Tennessee Williams: Mad Pilgrimage of the Flesh (99 page)

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Authors: John Lahr

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BOOK: Tennessee Williams: Mad Pilgrimage of the Flesh
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88
“to find in motion”: LOA1, p. 465.
88
“spiritual champagne”:
N
, Mar. 29, 1940, p. 191.
88
“the asking look in his eyes”:
CS
, “The Malediction,” p. 147.
88
“
You
coming toward me”:
N
, May 26, 1940, p. 195.
88
“rebellious hell”:
M
, p. 53.
88
“I know myself to be a dog”:
N
, May 30, 1940, p. 195.
88
“I wonder, sometimes, how much”:
M
, p. 53.
88
“at the nadir of my resources”: Williams to Luise Sillcox, July 8, 1940,
L1
, p. 257.
88
“mad pilgrimage of the flesh”: Williams to Joseph Hazan, Aug. 18, 1940, ibid., p. 262.
88
“beautiful and serene”: Williams to Donald Windham, Aug. 1940,
TWLDW
, p. 11.
89
pictures he would carry in his wallet: LLI with Joseph Hazan, 1985, LLC.
89
“Neither of us had any talent”: LLI with Joseph Hazan, 1985, LLC.
89
“My good eye was hooked like a fish”:
M
, p. 54.
89
cataract in one eye: Ibid.
89
“I will never forget the first look”: Ibid.
89
“slightly slanted lettuce-green eyes”: Ibid.
89
“When he turned from the stove”: Ibid.
89
“with Narcissan pride”:
M
, p. 54.
89
“He had Southern charms”: LLI with Joseph Hazan, LLC.
90
“crazed eloquence”:
M
, p. 54.
90
“Tom, let’s go up to my bedroom”: Ibid., p. 55.
90
unique account of his ravished surrender: Hazan insists that between Kip and Williams there was only one sexual encounter and that Williams embellished his sexual life with Kip. (See
N
, p. 202.) In
Memoirs
(p. 55), Williams implies that their affair was more than one night. “After that, we slept together each night on the double bed up there, and so incontinent was my desire for the boy that I would wake him repeatedly during the night for more love-making . . . ,” Williams wrote. In any case, the entire relationship lasted no more than six weeks.
90
“We wake up two or three times”: Williams to Donald Windham, July 29–30, 1940,
TWLDW
, pp. 9–10.
90
“little boy’s face”: Ibid.
91
“Last night you made me know”:
M
, p. 55.
92
“I know Kip loved me”: Ms. “Memoirs,” p. 237; in the published book, he adds: “after his bewildered fashion” (
M
, p. 55). The last two sentences were cut from the published version.
92
“ecstasy one moment”: Williams to Donald Windham, July 1940,
TWLDW
, p. 8.
92
“Kip turned oddly moody”:
M
, p. 55.
92
“Moves me to find someone afflicted”:
N
, July 29, 1940, p. 201.
92
“Will it be all gone”: Ibid., July 19, 1940, p. 199.
92
“I am being courted by a musician”: Williams to Donald Windham, July 1940,
TWLDW
, p. 8.
92
“a girl”: Ms. “Memoirs,” p. 56. In an edited passage, “The girl was the sister of Kenneth Tynan’s wife, Elaine.”
93
“Tenn, I have to talk to you”:
M
, p. 56.
93
“made a horrible ass of myself”:
N
, Aug. 15, 1940, p. 205.
93
“
C’est fini
”: Ibid.
93
“I can’t save myself”: Ibid., Aug. 12, 1940, p. 203.
93
“You whoever you are”: Ibid., Aug. 15, 1940, p. 205.
93
“Oh, K.—if only”: Ibid., Aug. 19, 1940, p. 207.
93
“I hereby formally bequeath you”: Williams to Kip Kiernan, Aug. 22, 1940,
L1
, p. 269.
