tack Hayman takes boils down to a portrait
of a bedeviled gay artist whose growing dependence on drugs
reinforced a neurotic insecurity that could be borne only by the
immense daily discipline of writing - and writing no matter what
disaster has befallen him. Williams's last 20 years come off as a
decline into mental slop, with the playwright doggedly dramatizing
his own "blue devils" without effect and producing failure upon
failure, or parody upon self-parody. Meanwhile, he also falls into
outrageous behavior and talks endlessly like a queen bitch who
wants only to be stroked, despite whatever idiocies he's mouthing.
A thought played on by Elia Kazan when first mounting A Streetcar
Named Desire seems pivotal to understanding Williams, who as a
younger man often picked up rough trade and was sometimes beaten
up, a fear that becomes central to the Blanche-Stanley polarity,
with Williams as Blanche and Stanley the rough trade perhaps out to
murder him. In the end, Williams lusted for new acclaim by the
critics as if for a lost Mardi Gras crown. Spankingly well-produced
with superb illustrations. (Kirkus Reviews)
Few playwrights write as much of their lives into every work as did
Tennessee Williams, and few had lives that were so obviously
theatrical. Growing up amid abusive alcoholism, genteel posturing,
and the incipient madness of his beloved sister, Rose, Williams
produced plays in which violence exploded into rape, castration,
and even cannibalism, projecting dramatic personal traumas. In this
frank, compelling study, the distinguished biographer and critic
Ronald Hayman explores the intersection of biography and art in one
of the most exuberantly autobiographical dramatists of the American
theater. By the time he died, in 1983, Williams's reputation had
seriously declined. More than twenty years of drug and alcohol
addiction, coupled with devastating openness about his promiscuous
homosexuality, had all but destroyed one of America's greatest
playwrights, while Williams's new works were increasingly
unsuccessful. In recent years, however, Broadway revivals and
amateur productions have testified to his enduring greatness as one
of the shapers of the American theater. The major plays, such as
The Glass Menagerie, Cat on a Hot Tin Roof and A Streetcar Named
Desire, never disappeared from American theatrical consciousness.
Their heroes - Tom Wingfield, Brick Pollitt, even Blanche Du Bois -
are portraits of the artist as a very troubled man. Hayman explores
the life and writings of Tennessee Williams and shows how they were
linked. More than any previous biographer, he unmasks the
compulsive, driven man behind the characters and lays bare the pain
that engendered Williams's violent apocalypses. Tennessee Williams
will change the way lovers of drama experience and understand some
of its finestachievements.
General
Is the information for this product incomplete, wrong or inappropriate?
Let us know about it.
Does this product have an incorrect or missing image?
Send us a new image.
Is this product missing categories?
Add more categories.
Review This Product
No reviews yet - be the first to create one!
Welcome to Loot.co.za!
Sign in / Register |Wishlists & Gift Vouchers |Help | Advanced search
(4)
(1)
