Tennessee Williams: Mad Pilgrimage of the Flesh (109 page)

“the first real bop play”: Robert Sylvester, “A Stroll along ‘Camino Real,’ ”

, Mar. 23, 1953.

273

“As theatre,

”: Brooks Atkinson, “Camino Real,”

, Mar. 20, 1953.

273

“it surpassed its flaws”:

, p. 167.

273

“I knew that I was doing”: Ibid., p. 166.

273

“I was hardly conscious of anything”: Williams to Konrad Hopkins, Apr. 14, 1953, LLC.

273

“a marvel of controlled cool empathy”:

, p. 167.

274

“I’ve come out of the production”:

, p. 497.

274

“How dare you”:

, p. 167.

274

“I believe it to be a very great play”: Letters to the Editor, LLC. Sitwell also wrote to the

, Apr. 5, 1953: “I have long thought Mr. Williams a playwright of very great importance. I now believe him to be a very great playwright. . . . Why are people who can see a little deeper to be deprived of a work which throws a blinding light on the whole of our civilization? Verbally, intellectually, and visually (the décor is amazing) it is a most extraordinary work.”

275

“What I would like to know”: Williams to Walter Kerr, Mar. 31, 1953,

, p. 464.

275

“A Statement in Behalf of a Poet”: Signed letter by Jane and Paul Bowles, Lotte Lenya, Elaine and Willem de Kooning, John La Touche, and Gore Vidal, among others, sent to newspapers, Columbia.

275

“The controversy over ‘Camino Real’ ”: Walter Winchell,

, Apr. 6, 1953.

276

“Concerning Camino Real”: “Concerning Camino Real,”

, Apr. 5, 1953.

276

’s “Sidewalks of New York”: Carl Gaston, “Sidewalks of New York,”

, Apr. 23, 1953.

276

“The Talk of the Town, Indeed!”:

, Apr. 15, 1953.

276

“Bloody but unbowed”:

, p. 206.

277

“I can’t believe that you really think”: Williams to Brooks Atkinson, Mar. 24, 1953,

, p. 462.

277

“psychopathic bitterness”: Brooks Atkinson, “Tennessee Williams Writes a Cosmic Fantasy Entitled ‘Camino Real,’ ”

, Mar. 20, 1953.

277

“Has this play alienated”: Williams to Brooks Atkinson, Mar. 24, 1953, LLC.

277

“flood of correspondence”: Williams to Brooks Atkinson, Apr. 3, 1953,

, p. 468.

277

“You have no idea how much”: Williams to Brooks Atkinson, Apr. 3, 1953, LLC.

277

“Of course soon as the notices”: Williams to Maria Britneva, Apr. 22, 1953,

, p. 75.

277

“The work was done”: Williams to Brooks Atkinson, Apr. 1953,

, p. 474.

278

“long-exceeded”: Williams to James Laughlin, Apr. 3, 1953, LLC.

278

play by Donald Windham:

opened at the Playhouse Theatre in Houston, May 13, 1953. Williams had to ban Windham from the theater; their friendship never recovered. “I have a brand new appreciation of Gadg. I always loved and admired him, but when I consider how many times I ‘blew my top’ at poor Windham and how often Gadg must have wanted to scream at me, but never did, I feel a real awe of his composure or control.” (Williams to Brooks Atkinson, June 25, 1952, BRTC.)

278

“with a little painting in oils”: Williams to Maria Britneva, Apr. 22, 1953,

, p. 75.

278

“shut out”: Williams to Brooks Atkinson, Apr. 3, 1953,

, p. 468.

278

“I have nothing more to expect”: Williams to James Laughlin, Apr. 5, 1953, ibid., p. 473.

279

“I believe I said”:

, May 8, 1936, p. 33.

279

“If only I could realize”: Ibid.

279

“thrombosed hemorrhoids”: Williams to Gore Vidal, Jan. 27, 1954,

, p. 514.

279

“Don’t think I ever spent such a night of pain”:

, Dec. 28, 1953, p. 609. The 1946 operation was the traumatic removal of his appendix and infected intestine in Taos, New Mexico, which was, he told Kenneth Tynan, “where the desperate time started.” (Williams to Kenneth Tynan, July 27, 1955,

, p. 306.) Of his 1953 ailment, Williams wrote, “It is relentless, constant, burning, aching. Frightens & appals one to think what misery, what anguish, our bodies are capable of. And this one such a sordid one, too. It might at least be in a decent place.” (

, Dec. 29, 1953, p. 609.)

279

“this pain eclipses thought”:

, Dec. 28, 1953, p. 609.

279

“a great storm has stripped me bare”: Ibid., Aug. 19, 1953, p. 583.

280

“pinkies”:

, July 4, 1958, p. 713.

280

“All hell is descended on me”:

, Dec. 29, 1953, p. 609.

280

“not auspiciously”: Ibid., June 5, 1953, p. 567.

280

“These suspicions of mine”: Ibid.

280

“One gets tired of begging”: Ibid., July 1, 1953, p. 571.

280

“treated like a stupid, unsatisfactory whore”: Ibid., July 10, 1953, p. 571.

280

“Conversation had fallen to the level of grunts”: Williams to Elia Kazan, undated, WUCA; also quoted,

, p. 572.

280

“What a sorry companion I make”:

, July 17, 1953, p. 575.

281

“ ‘The Horse’ and I never laugh”: Ibid., p. 575.

281

“dreary”:

, Aug. 24, 1953, p. 583.

281

“juvenile poetics”: Williams to Audrey Wood, Oct. 14, 1953,

, p. 502.

