Tennessee Williams: Mad Pilgrimage of the Flesh
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342 “It is the ‘peculiar people’ ”: Harold Clurman, “Introduction,” in Tennessee Williams, Tennessee Williams: Eight Plays (Garden City, N.Y.: Nelson Doubleday, 1979).
342 “dear man and fine critic”: M, p. 172.
342 “Harold’s rehearsals”: KAL, pp. 121–22.
342 “I know that Anna would break”: Williams to Audrey Wood, July 28, 1955, L2, p. 587.
342 “under-directed”: M, p. 172.
342 “For your own sake, honey”: Williams to Cheryl Crawford, Dec. 1956, L2, p. 641.
343 “a truly shattering setback”: M, p. 172.
343 “one of Mr. Williams’s pleasantest plays”: Brooks Atkinson, “Theatre: Rural Orpheus,” New York Times, Mar. 22, 1957.
343 “something missing”: “Only the Flashes,” Newsweek, Jan. 1, 1957.
343 “a drama of notable power”: Richard Watts Jr., “The World of Tennessee Williams,” New York Post, Mar. 22, 1957.
343 “The trouble with Tennessee Williams’s new play”: Wolcott Gibbs, “Well, Descending, Anyway,” The New Yorker, Mar. 30, 1957.
343 “put it down with a vengeance”: M, p. 173.
343 “There was an emotional shock”: Williams to Donald Windham, TWLDW, June 13, 1957, p. 293.
343 “If he ever refers to my sister”: CC Williams to Audrey Wood, Feb. 8, 1950, L2, p. 274.
343 “a flop”: Knoxville News-Sentinel, Mar. 28, 1957, LLC.
343 “my desperate old father”: N, June 6, 1954, p. 639.
343 “I’ve stopped hating my father”: Williams to Kenneth Tynan, July 26, 1955, TWLDW, p. 302.
344 “So a tragic situation works itself out”: Williams to Paul Bigelow, Jan. 7, 1948, L2, p. 143.
344 “My father was really quite an embarrassment”: LLI with Dakin Williams, 1985, LLC.
344 “I was surprised that Tennessee came”: Ibid.
344 “Dakin told me”: RMTT, p. 202.
344 both Dakin and Tennessee cried over their father: TWIB, p. 212; see also Gilbert Maxwell, Tennessee Williams and Friends: An Informal Biography (Cleveland: World Publishing, 1965), p. 222.
344 “The Williams family was not one”: TWIB, p. 150.
344 “I wonder if he knew”: CS, “The Man in the Overstuffed Chair,” p. xvii.
345 as “an exceptionally beautiful service”: Williams to Audrey Wood, Jan. 5, 1957, LLC.
345 “Am I wrong in thinking”: Williams to Elia Kazan, Apr. 31, 1957, L2, p. 646. The previous month Kazan had written Williams his critique of the production of Orpheus Descending. “I think you should have gotten more of a fight from somebody; a tougher, a keener, or possibly more unpleasant collaborator, telling you more objectively what was wrong with the script, where it was unclear, where it was too sudden, where it appeared unmotivated and abrupt. In fact, you needed someone to take the chance that I took in CAT. To take the chance that you would be resentful later and feel that you had been too strongly influenced. . . . You might have written another preface saying, ‘I didn’t really mean that version you saw on the Broadway stage,’ but still I think all in all you would have been happier now.” (Elia Kazan to Williams, Mar. 27, 1957, The Selected Letters of Elia Kazan, ed. Albert J Devlin with Marlene J. Devlin [New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 2014], p. 350.)
345 “Tenn became a terrific hypochondriac”: Spoto, Kindness, p. 215.
345 “a certain stop”: Williams to Brooks Atkinson, Mar. 24, 1957, L2, p. 644.
345 “Since the failure of ‘Orpheus’ ”: Williams to Lady St. Just, June 7, 1957, FOA, p. 147.
