The Luck of Friendship

by James Laughlin

Every day I work slowly but carefully as possible on a middle-length play called Two Scenes in the Bar of a Tokyo Hotel. I drink much less, but sometimes I fall out of my chair in a restaurant. Do I have brain cancer?

  Subject for objective speculation. Doctors seem to tell you anything but the truth.

  En avant with much love,

  Tennessee

  « • »

  my little brother . . . is indiscreet: After the deaths of his friends Carson McCullers and Lila von Saher, TW remained out of the public eye for six months in 1968, causing his brother Dakin to contact the police, which prompted the following headline in the New York Post, “TENNESSEE WILLIAMS DROPS FROM SIGHT HERE.”

  Tony Richardson: (1928–1991). English stage director, husband of Vanessa Redgrave and father of Natasha and Joely Richardson, he directed the second Broadway incarnation of Milk Train.

  Gigi: Another of TW’s many bulldogs.

  161. TL—1

  January 9, 1969 [New York]

  DEAR TENN:

  I was so sorry to hear from Bob that you had had a rough time with the flu. I only had a very light touch of it—knock on wood—and was pretty lucky. As Bob probably told you, we went out with the two little boys, between Christmas and New Year’s, for some skiing in Utah, and had a very fine time. About six feet of snow out there. I find it hard now to get as excited about skiing as I used to, but the little boys are crazy over it, and it was fun to do it with them.

  Thank you for approving the proof of x201C;Crepe-de-Chine” for The New Yorker. I’m so pleased that it will be appearing there, it’s a really wonderful poem. I thought that the new line you wrote in at the side of the proof was an improvement, and I passed that along to Howard Moss, and urged him to print it that way.

  That’s fine that we can get going on a volume of the shorter plays, Dragon Country, and I think it will be a strong collection. My only question about that list is whether to include The Two-Character Play in it. I feel it is different in tone, and so important—one of the most interesting things you have ever done, I feel—that it should have its own book. And, as you know, we had planned, with your blessing, to go ahead first with the signed, limited edition, to be beautifully printed by Joe Blumenthal at Spiral Press. I think we should press ahead with that, if you approve, and then it could have its own trade edition later.

  I’m also pleased that you like the idea of our gradually assembling the other books into chronological volumes of a Collected Plays series [later The Theatre of Tennessee Williams], and we will get ahead with that as separate volumes go out of print.

  I hope you are feeling better now, and will have fun in Rome if you get over there. But if you come back here to New York first, please be sure to let me know, so that we can get together for lunch or something.

  Very best, as ever,

  James Laughlin

  « • »

  the two little boys: Robert Laughlin (1957–1985) and Henry Laughlin (1960–2014), JL’s sons by Ann Resor Laughlin.

  162. TL—1

  March 5, 1969 [New York]

  DEAR TENN:

  I thought you might very much like to see another review of Kingdom of Earth, again on the premise that very few people will ever review [the published text of a] play, particularly one that has been done on Broadway. This one is rather nice and gets your idea as I am afraid Mr. Merrick and a few others didn’t!

  Someone told me that you had had pneumonia since you were briefly in New York. It begins to sound like a scourge of an Old Testament Prophet! Anyway, I hope that you are feeling better by now.

  In fact I hope that you will be showing up in New York one of these days. We have a few small questions about the short plays volume [Dragon Country] which I would like to put to you in person, or rather show you the problem and get the answer then and there.

  In my childhood, people used to talk about someone who has been converted as you were having “gone over to Rome.” Physically you don’t seem to have stayed “over there” very long. How about religiously? Or denominationally? Or spiritually (the word I am trying to avoid)? Maybe I mean spiritualismly or spirituous (in the hard liquor sense). Anyway whatever your state or state of your soul, I would love to see you.

  Yours,

  Robert M. MacGregor

  « • »

  “gone over to Rome”: TW’s conversion to Roman Catholicism. See next letter.

  163. TLS—1

  [Received March 10, 1969] [Key West]

  DEAR BOB:

  Of the conversion: it was intense loneliness and a very kind Jesuit priest. Everything that I do seems to provoke notoriety.