281

“on the one big thing”: Williams to Kenneth Tynan, July 26, 1955,

, p. 307.

281

“work and worry over work”: Williams to Donald Windham, Dec. 20, 1949, ibid., p. 249.

281

“physical deterioration and a mental fatigue”:

, Aug. 19, 1953, p. 583.

281

“and they were not too good”: Ibid., Dec. 4, 1953, p. 601.

281

“Audrey wrote me a devastatingly negative”: Williams to Maria Britneva, Oct. 15, 1953,

, p. 79.

281

“Death has no sound or light in it”:

, Oct. 20, 1953, p. 601.

282

“Was so disheartened”: Ibid., Oct. 1953, p. 595.

282

“If anything goes wrong”: Ibid., Dec. 29, 1953, p. 611.

282

“And on that morning”:

, “Cortege,” pp. 30–33.

283

“I’m such a coward”:

, Dec. 30, 1953, pp. 611–13.

283

“If I am ever even relatively well”: Ibid., p. 615.

283

“whispered”: Ibid.

283

“He says you should have an operation”: Ibid., Jan. 1, 1954, p. 619.

283

“that old breast-beating”: Ibid., Jan. 2, 1954, p. 621.

283

“to make no more incontinent demands”: Ibid., Jan. 5, 1954, p. 623.

283

“Oh, how I long to be loose again”: Ibid., Jan. 1, 1954, p. 619.

283

“I am doing what I dreamed”: Ibid., Jan. 16, 1954, p. 627.

284

“all the emotional content”:

, p. 109.

284

“get a grip on”: Williams to Audrey Wood, Apr. 1, 1954,

, p. 525.

284

“I’m . . . pulling together”: Williams to Audrey Wood, Mar. 21, 1954, ibid., p. 541.

284

“I do think it has a terrible sort of truthfulness”: Williams to Audrey Wood, Apr. 1, 1954, ibid., p. 525.

284

“work script”:

, p. 165.

284

“I was terribly excited”: Ibid.

284

“passing through”: Williams to Cheryl Crawford, June 1954,

, p. 534.

284

“at just about the pit”:

, June 9, 1954, p. 643.

284

“I’m just holding on”: Ibid., June 3, 1954, p. 637.

285

“Am I worthy of it?”: Ibid., Aug. 13, 1954, p. 653.

285

“my soul”: Ibid., June 6, 1954, p. 639.

285

“begun to develop”: Williams to Kenneth Tynan, July 26, 1955,

, p. 307.

285

“That’s a very dangerous thing”: Ibid.

285

“Once the heart is thoroughly insulated”: Williams to Kenneth Tynan, July 26, 1955,

, p. 307.

285

“Maybe Frank can help”:

, June 9, 1954, p. 643.

285

“the Delta’s biggest cotton-planter”: LOA1, p. 880.

285

“In this version”:

, p. 165.

285

“a synthesis of all my life”: Williams to Elia Kazan, Nov. 31, 1954,

, p. 558.

285

“A man can be scared and calm”:

, Dec. 30, 1953, p. 615.

287

“This click that I get in my head”: LOA1, p. 936.

287

“a cemetery of refusals”: Masud Khan,

(London: Karnac Books, 1989), p. 57. “Hysteria is not so much an illness as a technique of staying blank and absent from oneself, with symptoms as a substitute to screen this absence. The question arises: what has necessitated this need for blankness and caused this dread of psychic surrender through the early mother-child relationship in the hysteric? Or to put it differently: why does the hysteric’s inner life become a cemetery of refusals?”

287

“Born poor, raised poor”: LOA1, pp. 911–12.

287

“

”: Ibid., p. 91.

287

“But how in hell on earth”: Ibid., p. 913.

287

“Did Brick love Maggie?”: Williams, “About Evasions,”

, p. 110.

288

“I’ve gone through this”: LOA1, p. 890.

288

“I never could keep my finger”: Ibid., p. 892.

288

“There is torment in this play”: Williams to Cheryl Crawford, June 1954,

, p. 536.

288

shift from self-dramatization to self-justification:

, p. 321.

288

“I’m not sure self-pity”: Williams to Ted Kalem, ca. 1962, Columbia.

289

“When you’re feelin sorry”: Tennessee Williams, “Drinky-Pie” (unpublished poem), Harvard.

289

“It has gotten so bad”: Williams to Cheryl Crawford, June 1954,

, p. 535.

289

“For the New Year”: Elia Kazan to Williams, Dec. 25, 1953, LLC.

290

“Of course I wrote it for you”: Williams to Elia Kazan, Aug. 18, 1954, WUCA.

290

“Will return with 2 other plays”: Williams to Elia Kazan, undated, 1954, HRC.

290

“I still wish it could be a full evening”: Audrey Wood to Williams, July 19, 1954, HRC.

291

play was unfinished: “This play has tremendous potential, but it has to be finished,” she told him.

, pp. 165–66.

291

“To me the story is complete”: Williams to Audrey Wood, Sept. 1954,

, p. 543.

291

“I’m quite exhausted”: Elia Kazan to Williams, undated, ibid., p. 548.

291

“both hot for it”: Williams to Maria Britneva, Oct. 17, 1954,

, p. 101.

291

“The only thing I want is Kazan”: Ibid.

291

“You are on the threshold”: Williams to Elia Kazan, Sept. 16, 1954, WUCA.

292

“I’ve occasionally lied to playwrights”:

, p. 73.

292

“a brilliant first draft”: Elia Kazan to Williams, Oct. 20, 1954, WUCA.