345 “What a season we’ve been having”: Williams to Audrey Wood, Apr. 24, 1957, HRC.
345 “I can’t be the better part”: Williams to Sandy Campbell, Jan. 5, 1957, TWLDW, p. 292.
345 “The moment has certainly come”: N, Mar. 31, 1957, p. 701.
CHAPTER 6: BEANSTALK COUNTRY
346 “Who am I”: CP, “You and I,” p. 123.
346 hard-drinking poet Gilbert Maxwell: “I saw Gilbert throw his drink squarely iTenn’s face more than once; when he was in a particularly bitchy mood he’d call Tennessee ‘Ta-ness-a,’ ” the director George Keathley said. (Keathley, unpublished Ms., JLC.)
346 biographical album about his life: Richard Leavitt’s album was The World of Tennessee Williams. He also published Tennessee Williams and the South, with Kenneth Holditch, in 2002.
346 “I announced that I was retiring”: N, Apr. 1, 1957, p. 703.
346 “He reminded me of Thomas Wolfe”: Eugene B. Brody, “Introduction,” in Lawrence S. Kubie, Symbol and Neurosis: Selected Papers of Lawrence S. Kubie (Madison, Conn.: International Universities Press, 1978), p. 6.
348 “The tree of psychoanalytic theory”: N, Apr. 1, 1957, p. 703.
348 Kubie was the man: In a 1966 survey that asked 490 of the country’s leading psychiatrists to list the outstanding living psychiatrists, Kubie came in fifth, ahead of such renowned clinicians as the Menningers. See Norman Cousins, Memorial (privately published), p. 237.
348 history of the place: Lawrence Kubie, The Riggs Story: The Development of the Austen Riggs Center for the Study and Treatment of the Neuroses (New York: Paul B. Hoeber, 1960).
349 “What is cut off”: Lawrence Kubie, Practical and Theoretical Aspects of Psychoanalysis (Madison, Conn.: International Universities Press, 1950), p. 129.
349 “a good team-player”: Gore Vidal, “Tennessee Williams: Someone to Laugh at the Squares With,” in Gore Vidal, Armageddon? Essays 1983–1987 (London: Andre Deutsch, 1987), p. 54.
349 The psychoanalyst”: Kubie, Practical and Theoretical Aspects, p. 131.
349 “I don’t think I can stand much”: N, June 3, 1957, p. 705.
349 “salvation”: Ibid., June 7, 1957, p. 705.
349 “my favorite city in the Americas”: Williams to Elia Kazan, June 10, 1957, WUCA.
349 “goofed”: N, June 13, 1957, p. 707.
349 “With the plane trip as an excuse”: Ibid., June 11, 1957, p. 707.
349 “rarely take[s] more than one goofball”: Williams to Elia Kazan, June 10, 1957, WUCA.
349 “The swimming and the fucking”: Ibid.
350 “I am going on with my work”: He was working on The Loss of a Teardrop Diamond, which was made into a film in 2008.
350 “had knocked me out so completely”: Williams to Frank Merlo, June 1957, THNOC.
350 had nightmares: Williams to Lady St. Just, June 17, 1957, FOA, p. 148.
350 “a plush-lined loony-bin”: Ibid.
350 “a Christian Retreat”: Williams to Audrey Wood, June 19, 1957, HRC.
350 “I stayed only five minutes”: Williams to Edwina Williams, June 28, 1957, N, p. 706.
350 “My analyst is very anxious”: Williams to Paul Bowles, June 1957, HRC.
351 “Analysis is very upsetting at first”: Williams to Lady St. Just, Aug. 27, 1957, FOA, p. 149.
351 “into a swinging honky-tonk”: Williams to Oliver Evans, undated, Harvard.
352 “I’ve been wanting to try it”: Williams to Edwina Williams, June 28, 1957, N, p. 704.
352 “With Kubie I have worked”: Williams to Elia Kazan, June 28, 1958, WUCA.
