Tennessee Williams: Mad Pilgrimage of the Flesh (122 page)

, p. 742.)

534

“to whom my heart is committed”: Williams,

, p. 139.

534

“relentless thing called time”: Williams to Bill Barnes, Jan. 1, 1972, THNOC.

534

“I feel so OLD”: William A. Raidy,

, Apr. 15, 1972.

534

“At sixty-one”:

, p. 219.

535

“Time had interred his looks”: Truman Capote,

(London: Penguin Books, 1988), p. 59.

535

“Perhaps I’ll have a face-lift”:

, “Mes Cahiers Noirs,” Spring 1979, p. 737.

535

“eye-lift”: Ibid. In 1978, at the suggestion of “Texas” Kate Moldawer, Williams had cosmetic surgery.

535

“an aging man’s almost continual scuttling”:

, p. xviii.

535

“My best work was always done”:

, p. 220.

535

“the charm of the Orientals”: Williams to Oliver Evans, Oct. 18, 1972, Harvard.

535

“I was comforted greatly”: Williams to Edmund Perret, Sept. 20, 1972, THNOC. Perret, who was from an aristocratic New Orleans family, graduated from St. John Fisher College, then got his MA at Duquesne University. At Brown University and Catholic University he did doctoral studies. He became an executive director of the Contact Lens Association of Ophthalmologists. He met Williams in 1972, while still a student, and became a close friend. “I always thought if he and I had been born in the same year or a few years apart it would have been the greatest gay love affair that ever existed. He knew that. That’s why he said, ‘Baby, we missed the boat,’ ” Perret told Lyle Leverich in a 1983 interview. “He was my platonic lover. It was never consummated.”

535

“Robert was very, very, very quiet”: JLI with Dotson Rader, 2012, JLC.

535

“He drives well”: Williams to Oliver Evans, Oct. 18, 1972, Harvard.

536

“he alternates in moods”: Williams to Bill Barnes, May 31, 1973, THNOC.

537

“Tennessee would touch him”: JLI with Dotson Rader, 2012, JLC.

537

“There was something about him”: Ibid.

537

“My young writer friend”: Williams to Lady St. Just, Dec. 4, 1972,

, p. 279.

537

“a disastrous and destructive liaison”:

, p. 292.

537

“a nature I know”: Williams to Robert Carroll, Dec. 29, 1978, HRC.

537

“Traveller, stranger”: Williams to Robert Carroll, Jan. 13, 1977, HRC.

537

“a beautiful dream”: Williams to Edmund Perret, Oct. 1972, LLC.

537

work of Carson McCullers: “The best I’ve known personally since McCullers,” he said. (Williams to Oliver Evans, Oct. 5, 1972, Harvard.)

537

“My name for him”:

, “Little Horse,” pp. 75–76.

538

“cryin’ all the time”: “Hound Dog” written by Doc Pomus/Mort Shuman. Famously recorded by Elvis Presley.

538

“Where is Robert?”: Tennessee Williams, “Robert” (unpublished), undated, Harvard.

538

“He got himself”: Williams to Edmund Perret, Oct. 31, 1972, LLC.

538

“He has a young”: Williams to Harry Rasky, Oct. 20, 1972, Harvard.

538

documentary:

, DVD, written and directed by Harry Rasky (Canadian Broadcasting Corporation, 1972).

538

“I did not complain”: Williams to Harry Rasky, Oct. 20, 1972, Harvard.

539

“All rights, moral, or in writing”: June 1972,

, p. 264. St. Just kept the copyright, however, when Williams deeded it to her.

539

“Glenville’s abortion”: Williams to Lady St. Just, Oct. 1973,

, p. 303.

539

“You don’t recover”: Williams to Lady St. Just, May 8, 1973, ibid., p. 291.

539

“great sweetness to me”: Williams to Lady St. Just, May 26, 1973, ibid., p. 292.

539

“hired companion”: Williams to Bill Barnes, May 31, 1973, LLC.

539

“just lay there chain-smoking”:

, p. 738.

540

“the Twerp”: Williams to Andrew Lyndon, Dec. 18, 1976, Harvard. The feeling was mutual. “Robert called her a cunt to her face,” Rader said. (JLI with Dotson Rader, 2013, JLC.)

540

“That ‘grass’ he smokes”: Williams to Lady St. Just, Dec. 4, 1972,

, p. 279.

540

“I said: ‘You find me intolerable’ ”: Williams to Lady St. Just, Apr. 18, 1973, ibid., p. 289.

540

“was talking persistently”: Williams to Lady St. Just, May 31, 1973, ibid., p. 294.

540

“The co-habitation with Carroll”: Williams to Bill Barnes, June 13, 1973, THNOC.

540

“It turned out that ‘enigmatic’ ”: Williams to Oliver Evans, June 22, 1973, Harvard.

540

“The West Virginia Kid”: Williams to Lady St. Just, Feb. 5, 1974,

, p. 309.

541

“abruptly decided he wouldn’t leave”: Williams to Andrew Lyndon, Dec. 18, 1976, Harvard.

541

“When Tenn was with Robert”: JLI with Dotson Rader, 2012, JLC.

541

“You see, you had laid”: Williams to Robert Carroll, Jan. 13, 1977, HRC.

541

“Robert seemed to be going through”: Williams to Bruce Cook, Feb. 23, 1978, Harvard.

542

“My beloved Genius”: Pancho Rodriguez to Andreas Brown, Nov. 2, 1978, THNOC.

542

“I hope to see you some day”: Williams to Robert Carroll, undated, HRC.

542

“Robert was far more confident”: JLI with Dotson Rader, 2012, JLC.

544

“The banishment of Frank”: Ibid.

