The Luck of Friendship

by James Laughlin

  JL: That’s good, that’s true. He had a sense of helping young writers one way or another get published, maybe get some money, a deep sense of that, which came, I think, from his own insecurity. When he was in St. Louis he practically had no money.

  « • »

  Chicago for the opening: The out-of-town tryout for The Glass Menagerie opened at Chicago’s Civic Theatre on December 26, 1944, in an icy gale.

  Laurette Taylor: (1884–1946), American actress. Considered one of the greatest actresses of her generation, Taylor had been a star on Broadway since 1908. Her most famous portrayal was the ingénue in Peg o’ My Heart, a sentimental Irish comedy written by her husband, Hartley J. Manners. After Manners’s death in 1928, Taylor turned to alcohol, and her drinking was so severe she was often unemployable. After Eddie Dowling coaxed Taylor out of retirement, her portrayal of Amanda Wingfield went on to be considered the greatest Broadway performance of the twentieth century. Taylor’s legendary performance as Amanda helped establish TW’s reputation.

  the man, too: Eddie Dowling [Joseph Nelson Goucher] (1889–1972), American actor, director, and producer. Codirector of The Glass Menagerie, Eddie Dowling, who also played Tom Wingfield, was a showman who bought plays as vehicles he could direct, star in, tour with, and on which he could make a profit.

  the Chicago critics: Claudia Cassidy and Ashton Stevens championed the play and helped it stay open during a prolonged blizzard, essentially guaranteeing its transfer to Broadway.

  Bennett Cerf: (1898–1971), American humorist and editor. In 1940, without telling his agent Audrey Wood, TW signed a contract with Cerf and Random House, which stipulated their option on the next work by TW at their discretion. Along with the contract TW was paid an advance of one hundred dollars. In the meantime TW committed himself to ND, promising that all of his writing would thereafter be published by JL. The conflict was resolved and Random House ended up printing the first edition of The Glass Menagerie in 1945. However, Random House would soon let the play go out of print; it was reissued by ND in the New Classics series in 1949 with an iconic cover by Alvin Lustig. The play has been published by ND ever since.

  31. TLS—2

  Nov. 1, 1944 [Clayton]

  DEAR JAY:

  It is quiet and sunny here. Fall just getting started, big rooms full of yellow light, sounds of women puttering about, all very reassuring and agreeable in this appalling world. Just before I left N.Y. I saw a picture The Rainbow (Soviet film, at the Stanley in Times Square). Such a powerful study of hatred and horror! I suppose this is an authentic picture of what is happening outside “the belvedere” and I felt quite shaken by it. If you have a strong stomach, see it! It is really an apology for hatred. With such savagery unleashed in the world I don’t see how there can be peace again for hundreds of years. Those are the things one should be writing about. How to reconcile my world, or the world of—say—Charles Henri Ford—tender or private emotions or rare, esoteric fancies with what’s going on outside. Micro with macro cosmos! Should one even try? Or blandly assume, as I suppose Charles does, that we are the really important ones with the significant concerns?—Have you read Parker Tyler’s dissertation in the new View? There is where a superlative is reached in esthetic distance!—It is a good issue, incidentally, especially the “folk” pieces.

  The work on Menagerie may start in two or three weeks. Just before I left town I had a frightening conversation with Dowling. He proposed that a happy ending be flashed on the screen at the close of the play—Laura with the brace removed (“orthopedics do such wonderful things!”) and the gentleman caller standing again at the door!—That is the sort of thing the most intelligent producers spring on you!—He said it was just a suggestion, not a demand, “There is so much unhappiness in the world, Etc.” that the audience shouldn’t go away feeling depressed.—I am working out at the “Y” so I will go back in condition to fight off all such assaults. Fortunately Margo will be there. She will arrive in N.Y. in a few days.