352 “If only we could turn up something”: Williams to Lady St. Just, Oct. 30, 1957, FOA, p. 150.
352 “Kubie would imitate my father”: CWTW, p. 245.
352 “wasn’t really that bad”: Robert Rice, “A Man Named Tennessee,” New York Post, May 4, 1958.
352 “terrible light”: New York Post, May 4, 1958.
353 “Iron Man”: Tennessee Williams, “Iron Man” (unpublished poem), ca. 1935–1939, Harvard.
353 “A psychiatrist once said to me”: CS, “The Man in the Overstuffed Chair,” p. xv.
354 “I think it was the constraint of working”: Williams to Lucy Freeman, undated (ca. July 1962), LLC.
354 “My mother would scream”: CWTW, p. 169.
354 “a rather pathetically regular life”: RMTT, p. 202.
354 “Oh, no, I can’t make peac
e”: N, June 17, 1942, p. 291.
354 “Happily, the Bird’s anarchy”: Vidal, “Tennessee Williams,” p. 54.
354 “WALLACEd: Richard Watts, whom I know”: CWTW, p. 54.
356 “I was bored not working”: Miami Herald, Dec. 21, 1958.
356 “extraordinary power”: Williams to Elia Kazan, July 5, 1980, Harvard.
356 “much of the beautiful”: As quoted in Geoffrey Galt Harpham, On the Grotesque (Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press, 1982), p. 181.
356 “a well-groomed jungle”: LOA2, p. 100.
356 “that string of pearls”: Ibid., p. 138.
357 “I was PROCURING”: Ibid., p. 141.
357 “It wasn’t folie de grandeur”: Ibid., p. 111.
357 “Really I was actually the only one”: Ibid., p. 110.
357 “After the operation”: Ibid., p. 147.
357 “Do you want to bore a hole”: Ibid., p. 127.
357 “Now that it’s over”: Edwina Williams to Williams, Jan. 20, 1943, in Lyle Leverich, Tom: The Unknown Tennessee Williams (New York: W. W. Norton, 1995), p. 480.
357 “What kind of operation was it”: Williams to Edwina Williams, Jan. 25, 1943, L1, p. 481.
359 “had given up on Rose”: Leverich, Tom, p. 481.
359 “The psychiatrists convinced Cornelius”: RMTT, p. 85. Dr. Emmett Hoctor, the superintendent of Farmington State Hospital, had suggested the operation, which was carried out by Dr. Paul Schrader with Dr. Hoctor in attendance. “He was perfectly lovely to me and inspired me with confidence that he will do the right thing by her. He is of fine moral & Christian character also a Roman Catholic,” Edwina wrote. (Leverich, Tom, p. 224.)
359 “only hope”: “She is now in the State Hospital in Farmington. Cornelius had her taken there on Saturday,” Edwina wrote to her parents. “She became violently insane just after you left and they placed her in a room off from the rest and told me they would advise insulin immediately as the only hope for her. . . . They all agree that this is the only hope and that Farmington is the best place, so there was nothing for me to do but consent.” (Leverich, Tom, p. 223.)
359 “Does no work”: Leverich, Tom, p. 335.
359 “has been eccentric most of his life”: Ibid., p. 247.
359 “Any of the normal hugging or kissing”: Ibid.
359 “I remember her stalking”: Williams to Oliver Evans, July 1971, Harvard.
360 “Let’s all die together”: Leverich, Tom, p. 149.
360 “with refugees”: Ibid., p. 199.
360 “Cornelius . . . lost his temper”: Ibid., pp. 199–200.
360 “Rose was like a wild animal”: TWIB, p. 63.
360 “both of her parents had lost their minds”: “Psychiatric Summary”: Farmington State Hospital, Dr. CC Ault, Dec. 16, 1937, LLC.
361 “Valediction”: N, p. 82.
361 “Horrible, Horrible!”: N, Dec. 20, 1939, p. 177.