544

“There are not many readers”: Williams to Robert Carroll, Feb. 2, 1980, HRC.

544

“Take care”: Williams to Robert Carroll, July 14, 1980, HRC.

544

“It is true that my charms”: Williams to Bill Barnes, July 15, 1973, THNOC.

545

“I have a conviction”: Williams to Bill Barnes, Apr. 10, 1973, JLC.

545

“a kind of autobiographical peep show”: Michael Korda, “That’s It, Baby,”

, Mar. 22, 1999. In the same article, Korda said, “I thought it courageous of Tennessee to have tried his hand at a novel, particularly one that celebrated the decline of the characters’ sexual and artistic powers.”

545

“If he hasn’t exactly opened his heart”: Allean Hale, “Afterword,” in Tennessee Williams,

(New York: New Directions, 2006), p. 253.

545

“I am knocking it out”: Williams to Lady St. Just, July 30, 1972,

, p. 270. St. Just was so offended by the book’s sexual explicitness that she threw her copy away.

545

“I don’t plan”: Williams to Kate Medina, July 16, 1972, HRC.

545

“I feel that the project”: Williams to Kate Medina, Feb. 1973, HRC.

546

“You impressed me”: Williams to Thomas Congdon, Apr. 4, 1973, HRC.

546

“I feel I’ve been had”:

, Mar. 25, 1976.

546

full power of his romantic connection: Williams wrote, “Donald Windham had suggested the dramatization of this story [

] but it was I who had secured the rights to dramatize it from Lawrence’s widow. . . . Unhappily it is also true that Donald’s contribution to this adaptation is not hugely under-estimated by the word minimal. . . . Donald Windham was already, in my opinion, a precociously gifted writer of prose-fiction, but he had not learned to write dialogue that actors could comfortably employ on a professional stage nor even off . . . .” (As quoted in an unpublished essay, “The Flowers of Friendship Fade the Flowers of Friendship,” LLC.)

546

“amusing and well-written”:

, Spring 1979, p. 749.

546

given permission to Windham: In a disingenuous letter to the

, answering Williams’s complaints about Robert Brustein’s review of the book, Windham wrote, “The first agreement was signed January 6, 1976. . . . This letter asked him, if he agreed, to give the accompanying rough-drafted document to his lawyer to draw up an agreement between us. It was because TW signed this rough draft that evening when he came to dinner, saying that there was no need for his lawyer to be involved, that I went to a lawyer and had the second agreement prepared to make everything legally clear between us. TW was given this second agreement after he returned to New York, on Feb. 17, 1976, at a restaurant where he was having lunch with his sister and friends and had asked me to join him. He signed it in front of his five guests, after reading it and making a handwritten addition on it, as he had made on the first agreement.” (

, Jan. 15, 1978.)

546

“insulting and damaging”: Williams to Floria Lasky, Nov. 21, 1976, LLC.

546

“What makes a Windham?”:

, Spring 1979, p. 749.

547

“The love that previously dared not speak”: Robert Brustein, “The Perfect Friend,”

, Nov. 20, 1977.

547

“

”: Williams to Hillard Elkins, June 18, 1974, LLC.

547

Kennedy assassination: “I think the panic and rot of our present era really did first manifest itself in full when those murders of JFK and Oswald took place in Dallas; it was the elevation of that red devil battery sign,” Williams wrote to Barnes. (Williams to Bill Barnes, Oct. 19, 1973, THNOC.)

547

“Did I die by my own hand”:

, Spring 1979, p. 739.

547

“one big hell-hollering

”: Tennessee Williams,

(New York: New Directions, 1984), p. 25.

547

“Oh, they trusted me”: Ibid., p. 24.

548

“Tonight?”: Ibid., p. 38.

549

“grief and disease receive little pity”: Herbert Kretzmer, “High Level Plot That Is Hatched in Hell,”

, June 9, 1977, cited in William Prosser,

(New York: Scarecrow Press, 2009), p. 145.

549

“Dreams necessary”: Williams,

, p. 90.

549

“outlaws in appearance”: Ibid., p. 92.

549

“They seem to explode”: Ibid., p. 84.

549

“He’s just 32”: Williams to David Merrick, Nov. 3, 1973, LLC.

549

“In the old days”: Williams to Bill Barnes, undated, THNOC.

550

declare him “dead”: John Simon, in his review of

in

, for instance, wrote, “The kindest thing to assume is that Williams died shortly after completing

.” (Cited in Prosser,

, p. 157.)

550

“If the play has not your confidence”: Williams to David Merrick, Nov. 23, 1973, LLC.

550

“I sensed that you were seriously interested”: Williams to Elia Kazan, Dec. 1973, LLC.

550

“What’s the matter, David?”: Howard Kissel,

(New York: Applause Books, 1993), p. 426.

550

after Merrick’s option lapsed: Ed Sherin, “A View from inside the Storm” (unpublished), ESC.

551

“None of us wanted to be involved”: Tennessee Williams, “The Curious History of This Play and Plans for the Future,” LLC.

551

“one of the most important works”: Sherin, “View,” ESC.

551

“were paranoid”: Ibid.

551

“I fancy this”: Williams to Lady St. Just, May 4, 1975,

, p. 326.

551

“another actress be found”: Sherin, “View,” ESC.

551

“As I live and breathe”: Williams to Lady St. Just, Apr. 1975,

, p. 325.

551

“amateurish”: Sherin, “View,” ESC.

551

“a mess”: Prosser,

, p. vi.

551

“cause for rejoicing”: Ibid.

551

“beginning to emerge”: Sherin, “View,” ESC.

553

“I stood in disbelief”: Ibid.

553

“He gave me this shocking report”: Williams memo, undated, LLC.

553

“Tennessee Williams”: Kissel,