  I swear that is not what I want.

  As for Catholicism, I have always been a Catholic in my work, in the broadest sense of it.

  Don’t be disturbed. I question the canons of all faiths. I love the chanted mass, and rich ceremony.

  At best, I will remain a very eclectic Catholic.

  My brother was down here, as he had heard I was dying. He arranged the meeting with the Jesuit and the baptism. I also received the last rites, assuring my ascension to heaven after a relatively short stay in purgatory.

  Since I last saw you, I spent two weeks in Rome and had a private audience with the general of the Jesuits, sometimes called “The Black Pope.”

  I will be in New York soon for the production, off-Broadway, of a play in two scenes! A rather outrageous play, only a renegade Catholic would write it.

  Fondly,

  10.

  « • »

  a play in two scenes: In the Bar of a Tokyo Hotel opened off-Broadway on May 11, 1969.

  164. TLS—1

  3/16/69 [New York]

  DEAR BOB:

  My apologies, again, for waking you. I know how distressing it is to be waked before you’re ready. Why don’t you get one of those phones that can be turned off? I have one in Key West, but nobody calls me there anyway.

  I am here in connection with the off-Broadway production of Two Scenes in The Bar of a Tokyo Hotel. H[erbert]. Machiz is directing, and Anne Meacham has been cast. There is a possibility of getting Donald Madden who has become a close friend of mine and Bill’s. The script needs careful editing which I am trying to give it as I hear actors read it.

  Miss Hooligan is here and sends you her warmest regards, along with mine.

  I am making every effort to avoid personal notoriety, but yesterday evening went out to dinner in a double-breasted pin-stripe suit and a purple shirt and nearly white tie, very wide. I wanted to look like George Raft.

  Ever,

  Tenn.

  « • »

  Donald Madden: (1928–1983), American stage and television actor.

  Miss Hooligan: Another of TW’s bulldogs.

  George Raft: (1901–1980), Hollywood character actor known for playing well-dressed gangsters.

  165. TL—1

  [April (?) 1969] [New York]

  DEAR TENN:

  I was quite disturbed when Audrey called us to say that the producers of Ken Tynan’s review were trying to claim partial book publication rights on the piece you had written for them. I think this is a terrible idea, and I hope you won’t let them do it. I think it would set a very bad precedent indeed. In all the books we have done for you, book rights have always been a separate matter, directly between you and us, and I think that’s the way it should remain. The theatre, I think, should be one domain, and book publishing a separate one.

  We are now battling hard on a similar situation for Ferlinghetti. The Apple people—that is the firm the Beatles set up in England—want to do a record of him reading his poetry, and they are trying to claim publication rights in what they record, which, as Ferlinghetti agrees, is all wrong.

  I know that Ken Tynan is a good friend of yours—and he’s a writer whom I greatly respect myself—but I do hope you can find a way to make it clear to him that publication rights are an entirely separate thing from theatre performance rights. By the way, I’d love to see what
you have written for them if you have an extra copy around.

  I hope the new play [In the Bar of a Tokyo Hotel] is going well, and that I’ll be seeing you soon. Do call some day when you might be free for lunch or a drink. I don’t like to bother you when I know you are in rehearsal, but would love to see you, so hope you will let me know when you might have a moment.

  I think some of the new books on our spring list might interest you and I’ll send a few up, hoping you will enjoy some of them.

  Very best, as ever,

  James Laughlin

  « • »

  Ken Tynan’s review: The Broadway musical review about sex, Oh, Calcutta! was controversial for its vulgar humor and use of nudity.

  Ferlinghetti: Lawrence Ferlinghetti (1919–), American poet, publisher, painter, and friend to the artists of the Beat Generation. ND has published over twenty-three titles by Ferlinghetti.

