Tennessee Williams: Mad Pilgrimage of the Flesh (119 page)

, Mar. 16, 1966.

477

“fits people and societies going a bit mad”:

, p. 218.

477

“It’s harder as you get older”: Ibid., p. 120.

478

“I decided they were right”: Ibid., p. 157.

478

“Everything’s southernmost here”: Tennessee Williams,

(New York: Dramatists Play Service, 1967), p. 6.

478

“You’d go a long way out of your way”: Ibid., p. 10.

478

“with Caribbean blue eyes”: Ibid., p. 4.

479

“POLLY: HOW”: Ibid., p. 20.

479

Cubist parody of Southern Gothic: Williams called the play “a gothic comedy.”

479

“Picasso designed it”: Williams,

, p. 4.

479

symbolic triumph of the pratfall: “We’d enter a restaurant and before Tenn had had even one drink, he’d fall down,” Maureen Stapleton recalled. “After a while he was always falling down.” (Spoto,

, p. 264.)

479

“gunfire dialogue”:

, p. 98.

479

blind in one eye: Alleane Hale, “The Gnadiges Fraulein: Tennessee Williams’s Clown Show,” in Philip C. Kolin, ed.,

(New York: Peter Lang, 2002), p. 43.

479

“would not be out of place”: Williams,

, p. 13.

479

“Her scroll has been charged”: Ibid., p. 12.

479

“Having passed and long passed the zenith”: Ibid., p. 18.

480

“Three fish a day”: Ibid., p. 19.

480

“the competish”: Ibid., p. 20.

480

“assumes the starting position”: Ibid., p. 35.

480

“The Disunited Mistakes”: Ibid., p. 5.

480

“incomprehensible evil”: Spoto,

, p. 265.

480

“didn’t have a clue”: Zoe Caldwell,

(New York: W. W. Norton, 2001)

p. 190.

480

Schneider confessed as much: Hale, “Gnadiges Fraulein,” p. 42.

480

“who followed the printed script”: Mike Steen,

(New York: Hawthorn Books, 1969), p. 70.

480

“I had my arm in a sling”: Ibid.

481

“

”: Caldwell,

, p. 190. Caldwell also writes, “Three years later, in 1969, I went to Key West and there were the little gray clapboard houses blown at a slant by the gulf winds with two weathered rocking chairs on the veranda. There were the pelicans down at the dock competing for fish. There were hippies dressed as Indians, and the sailors still had those tight bums. And inside the bars, there were quite a few leftover ladies with dyed hair, red lips, bright eye shadow, and shoes that belong to another time or someone else—and, because of the heat, a lot of white powder was caked on their faces. Sad clowns. I realized that, like all great artists, Tennessee didn’t write lies. . . . Artists make us stop and look.”

482

“marvelous”: Steen,

, p. 120.

482

“The press hit me with all the ammo”:

, p. 212.

482

“A brilliant talent is sleeping”: Stanley Kauffmann, “Tennessee Williams Returns,”

, Feb. 23, 1966.

482

“savage slapstick”: Walter Kerr, “Kerr Reviews Two by Tennessee Williams,”

, Feb. 23, 1966.

482

“Walter Kerr dismissed ‘Gnadiges Fraulein’ ”:

, p. 235.

482

“they might have gained considerable esteem”: Harold Clurman, “Slapstick Tragedy,”

, Mar. 14, 1966.

482

derisory reviews: “Pointless, pompous nightmare” (

); “an ordeal of tedium” (

); “pretentious . . . ludicrous. Why was ‘Boom!’ ever filmed in the first place?” (

). Quoted in Harry Medved and Michael Medved,

New York: Perigee Books, 1984), p. 109.

482

“I want to die”:

, p. 192.

482

“I would fall down often”:

, p. 211.

483

“I was abandoned by friends”:

, p. 235.

483

“zombie”:

, p. 210.

483

Carson McCullers: “To have known a person of Carson’s spiritual purity and magnitude has been one of the great graces of my life.” (Williams to Virginia Spencer Carr, Aug. 18, 1970, Delaware.)

483

“I did not pick him up”: JLI with John Hancock, 2012, JLC.

483

“He confessed that he’d been furious”: Ibid.

483

“in quite imminent danger”: Murray Schumach, “Tennessee Williams Expresses Fear for Life in Note to Brother,”

, June 29, 1968.

483

“If anything of a violent nature”: Ibid.

483

“Please check up on my son”: Edwina Williams to Marion Vaccaro, Dec. 10, 1968, LLC.

483

“the life bit”: Williams to David Lobdell, Aug. 22, 1965, LLC.

483

“I wrote it”:

, June 6, 1971.

483

“To play with fear”: Tennessee Williams,

(New York: New Directions, 1979), p. 2. All quotes from

are from this edition.

483

“incomplete interior”: Ibid., p. 1.

483

“insane”: Ibid., p. 14.

483

“a play within a play within a play”: Tom Buckley, “Tennessee Williams Survives,”

, Nov. 1970, p. 164.

483

“So it’s a prison”: Williams,

, p. 59.

483

“If we can imagine summer”: Ibid.

483

“

: Ibid., p. 63.

485

“Mishima told me then”: Williams to Oliver Evans, undated, Harvard.

485

“been ravaged, without Vaseline”: Williams to James Laughlin, Mar. 10, 1968, LLC.