93
“Do you think I am making too much”: Ms. “Memoirs,” p. 240.
93
“K., if you ever come back”:
N
, Aug. 19, 1940, p. 207.
93
died of a brain tumor: Williams visited Kip as he lay dying in a hospital bed at the Polyclinic Hospital near Times Square. By then, Kip had married; from his bed he had been asking for “Tenny.” Williams, who was afraid to visit him alone, brought Windham. “As I entered Kip’s room he was being spoon-fed by a nurse; a dessert of sugary apricots. He had never looked more beautiful,” Williams said in a 1981
Paris Review
interview. “We spoke a while. Then I rose and reached for his hand and he couldn’t find mine, I had to find his.” Afterward, he sent Kip a cream-colored Shantung robe. He commemorated the encounter in “Death Is High”: “Return, you called while you slept. / And desperately back I crept / . . . my longing was great / to be comforted and warmed / once more by your sleeping form, / to be, for a while, no higher / than where you are, / little room, warm love, humble star!” Williams to Paul Bowles, Feb. 23, 1950, HRC. This early draft was later published in a much-revised version as “Death Is High,” without the dedication to Merlo.
94
“Tennessee could not possess his own life”: Gore Vidal, “Tennessee Williams: Someone to Laugh at the Squares With,” in Gore Vidal,
Armageddon? Essays 1983–1987
(London: Andre Deutsch, 1987), p. 59.
94
“For love I make characters”:
CS
, “Preface,” p. xv.
94
Something Cloudy, Something Clear
: This title refers to Williams’s eyes at the time he met Kip, and represented to Williams “the two sides of my nature. The side that was obsessively homosexual, compulsively interested in sexuality. And the side that in those days was gentle and understanding and contemplative.” (
CWTW
, p. 346.)
94
“has a fresh and primitive quality”: LOA1, p. 199.
94
“fresh and shining look”: Ibid., p. 575.
94
“is one of those Mediterranean types”: Ibid., p. 701.
94
“still slim and firm as a boy”: LOA1, p. 884.
94
“the body electric”: Williams to Donald Windham, Jan. 3, 1944,
TWLDW
, p. 126.
94
“I love you”: Williams to Kip Kiernan, Aug. 22, 1940,
L1
, p. 269.
94
“I screamed like a banshee”:
CWTW
, p. 229.
95
“I have just had an orgy”: Williams to Donald Windham, Sept. 20, 1943,
TWLDW
, p. 105.
95
“Why do they strike us?”:
N
, Jan. 5, 1943, p. 339.
95
“Not that I like being struck”: Ibid., Jan. 7, 1943, p. 339.
95
“What do you expect to get”: Tennessee Williams, “The Primary Colors” (unpublished), HRC.
95
Sexuality: In an early version of
Streetcar
, Blanche says to “George” (Mitch), “What people do with their bodies is not really what makes good or bad people of them!” Ibid.
95
“The truth of the matter”:
N
, Aug. 25, 1942, p. 327.
95
“tricks in my pocket”: LOA1, p. 400.
95
“charged with plenty”: Williams, “Primary Colors,” HRC.
95
“She tries to explain her life”: Williams to Audrey Wood, Mar. 23, 1945,
L1
, p. 557.
96
“We ought to be exterminated”:
N
, Sept. 14, 1941, pp. 232–33. Evans was also the model for Billy in Williams’s short story “Two on a Party.”
96
“sad but poignant”: Ibid., Sept. 14, 1941, p. 235.
96
“What are we doing”: Williams to Erwin Piscator, Aug. 13, 1942,
L1
, p. 393.
96
“Mr. Williams, you have written”: Williams to Audrey Wood, July 29, 1942, ibid., p. 387.
96
“underground devils”: Williams to Mary Hunter, mid-April 1943, ibid., p. 438.
96
“naked and savage kinds of creation”: Ibid.
96
“vast hunger for life”: Williams to William Saroyan, Nov. 29, 1941,
L1
, p. 359.