361 “tragically mistaken”: M, p. 251.
361 “was essentially more psychotic”: CWTW, p. 327.
362 “dearest brother”: Rose Williams to Williams, July 8, 1944, HRC.
362 “Probably the best thing I’ve done”: M, p. 127.
363 “She and Tennessee sang carols”: John Lahr, “The Belle of Bethel,” Talk of the Town, The New Yorker, Sept. 23, 1996, p. 34.
363 “She moved among her subjects”: Ibid.
363 “the Windsor Wave”: Ibid.
363 “I am the Queen”: Ibid.
363 visited Rose with unusual frequency: Donald Spoto, The Kindness of Strangers: The Life of Tennessee Williams (Boston: Little, Brown, 1985), p. 219.
363 “I’ve seen Rose four times”: RMTT, p. 233.
365 “just a body”: Williams to Cheryl Crawford, Oct. 1956, L2, p. 634.
365 “Oh, Laura, Laura”: LOA1, p. 465.
365 “Rose in one of her neurotic sprees”: N, Oct. 7, 1936, p. 59.
365 “God forgive me for this!”: Ibid.
365 “We passed each other on the landing”: M, p. 122.
366 “I think of Rose”: N, Oct. 9, 1937, p. 109.
366 “poor mad creature”: Ibid., Dec. 20, 1939, p. 177.
366 “Rose, my dear little sister”: Ibid., July 10, 1939, p. 159.
366 “I seldom think of Rose anymore”: Ibid., Sept. 16, 1939, p. 159.
366 “the most shocking experience”: Ibid., Jan. 14, 1943, p. 343.
366 “my lack of feeling”: Ibid., Mar. 22, 1943, p. 359.
366 “Rose. Her head cut open”: Ibid., Mar. 24, 1943, p. 361.
366 “depend upon a feverish animation”: LOA1, p. 13.
367 “You—you disgust me. . . . !”: Ibid., p. 79.
367 “It was because”: Ibid., p. 528.
367 “a band of frightfully thin and dark naked children”: LOA2, p. 142.
367 “The madness is still present”: Williams to Paul Bigelow, Apr. 10, 1943, N, p. 362.
367 “what a dark and bewildering thing”: Williams to Donald Windham, Apr. 1943, TWLDW, p. 57.
367 his lifetime dedication to memorializing her: Williams based a character on Rose in more than fifteen plays, at least eight poems are dedicated to her, and a dozen plays deal with mental illness and lobotomies. (See N, p. 40.)
368 “best-liked”: CS, “Portrait of a Girl in Glass,” p. 114.
368 “the others had now begun to smile”: Ibid., p. 118.
368 “Laura was the first to speak”: Ibid.
368 “I think the petals of her mind”: Ibid., p. 112.
368 “pop out with something”: Ibid., p. 119.
369 “unceremoniously outed”: Tony Kushner, “Introduction: Notes on The Glass Menagerie,” in Tennessee Williams, The Glass Menagerie (Centennial Edition) (New York: New Directions, 2011), p. 27.
369 “I suppose this means the end”: Williams to Paul Bowles, Dec. 1957, HRC.
369 Suddenly Last Summer: Suddenly Last Summer was produced with Something Unspoken, under the collective title Garden District.
369 “Apparently, judging from some of the reviews”: Katherine Anne Porter to Williams, Jan. 28, 1958, Maryland.
369 “An impressive and genuinely shocking play”: Wolcott Gibbs, “Oddities, Domestic and Imported,” The New Yorker, Jan. 18, 1958.
369 “An exercise in the necromancy”: Brooks Atkinson, “2 By Williams,” New York Times, Jan. 8, 1958.
369 “I don’t think I’ve ever been quite”: Williams to Brooks Atkinson, Jan. 9, 1958, BRTC.
370 “a big white-paper-wrapped bunch”: LOA2, p. 147.