  Great distress here as we have received a 15 page letter from my brother in the Burma jungle announcing and justifying his conversion to Roman Catholicism. My grandfather, the Episcopal minister, has packed up and returned South. Wouldn’t you think this generation would at last and at least be done with theological dogma? No!—my kid brother writes a long dissertation from the fighting front on “Transubstantiation” (accepts it literally) and “The Infallibility of the Pope” which he says has not been disproven!—Believe it or not, I am the bright one of the family!

  Maybe I will get back before you leave—if Dowling wires me.

  Hope you get back at [Delmore] Schwartz and all writers who bore each other. Don’t let them do all the talking!

  I talked to a woman who works for Vanguard at a cocktail party. She says you don’t circularize the book-dealers enough. How about that?

  I have to write a critique for new View. Think it will be on Lorca and Ramon Naya and “The Plastic Theatre.”—Not on Shapiro. I could think of nothing pleasant to say about his V-Letter so I just won’t do it.

  Tennessee

  « • »

  my grandfather: The Reverend Walter E. Dakin (1857–1955), TW’s maternal grandfather on whom the character of Nonno in The Night of the Iguana (1961) is based.

  Lorca: Federico García Lorca (1898–1936), Spanish poet and playwright. ND published Lorca’s Selected Poems, Five Plays, and several other titles.

  Ramon Naya: Playwright and author of Mexican Mural, which was the first-prize winner in the 1939 Group Theatre play contest.

  The Plastic Theatre: TW frequently used this term to help describe his ideas about how a playwright’s responsibility goes beyond the words to engage the nonliterary elements of theater—music, sound, light, settings, dance—strategically within the physical environment to reach those moments that create meaning not found solely in the text of a play. In The Glass Menagerie TW incorporated many of his ideas about “The Plastic Theatre.”

  Shapiro [ . . . ] his V-Letter: Karl [Jay] Shapiro (1913–2000), American poet, critic, and editor. Victory Letter is a book of poems by Shapiro.

  32. TLS—1

  Dec. 15, 1944 [Clayton]

  DEAR JAY:

  We catch the train tomorrow afternoon for Chicago and probably the most hectic week of my far from pacific career, so I am snatching these few relatively tranquil moments to say hello.—When I think of you on your mountain, among the everlasting snows,—well, it is like Kilimanjaro from the pestilential jungle! Stay on your mountain, boy!

  I won’t try to tell you how things are going. It’s just in the lap of the gods. Too many incalculables—the brain-cells of an old woman, a cold-blooded banker’s reckoning of chances, enigmas of audience and critics. It is really a glass menagerie that we are taking on the road and God only knows how much of it will survive the journey.

  I have one great thing to be thankful for—and that is Margo, in whose apartment I’m writing. Without her in on this adventure I wouldn’t have gotten this far along with it—she has been heroic.

  Have just said goodbye to Audrey—she mentioned that she is getting in touch with your man Brecht and seems highly interested in him.

  Anything new on Battle? Incidentally, Dowling is enthusiastic over it and has sent a copy to Tallulah Bankhead. IF the menagerie is successful, I think he would try to interest her in an early production of it and I think she’d be damned good as Myra. Maybe a little short on tenderness but plenty of richness and drama. If this materialized I would try another version of the script—eliminating two features that have always troubled me, the vague “book” and the prologue-epilogue. I hope you are making that suggested division in Act Two—that would help.

  I have seen only one review of the poems [FYAP (1944)], in the Herald Tribune. It was pretty condescending but not really evil—as the View would have been. But I think View has killed their review—for lack of space in the Christmas issue.

  Regardless of how things turn out on the present
venture, I will be grateful for a chance to retire from the world and get back some composure. It has been months since my heart beat quietly!

  Yours ever,

  Tennessee

 
  We open Dec. 26>

  « • »

  Brecht: Bertolt Brecht (1898–1956), German playwright and exile. ND published Brecht’s Private Life of the Master Race, translated by Eric Bentley, in 1944. According to Bentley, JL was interested in taking on Brecht as an author and, though the playwright initially showed interest, eventually Brecht did not to respond to communications from JL or Audrey Wood.

  we open Dec. 26: See note to Section III.