  166. TLS—1

  April, 1969 [New York]

  DEAR JAY:

  I understand that the whole matter about Oh, Calcutta! has been straightened out by A[udrey] W[ood]. My little contribution would only play for a couple of minutes. A.W. feels that it sets—I mean would set—a very bad precedent and she was very “up tight” about it. I only wrote the tiny piece to please Ken, it isn’t of any consequence. Since you’re against it, too, I’m sure the right decision has been made.

  This week I take over the direction of Tokyo, as the actors are in open revolt against Machiz. I can’t call the shots on this one but I’ll do my damndest. My relations with the actors are excellent. At least I’ll have that going for me. Bill [Glavin] and I are flying to Rome the day after the play opens.

  Some evening, about seven, I hope we can get together. I’d like you to have a finalized copy of this very protean work, and I have another short play that may interest you.

  Affectionately,

  10.

 

  « • »

  My little contribution: Possibly a sketch by TW called Short Short.

  167. TL—2

  10/5/69 [New York]

  DEAR TENN—

  I was so sorry to hear that you were in the hospital and hope you will be better and out soon. My saintly Mother, now in Heaven, loved hospitals, and kept thinking up useless parts of her stomach which could be excised, so she could get back into the West Penn, but not me, though once, when I had busted my back skiing in New Hampshire and was in a cast, there was this really good-looking young nurse, I’m afraid I gave her a bad time, she didn’t dare get in range or I would make a grab for her . . .

  Thank you so much for signing the pages for The Two-Character Play, that must have been quite a chore, you were noble to do it. It’s going to be a BEAUTIFUL book. It’s in the bindery now, but I’ve seen a set of sheets, and they are lovely, really perfect printing. Keep me posted where you are so I can send you the book as soon as it’s finished.

  Did you see a fine piece about you, an interview, in a magazine called After Dark by a fellow named Dan Isaac? I think it’s very good. Audrey probably sent it to you, but if not, I can make a xerox for you.

  I’ve sent you, there in St. Louis, Tom Merton’s last long poem, Geography of Lograire, which we’ve just brought out. I think there’s some marvelous stuff in it. He was getting better and better all the time as a poet, really getting down into his unconscious and bringing up some strange wonders. I miss him sorely.

  Very best from all,

  [James Laughlin]

  « • »

  in the hospital: The accumulative effect of at least half a dozen years of Dr. Max Jacobson’s amphetamine cocktail injections, combined with antidepressants, sedatives, barbiturates, and alcohol had left TW unable to function most of the time, caused severe paranoia, and created dangerous levels of drug poisoning, from which the playwright was apparently dying. In September 1969, his brother, Dakin, had TW committed to the psychiatric division of Barnes Hospital in St. Louis where he stayed for nearly three months while he detoxified. Though TW eventually understood that his life had been saved and that he was given many more years to write, he was never able to entirely forgive Dakin and left him out of his will, except for a nominal amount.

  signing the pages: A signed, limited edition of The Two-Character Play was published by ND in 1969.

  Dan Isaac: Isaac is the Williams scholar who edited the published editions of TW’s early full-length plays, Candles to the Sun (ND 2004) and Spring Storm (ND 1999).

  Geography of Lograire: The long, last poem of Thomas Merton, which JL prepared for publication after Merton’s untimely death in Thailand on December 10, 1968. Merton had, after years of isolation at the Abbey of Gethsemani in rural Kentucky, been allowed to travel in Asia where he met the Dalai Lama and other leaders of Eastern religions and attended an ecumenical conference. After giving a final address to the group in Bangkok, he returned to his lodgings to take a shower and was accidentally electrocuted when, standing on the wet floor, he touched a faulty direct-current electric fan. His body was returned to the United States on a military plane also carrying the bodies of soldiers who had died in Vietnam. A brown satchel containing all the books and papers that Merton had with him was marked to be given to JL. This contained the notebooks that were the basis for Merton’s The Asian Journal on which JL worked for the next three years. Merton’s death affected JL deeply.

  SECTION XV

  PF: What do you see as your major influence on Tennessee?

