Tom:The Unknown Tennessee Williams by Lyle Leverich

Sorry about the light blogging-just back from vacation and getting boys ready for school-trying to arrange a visit to Virtuous Father and taking on some new work projects-also trying to spend as much time outdoors as possible and see at least a bit of Olympics-thank God basketball and tennis coverage does not predominate-enjoying sailing,shooting, whitewater,judo and other minor sports which I never see otherwise as well as swimming,track and field and surprisingly men's gymnastics-contestants seem older and more fully formed as people than in most recent Olympics-
I was looking for some non-political books to read while on vacation and found the following biography of Tennesse Williams at the library. I've never thought of myself as a particular fan of "Streetcar" but always liked "Glass Menagerie" after seeing a revival starring Piper Laurie on Broadway in the mid sixties. It didn't hurt that at about this time my widowed grandfather had recently married a woman my uncle referred to as "either a low grade moron or perhaps a high grade imbecile"those terms still had some technical meaning in those politically incorrect times and that my new step grandmother referred without irony to the many "gentlemen callers" she had known made us all crazy with laughter.

I also have a very tenuous real life connection to Tennesee Williams as my fathers best friend also my late godfather was the manager-and the son in law of the owner-of New York's Hotel Elysee where Tennesee Williams lived intermittently and where he died. My father met him at the hotel several times and said he seemed like a gracious southern gentlemen but that obviously he didn't know him.
The book is the first volume of a projected two volume biography of Williams that includes the years up until he becomes famous and at the time of this post I have only read the years prior to his college graduation.
He was the product of the south and more specifically the semi-patriciam Episcopalian south which is the culture I have married into and in which we spent our vacation (Kanuga). It was a culture in which appearences were paramount and the multiple onuses of alcoholism,mental illness and homosexuality are exccruciatingly painful to watch unfold in the life of this sensitive young man. The effect of physical illness-diphteria and then Bright's disease-which left him short statured and then frail completed his psychological underpinings. The stultifying atmosphere, the constant parental battles, the paternal disapproval and the marginal economic circumstances made me want to scream enough.
His salvations-if you can call them that were first his Episcopal minister grandfather and his wife as well as his owm love of writing and capacity for hard work.
The descriptions using gobs of primary source material makes the totures of his later life seem tragically inevitable.
The good old days-I wonder how this family would have done with our more enlightened and humane atitudes towards mental illness,alcoholism and homosexuality. Are artists less tortured today-probably not but I hope there are at least fewer who have to suffer so badly.

Comments

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This is Sheila here - This book is one of my favorite biographies ever written. Tragically, Lyle Leverich died before he could complete the second volume. I had a good couple of days mourning when I learned that!! His description of the opening night of Glass Menagerie in Chicago is one of the most inspirational stories (as an actress) I have ever read!

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