96
“long fingers”: Williams to Donald Windham, July 18, 1943,
TWLDW
, p. 88: “We must have long fingers and catch at whatever we can while it is passing near us.”
96
“too selfish for love”: LOA1, p. 265.
97
“Who, if I were to cry out”: Ibid., p. 565.
97
“Probably the greatest difference”: Williams to Donald Windham, Sept. 20, 1943,
TWLDW
, p. 106.
97
little devil of the prologue: John: “They told me I was a devil. . . . I’d rather
be
a devil.” The script even has Buchanan driving like “a demon.” LOA1, p. 610.
97
“unmarked by the dissipations”: Ibid., p. 575.
97
“a Promethean figure”: Ibid.
97
“worn-out magic”: Ibid., p. 622.
97
“It’s yet to be proven”: Ibid., p. 611.
97
“the everlasting struggle and aspiration”: Ibid., p. 612.
97
“I should have been
castrated
”: Ibid., p. 624.
97
“I’m more afraid of your soul”: Ibid.
97
“I came here to tell you”: Ibid., p. 638.
99
“narcotized tranquility”: Ibid., p. 504.
99
“I cannot create”:
N
, June 27, 1941, p. 229.
99
“I pray for the strength”: Williams to Joseph Hazan, Aug. 20, 1940,
L1
, p. 265.
99
“the cage of Puritanism”:
CWTW
, p. 83.
99
“The prescription number is 96814”: LOA1, p. 642.
99
“And still our blood is sacred”:
CP
, “Iron Is the Winter,” pp. 60–61.
99
“I need a soft climate”:
N
, Nov. 28, 1945, p. 437.
100
“N.Y. holds me only by the balls”: Williams to Donald Windham, Dec. 18, 1945,
TWLDW
, pp. 178–79.
100
“Our friendship was more spiritual”: LLI with Pancho Rodriguez, 1983, LLC.
100
“the rare and beautiful stranger”:
N
, Aug. 18, 1940, p. 206.
100
“I don’t think he was disappointed”: LLI with Pancho Rodriguez, 1983, LLC.
100
“Right in the thick of it”: Williams to Margo Jones, Oct. 17, 1946,
L2
, p. 75.
100
“It was not until I met him”: LLI with Pancho Rodriguez, 1983, LLC.
100
“the bright side of myself”: Williams to Joseph Hazan, Aug. 22, 1940,
L1
, p. 270.
101
“Tennessee: This is Vanilla Williams”: Tennessee Williams/Pancho Rodriguez record, BRTC.
101
“Well bred people find it difficult”:
Miami Herald
, Mar. 30, 1958.
101
“comes from deep underground”: LOA1, p. 640.
101
“was willing”: Williams to Studs Terkel, radio interview (Blackstone Hotel), Dec. 1961, LLC.
101
man-child of twenty-five: Pancho Rodriguez was born Dec. 1, 1920.
102
primitive: “He was a primitive,” the New Orleans artist Fritz Bultman said, as quoted in Donald Spoto,
The Kindness of Strangers: The Life of Tennessee Williams
(Boston: Little, Brown, 1985), p. 122.
102
“All of my nights with Pancho”: Ms. “Memoirs,” p. 24.
102
“sort of an off-beat saint”:
M
, p. 106.
102
“At first I entertained him”: Ms. “Memoirs,” p. 24.
103
“My deportment wasn’t too exemplary”: LLI with Pancho Rodriguez, 1983, LLC.
103
“The scenes he created”: Ms. “Memoirs,” p. 24.
103
“He could not explain this thing”:
CS
, “Rubio y Morena,” p. 259.
103
“had never been able to believe”: Ibid., p. 257.
103
“restored his male dominance”: Ibid., p. 261.
103
“some loud tacky thing”: Ibid., p. 595.
103
“where anything goes”: Ibid., p. 610.
103

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