  JL: Of course, I think where I helped him maybe the most was in boosting the poetry. You know, bringing it out, trying to talk it up, and I think it’s wonderful romantic poetry. But you see nobody will take him seriously because the New Critics came along and everything had to be all these formalist structures, and Tennessee would just write down what came into his heart so that he didn’t get the credit for it that he ought to have had, and then the stories the same. I loved the stories.

  PF: The stories are wonderful.

  JL: I kept pushing for more stories all the time. I think both of those things pleased him, and I talked to him about Tom Merton as somebody who didn’t get the credit he should have for his poetry because he was so famous as a religious writer. So I told Tennessee, “If you weren’t a great playwright you’d be a first-class poet and story writer, you’d be Chekhov.” I think that kind of talk he liked. It was sincere with me, I thought the stories were just marvelous.

  « • »

  New Critics: The New Critics were an informal group of teachers and writers ascendant from the 1950s to the mid-1970s, inspired by the work of John Crowe Ransom, Allen Tate, Cleanth Brooks, and Robert Penn Warren. They championed “close reading” of the text, particularly of poetry, to determine its value, excluding such factors as the writer’s intent, the reader’s response, and social and political currents including the biography of the author. Because they focused so intently on the “formal” elements of verse such as rhyme and meter as well as the use of the tension-creating devices of paradox, ambiguity, and irony, JL felt that the New Critics missed the point of poetry—to touch the human soul and elevate it.

  168. TLS—1

  11/10/69 [Barnes Hospital, St. Louis]

  DEAR JAY AND BOB:

  I have little hope that this re-write and cut in I Can’t Imagine Tomorrow will reach you in time to be used, but here they are anyway. I’m also enclosing the first proof-page of The Frosted Glass Coffin. Two beginnings are used; I’ve scratched out one. You’d probably caught that yourselves.

  I’m afraid this collection of plays [Dragon Country, A Book of Plays, 1970] reflects the depression and fatigue of the writer. Of the new works, only Confessional seems to have much vitality, and even that is over-laden with loose verbiage.

  I’m just beginning to get in contact with the world outside again. The doctors are nearly ready to release me from the hospital, but I’m far from well physically. I’m afraid my heart has been severely damaged. I plan to go directly from the hospital to th
e airport and board a plane to Key West. Whether or not I can stand a long plane-trip is anyone’s guess. I wouldn’t make book on it. If I can, it will be wonderful to be back in my little Key West compound. I might even get relatively well. In any case—I never could stand confinement! It’s too bad that Dakin didn’t realize that, and it’s too bad that I didn’t realize that Dakin didn’t realize that. I am waking up rather late from a very bad dream . . .

  How terribly I’ve abused myself and my talent in the years since—(?)*

  Love,

  10.

  <*I suppose since Frankie’s death.>

  « • »

  169. TL—1

  November 12, 1969 [Norfolk]

  DEAR TENN:

  I was pleased indeed to hear that you were getting along well and might soon be out of the hospital. I hope it hasn’t been too dismal for you there. But I imagine you have had your typewriter there and have been able to work. Have you written any new poems?

  We now have the copies of the limited edition of Two-Character Play from the bindery, and I’m rushing one off to you there at the hospital today, and hope you will be as pleased with it as I am. I think Joe Blumenthal did a beautiful job with the printing and design. And thank you again for signing all the copies.

  Please let me know where you would like your other author’s copies to go. You’re entitled to five and I’ve sent one to Audrey, of course, but that leaves three, if you want to let me know whom you would like to have them. No hurry about this, I’ll just keep them here until you let me know where you want them to go.

  I hope you received all right the copy of Tom Merton’s last poem, Geography of Lograire, which I sent some weeks ago. I think it’s his best thing in poetry, some marvelous passages in it, and I do want you to see it, so let me know if it didn’t turn up, and I’ll send another. I’m working now on the editing of Tom’s Asian Journal, the diary which he kept on his trip to Asia, from which he never returned. It’s very fascinating, some really marvelous passages. But needs a good deal of work on my part as he wrote in pretty much shorthand, and I have to fill in to make it read in proper sentences, as a published book should. He was a terrific guy.