Memoirs

For Tennessee Williams the past is always present. As he weaves his Memoirs, the playwright continually shifts and intermingles times and places—his childhood in Mississippi and St. Louis; his struggle as a "starving artist"; "overnight" success with The Glass Menagerie in 1945; the death of his long-time companion Frank Merlo in 1962; confinement to a psychiatric ward in 1969, and his subsequent recovery from alcohol and drug addiction in the 1970s. Of course Memoirs is also filled with amazing friends who Williams often hilariously—sometimes fondly, sometimes not—remembers: Laurette Taylor, Gore Vidal, Truman Capote, Elia Kazan, Marlon Brando, Vivian Leigh, Carson McCullers, Anna Magnani, Elizabeth Taylor, and Tallulah Bankhead to name just a few. Much has changed in America since 1975 when Williams's candor in Memoirs—about being a gay man, his love life, sexual encounters, and drug use—caused a bit of a scandal, but some things have not. Filmmaker John Waters provides much-needed perspective to this edition of Memoirs with a bold and witty introduction that is characterized by his undiluted admiration and respect for Tennessee Williams as an artist and a man. In addition, noted Williams scholar Allean Hale has contributed a brief afterword detailing a few of Williams's more intriguing discrepancies. One of the world's greatest playwrights, TENNESSEE WILLIAMS was the author of over thirty full-length plays including The Glass Menagerie, A Streetcar Named Desire, Cat on a Hot Tin Roof, Camino Real, Not About Nightingales, The Rose Tattoo, and Night of the Iguana. The films of JOHN WATERS—director, screenwriter, and raconteur of kitsch and camp—include: Pink Flamingos, Female Trouble, Polyester, Cry Baby, Serial Mom, Cecil B. Demented, and A Dirty Shame. Mr. Waters is the author of his own memoir, Shock Value, and in 2002 his film Hairspray was made into a hit Broadway musical. "I yearned for a bad influence and boy, was Tennessee one in the best sense of the word: joyous, alarming, sexually confusing and dangerously funny. " —John Waters, from his Introduction, Mr. Williams Saved My Life "A raw display of private life. " —The New York Times Book Review