  33. ALS—2

  December 28, 1944 [Chicago]

  DEAR JAY—

  Bob Carter, who wrote this review of the Poets, is a poet himself and a student at Chicago University. He has interviewed me in connection with the Menagerie. We got to talking about Rimbaud which I think he should especially read—A Season in Hell—I only know one line Bob has written but I think it is very lovely. “She gives him pleasure in the time it takes to break a bottle!”

  Well, anyhow—

  If you have an extra copy of any Rimbaud—wish you would send it to him.

  The play went well in Chicago—three raves, two mixed reviews—but the best critics were on our side. And the audiences have been warm, however box office is bad and we’ll probably move to New York soon.

  Hope Bob’s review pleases you as it did me—It was written before we met.

  Best,

  Tennessee

  « • »

  Bob Carter: Robert Carter (1927–2010) became a Jesuit priest, later founded the gay Catholic organization Dignity, and was cofounder of the National Gay and Lesbian Task Force.

  Chicago University: University of Chicago.

  the best critics: Ashton Stevens and Claudia Cassidy.

  34. TLS—1

  [received February 6, 1945] [Chicago]

  DEAR JAY:

  I am mailing at the same time a letter to Audrey with a signed copy of your contract. She has to see it first, but I have urged her strongly as possible to clear me of Random House. I am sure her concern will be primarily your ability to get the book out on time and distributed widely enough—there was such a long delay about the Five Poets due to your troubles with printers that I hope you can give us some assurance of a dependable date on this one. That is, while the play is still hot! On top of my strong letter and that assurance, I feel sure that Audrey will extricate me from Cerf. I need not tell you again how happy that would make me for I would like all my shy intrusions on the world of letters to be thru N.D.

  Thanks for the poems. They are very simple and direct and in the case of “Avalanche”—particularly forceful. I liked that one best—perhaps the “implacable girl” disturbed the misogynist in me but I found directly relating to her less moving than the mountain ones.

  There is an almost terrifying candor here and there—more than I would dare. But which I respect highly. I think you have a story to tell that is bigger than you can put into short-lined lyrics. How about a short novel with the lodge as a background and the girl and the avalanche and the same but expanded frankness?

  Tennessee

  « • »

  “Avalanche”: This poem was published in the volume of JL’s poetry, Some Natural Things (ND 1945).

  35. TLS—2

  Sunday [March 11, 1945] [Clayton]

  JAY!

  How silly of you to think I was letting you down about the Menagerie publication!

  I didn’t answer your letter because Audrey wrote me that “everything was settled” and you were putting the book in print, that is, getting the type set up in preparation—so I assumed it was all ironed out. She did say, however, that Cerf had turned down your hundred and that nothing could be done till after the opening—that is, definitely.

  I know I should have gotten the final script off to you by now. I enquired a couple of times for a copy but the script girl put me off saying there was only one which she needed—I have none at all. And Dowling’s drunk scene still only exists in his voice-box: he destroys paper copies for some reason. Can Audrey give you a script or must you get one through me, and how soon? I guess we must get legally disentangled from Cerf before actual printing can start, but I have every intention—if your printers can give you a reasonable date on it—of taking any action necessary to get clear of Cerf. I want no part of any commercial publishers now or ever! Not as long as I am eating without them. Once you get tied up with one you become, for better or worse, a professional writer which shouldn’t happen to anyone!

  I have let other things slip lately because I’ve been amusing and torturing myself with a group of somewhat surrealist poems, loosely connected under the general title of “Electric Avenue,” mostly with a southern background: might fit in with “The Couple” which I sent you last Spring. My main aggravation is inability to break from the five beat line or slight variations of it: it has become a fixation, monotonous and inescapable. In this connection I have been studying St. Jean Perse as he has the most flexible cadences of all. Crane is not really good at cadence, though he is powerful enough not to need it. He usually has either five beats or machine-gun bursts that only he can get away with. Except in the prose-poems like “Eternity” and “Havana Rose” in which I think he reached his pinnacle of style, or form.