370 “He!—accepted—all!”: Ibid., p. 145.
370 “Even though he knew”: Ibid.
370 “emotionally stirred”: Lawrence S. Kubie to Williams, Jan. 13, 1958, Columbia.
370 “Doctor—Cu?—Cu?”: LOA2, p. 102.
370 “Of all the many portrayals”: Lawrence S. Kubie to Williams, Jan. 13, 1958, Columbia.
371 “I am a realist”: Katherine Anne Porter to Williams, Jan. 28, 1958, Maryland.
371 “Life is cannibalistic”: Whitney Bolton, “Williams Talks on Violence,” Philadelphia Inquirer, Feb. 1, 1959.
371 “I think we ought at least to consider”: LOA2, p. 148.
371 “I remember a couple of years ago”: New York Post, May 2, 1958.
371 “I’ll tell you a new ‘bit’ ”: Elia Kazan to Williams, undated, WUCA.
372 “ ‘Just this second’ ”: Elia Kazan to Williams, Jan. 10, 1958, WUCA.
372 “Kubie has said for me”: Williams to Elia Kazan, June 4, 1958, WUCA.
372 “passing through purgatory”: Williams to Lady St. Just, Apr. 23, 1958, FOA, p. 151.
372 “But instead of posting it”: Ibid.
372 “It turned into a contest of wills”: Williams to Elia Kazan, June 27, 1958, WUCA.
373 “He is a strange and interesting phenomenon”: Lawrence Kubie to Lucie Freeman, undated, LLC.
373 “I had to defy my analyst”: Williams to Elia Kazan, June 4, 1958, N, p. 711.
/> 373 “I resented him telling me”: Williams to Audrey Wood, July 9, 1958, ibid., p. 716. In the same letter, he complained, “I feel that he has been stubbornly obtuse about the need to continue my work when there’s nothing to put in its place, and when I feel so strongly that I have so little time left in which to complete it.”
373 “seems to have set the keynote”: N, Aug. 1958, p. 719.
374 “Another day without coffee”: Ibid., July 18, 1958, p. 717. “I am planning to return to the States sooner than I had expected to facilitate this collaboration [on Sweet Bird] and also because I think I must resume my analysis, maybe not with Kubie, maybe with a younger man with fresher ideas or with a woman, more inclined to the school of Jung.” (Williams to Audrey Wood, July 9, 1958, HRC.)
374 “grave error”: Williams to Audrey Wood, July 9, 1958, LLC.
374 “The truth of the play”: Williams to Audrey Wood, June 6, 1958, HRC.
374 “Frank and I never get along”: Williams to Jo Mielziner, Aug. 5, 1958, HRC.
374 “I’m drunk enough to write you”: Williams to Frank Merlo, Spring 1959, Harvard.
375 his unfulfillable emotional demands: “I am too ready, too quick, to condemn a person I love because I can’t believe that the love is returned,” he confessed to Wood. “And [I’m] such a great egotist that no matter how little attention I am able to give to other people, I want a whole lot given me.” (Williams to Audrey Wood, Sept. 27, 1959, HRC.)
375 “outlived legend”: LOA2, p. 230.
376 “2 by 4 situation”: Ibid., p. 417.
376 “gnaws off its own foot”: Ibid., p. 236.
376 “There’s nowhere else to retire to”: Ibid., p. 172.
376 “In a life like mine”: Ibid., p. 182.
376 “monster”: Tennessee Williams, “Anna Magnani: Tigress of the Tiber,” New York Herald Tribune, Dec. 11, 1955.
377 “I am a monster”: Williams to Elia Kazan, Dec. 23, 1958, WUCA.
377 “I wasn’t always this monster”: LOA2, p. 230.
377 “Kubie said I can’t believe anyone”: Williams to Audrey Wood, July 9, 1958, HRC.
377 “I came to discover”: Williams to Oliver Evans, Nov. 15, 1958, HRC.