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

, p. 429.

553

“the very forces in our society”: Sherin, “View,” ESC.

553

“It’s not closing for good”: Kissel,

, p. 429.

553

“Burn, burn, burn”: Prosser,

, 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”:

, May 11, 1978.

554

“Aside from you”: Williams to Walter Kerr, Mar. 10, 1978, LLC.

554

“Why, Roger”: Teddy Vaughn,

, Dec. 2, 1979.

554

“I am widely regarded”: Tennessee Williams, “I Am Widely Regarded as the Ghost of a Writer,”

, May 8, 1977. In his “Epitaph for Tennessee Williams,” included in

, 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,

, May 16, 1979.

554

“Help!”: Prosser,

, p. xvi.

554

“I phoned Tennessee”: Ibid.

555

“so they might hear”:

, 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,

, 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,

(New York: G. P. Putnam’s Sons, 1978), p. x.

555

plays teemed with apparitions:

;

;

;

;

;

.

556

“alternate projects”: Williams to Bill Barnes, Nov. 18, 1974, THNOC.

556

“spectral country”: Tennessee Williams,

(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,

, p. 327. Rose Williams haunts

—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

, Harvard.

558

“Once this house was alive”: Tennessee Williams,

(New York: New Directions, 1979), p. 5.

558

“(

”: Ibid., p. 116.

559

“Old cats know how to fall”: Early draft of

, HRC; lines appear later in Tennessee Williams,

(New York: New Directions, 2011), p. 236.

559

“None of us saw Tennessee”: Donald Spoto,

(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,”

, May 22, 1977.

560

“body snatching”: Brendan Gill, “Body Snatching,”

, Apr. 7, 1980

560

“We are simply being told”: Walter Kerr, “The Stage: ‘Clothes for a Summer Hotel’; People Out of Books,”

, Mar. 27, 1980.

560

“In a sense all plays are ghost plays”: Tennessee Williams

:

(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,”

, 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.” (

, Mar. 27, 1980

)

561

“Is that really you, Scott?”: Williams,

, p. 9.

561

“

”: Ibid., p. 11.

561

“Mr. Fitzgerald . . . seems to believe”: Charles E. Shain,

(St Paul: University of Minnesota Press, 1961), p. 31.

562

“The will to cry out remains”: Williams,

, 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

, Williams’s free adaptation of Chekhov’s

, 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,

(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

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,

, 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,

(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,

, p. 336.

566

“Slender Is the Night”: Jack Kroll, “Slender Is the Night,”

, Apr. 7, 1980.

566

“ ‘Clothes’ Needs Some Tailoring”: Clive Barnes, “ ‘Clothes’ Needs Some Tailoring,”

, Mar. 27, 1980.

567

“There is nothing necessary”: John Simon, “Damsels Inducing Distress,”

, Apr. 7, 1980.

567

“The action is set in the 1940s”: Robert Brustein, “Advice for Broadway,”

, May 3, 1980.

567

“This is an evening at the morgue”: Rex Reed,

, 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,

(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

. (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,’ ”

, 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

: Harold Clurman, “Theatre,”

, 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”:

, Spring 1979, p. 739.

572

“When I am very ill”: Williams to Oliver Evans, Jan. 12, 1981, Harvard.