Product Description

When Memoirs was first published in 1975, it created quite a bit of turbulence in the media--though long self-identified as a gay man, Williams' candour about his love life, sexual encounters, and drug use was found shocking in and of itself, and such revelations by America's greatest living playwright were called "a raw display of private life" by The New York Times Book Review. As it turns out, more than thirty years later, Williams' look back at his life is not quite so scandalous as it once seemed; he recalls his childhood in Mississippi and St. Louis, his prolonged struggle as a "starving artist," the "overnight" success of The Glass Menagerie in 1945, the death of his long-time companion Frank Merlo in 1962, and his confinement to a psychiatric ward in 1969 and subsequent recovery from alcohol and drug addiction, all with the same directness, compassion, and insight that epitomize his plays.

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #205856 in Books
• Published on: 2007-12-06
• Original language: English
• Binding: Paperback
• 368 pages

About the Author
Tennessee Williams was born in 1911 in Columbus, Mississippi. He received a Rockefeller Fellowship in 1940 for his play Battle of Angels, and he won the Pulitzer Prize in 1948 and 1955. Among his many other plays Penguin have published The Glass Menagerie (1944), A Streetcar Named Desire (1947), Summer and Smoke (1948), The Rose Tattoo (1951), Camino Real (1953), Cat on a Hot Tin Roof (1955), Orpheus Descending (1957), Sweet Bird of Youth (1959), Period of Adjustment (1960), The Night of the Iguana (1961), The Milk Train Doesn’t Stop Here Anymore (1963; revised 1964) and Small Craft Warnings (1972). Tennessee Williams died in 1983. The films of John Waters - director, screenwriter, and racounteur of kitsch and camp - include: Pink Flamingoes, Serial Mom, Cecil B. Demented, and A Dirty Shame.

Customer Reviews

I expected something different, but it's honest and it's T. Williams...
If you do like Tennessee Williams' plays, you'll probably be interested in reading his Memoirs; in them, he does talk about where his plays' characters come from, about how their publishing and stagings were...and he, personally, is easy recognizable in every paragraph.
What I liked in this book is his honest way of describing himself and his acts; he is a person with a clear conscience, a sharp sensibility, able to see and to point at beauty in other people; and how he accepts himself and everything he feels although he admits his own faults.
However, I expected these pages to contain more about his work, writing, theatre experiences, own feelings...but he rather describes facts, meetings, people...which made its reading a bit cold and not as passionating as I had expected.
In fact, I was interested in the book but, I must say, because I knew it was Tennesse Williams, not for the book's own qualities alone.