485

“I am in a state of panic”: Williams to David Lobdell, Jan. 1968, LLC.

485

“I don’t believe God is dead”: Williams to Robert MacGregor, Apr. 1968, LLC.

485

“He still is not taking care”: Audrey Wood to Lady St. Just, July 16, 1968,

, p. 196.

485

“Everyday I work slowly”: Williams to James Laughlin and Robert MacGregor, July 5, 1968, LLC.

485

“an artist’s one-ness”: Williams to Herbert Machiz, undated, THNOC.

486

“The Negative”: Tennessee Williams, “The Negative” (unpublished poem), undated, Harvard.

486

“the constant unbearable”: “MARK: The constant unbearable of. MIRIAM:

! MARK:

” Tennessee Williams,

(New York: Dramatists Play Service, 1969), p. 23.

487

“total collapse of the nervous system”: Ibid., p. 10.

487

“He is mad”: Ibid., p. 30.

487

“adventure”: Ibid., p. 22.

487

“crock”: Ibid., p. 28.

487

“He’s gone through drip”: Ibid., p. 32.

487

finish each other’s sentences: Walter Kerr’s review contended that Williams “made a fetish of the unfinished sentence.” (Walter Kerr, “The Facts Don’t Add Up to Faces,”

, May 25, 1969.) “My incompleted sentences are quite deliberate,” Williams wrote back to Kerr. “I feel they give a quality of urgency to dialogue, even to monologues.” (Williams to Walter Kerr, May 30, 1969, Wisconsin.)

487

“MIRIAM—Are we two people”: Williams,

, p. 24.

487

“MARK: For the first time”: Ibid., p. 14.

488

“I don’t complete many sentences”:

, p. 136.

488

“peculiarly humiliating doom”: Williams to Herbert Machiz, Apr. 29, 1969, THNOC.

488

“but stumbles to his knees”: Williams,

, p. 12.

488

“Too soon after work”: Ibid., p. 15.

488

“shaking, unbathed, unshaved”: Ibid.

488

“demanding what I can’t give”: Ibid., p. 16.

488

“MIRIAM: You’ll return to the States”: Ibid., p. 23.

488

“I’ll tell you something”: Ibid., p. 36.

488

“be back in ten minutes”: Ibid., p. 38.

489

letter to Herbert Machiz: On May 14, 1969, part of the letter was later reproduced in an ad in the

.

489

“As Mark truthfully says”: Williams to Herbert Machiz, May 14, 1969, LLC.

489

“MIRIAM: I have clipped flowers”: Williams,

, p. 23.

490

“I have, under my own name”: Ibid., p. 30.

490

“Miriam appears to see”: Ibid., p. 38.

490

“Released!”: Ibid.

490

“Animation”: Ibid., p. 39.

490

“What are your actual plans?”: Ibid., p. 40.

490

“With abrupt violence”: Ibid.

490

“He thought that he could create”: Ibid.

491

“At this moment”:

, p. 285.

491

“broad hints in person and in print”: Ted Kalem, “The Angel of the Odd,”

, Mar. 9, 1962.

491

“weakened by the flu”:

, Jan. 11, 1969.

491

“I also received the last rites”: Williams to Robert MacGregor, Mar. 9, 1969, LLC. After his conversion, at night in Key West when he’d turn out his reading light, Williams told a friend, “I’d feel the presence of Our Lady sitting by my bed. Sad to think it was only two Doridens and a 100 milligram Mellaril tablet taking effect, I suppose.

.” (Williams to Andrew Lyndon, Nov. 4, 1969, Harvard.)

491

“Salty Author Williams Takes Catholic Vows”:

, Jan. 11, 1969.

491

“Dear Father Joe”: Williams to Ruth Guttman, Nov. 7, 1969, Harvard. “My conversion to The Roman Catholic Church was altogether sincere and remains so.”

491

“He didn’t understand”: “Salty Author Williams Takes Catholic Vows,”

, Jan. 11, 1969. According to a letter written from the Archdiocese of Miami to the executive director of the Bishop’s Committee for Ecumenical and Interreligious Affairs, Williams’s baptism was a mistake. “Mr. Williams had previously been an Episcopalian and had been baptized. However, he insisted that Father LeRoy, S.J. of Key West baptize him, explaining that he wanted ‘the full spiritual benefit of being received into the Catholic faith.’ Father LeRoy did baptize him conditionally and admits and regrets his mistake. Father LeRoy is new in Key West and in the Archdiocese of Miami and perhaps had not seen the guidelines.” (Rev. James D. Enright to Rev. Bernard F. Law, Feb. 6, 1969, LLC.)

491

“get my goodness back”:

, p. 285.

491

“Tenn thinks his conversion”:

, Jan. 18, 1969.

491

“the eventual, unavoidable doom”: Williams to Herbert Machiz, Apr. 2, 1969, THNOC.

492

“He seemed to be interested only in stage movement”: Williams to James Laughlin, May 4, 1969, LLC.

492

“Anne Meacham as Mark’s wife”: Harold Clurman, “Theatre,”

, June 2, 1969.

492

“In the age of the heartless avant-garde”: Jack Kroll, “Life Is a Bitch,”

, May 26, 1969.

492

“almost too personal”: Clive Barnes, “Williams Play Explores Decay of an Artist,”