  I left Menagerie in a state of chassis. Pandemonium back-stage! Intrigues, counter-intrigues, rages, smashed door panes,—quelle menagerie! I was in the dog-house with nearly everybody—with the backer because I wrote a Sunday paper column on business-men and gamblers in the theatre which he took as a personal affront. With Tony and Laurette because Tony has developed an alcoholic persecution-complex and has convinced Laurette of God knows what imaginary offenses of mine! Things are so tense all the time you never know when the whole company will just blow up and vanish! Actors are just not believable—so fantastic! especially the good ones like Laurette and Tony.

  I am sorry about the disappointment in N.Y. though I might have told you, for I have been through it continually. A thing like that is so firmly rooted in one time or place, in one set of circumstances, that try as you will you can’t breathe life into it the second occasion. But why should you want to, as it is not duration that gives it value really.

  The evils of promiscuity are exaggerated. Somebody said it has at least the advantage of making you take more baths. But I think one picks a rose from each person, each of a somewhat different scent and color. Each affair can make some new disclosure, and whether it builds or reduces your range of feeling and understanding depends pretty much on yourself. Of course you pay for it with something—perhaps a cumulative distrust of what is called “real love.”

  As for hurting people who love you—nothing is less avoidable! I have been home for a week—every night this week some feeling of compulsion sent me out of the house from about five in the afternoon till after two in the morning—any excuse just to get away and escape talk and questioning! Though I knew I was insulting and hurting them. Tonight I came in at ten—the earliest—and was greeted with a flood of tears and reproaches—and how could I explain or excuse myself except by saying—Yes, it’s true, I can’t stand it here, not even one night out of one week out of one year!

  I will be in New York about or on the 24th. If Audrey permits, let’s call on Cerf together and have it out with him.—Have been reading the 1942 Annual—many thanks—the stuff by Alvin Levin has brilliant patches—I can’t follow Goodman, he is so abstruse or intricately intellectual—I like the W.C.W. play to read but I question its plasticity, its stage values—but I haven’t finished it yet.

  Returning to Chicago tomorrow evening.

  A riverdici [sic]

  10

  « • »

  “everything was settled”: refers to a memo from Audrey Wood to TW of February 9, 1945.

  nothing could be done till after
the opening: The Glass Menagerie opened on Broadway, March 31, 1945.

  “Electric Avenue”: An early title for the poem “Jockeys at Hialeah.”

  “The Couple”: A TW poem published in Androgyne, Mon Amour (1977).

  St. Jean Perse: Saint-Jean Perse, pseudonym for Alexis Saint-Léger Léger (1887–1975), French poet and Nobel Prize winner for literature in 1960. ND published his Selected Poems in 1982.

  state of chassis: a reference to a line in Sean O’Casey’s Juno and the Paycock (1924).

  Tony: The actor Tony Ross who played the role of the Gentleman Caller in the original production of The Glass Menagerie.

  the 1942 Annual: See note following letter from TW to JL of 12/22/42 for the history of the New Directions in Prose and Poetry anthologies [NDPP hereafter].

  Alvin Levin: American novelist published in NDPP 7 (1942). A compendium of his writing, Love Is Like Park Avenue, was published by ND in 2009.

  W.C.W.: William Carlos Williams (1883–1963), American poet and physician. Along with Ezra Pound, WCW was the mainstay of ND when JL first began publishing. JL and WCW had a lifelong friendship, JL finding a mentor in WCW. The play referred to by TW is Trial Horse No. 1 (Many Loves), an entertainment in three acts and six scenes, published in NDPP 7 (1942) and later WCW’s Many Loves and Other Plays (1961).

  36. TLS—1

  [Spring 1945] [New York]

  DEAR JAY

  Everybody is getting copies of Battle but me. Can I have a couple? The two that went to your office were promptly claimed by Audrey and Donnie respectively, I think they came out beautifully, though I haven’t had a chance to read through one yet.