Four more years: A reference to Richard Nixon’s reelection as president the preceding month.
P.S. S.C.W.: A copy of this letter was not placed in the corrections file and the requested changes were not made to the published editions of Small Craft Warnings.
183. TL—2
March 6, 1973 [Norfolk]
DEAR TENN:
What a beautiful—and powerful—play [Out Cry]! I was sorry that you had rushed away before the end of the opening so that I couldn’t give you a big abrazo of congratulations. I had loved it too, as you know, in the somewhat more spare, abstract version that we did as Two-Character Play in the limited edition, but I think the new version, with so many new good touches, is even stronger: the abstract quality is not lost, but there is more fleshing out to dramatize the ideas, and it certainly is that, a play of ideas as well as human passion, and I use the word passion here in the religious sense, what man suffers just to exist, and must suffer all the more intensively if he is driven by the daemon of the instinct to create. I think Out Cry is one of your most important statements, and best plays, because it’s all there, crystallized, the basic ontological problems: what is “being,” what are we here for, and what do we do about it if we are more than mere animals going through the motions without doubt or question.
We want, of course, to get out the book as soon as possible, and I think it should be paperback as well as cloth, because the students will eat it up and I’m sure many professors will want to teach it in their classes. I hope Bob can get a final script from Bill Barnes before he (Bob) takes off for his vacation in Spain next week, so that we can have it ready for the fall list.
And that was a very graceful piece you had in the Sunday Times about Cat and other matters. You sound relaxed and happy, and I hope it stays that way for you now, you’ve been through some rough seas, I know.
It’s good to have you back again in the annual with the fine poem, “Old Men Go Mad at Night.” Many thanks for that. The ND 27 will be out in the fall if all goes well. And I liked the story in Playboy, too, “The Inventory at Fontana Bella,”—very randy and almost Guignol, your own special blend of black humor, but with so much more color and wit than most of them, the Barths & Roths, can manage in that genre. I trust that Bill Barnes is keeping track and a file of stories and will let us know when there are enough for another collection of them.
It’s been a lousy winter here in Connecticut for snow, mostly just ice and rain, but we’ll soon be getting off for some skiing in Utah with the kids, and they report nearly a hundred inches out there. Hope to see you when we get back in April if you’re around New York at any time then, do be sure to let me know.
Very best, as ever,
[James Laughlin]
« • »
very graceful piece: TW’s pre-Broadway essay for Out Cry, “Let Me Hang It All Out,” was published in the New York Times on March 4, 1973.
Guignol: Reference to the French puppet shows whose main character is Guignol. Using sharp wit and linguistic playfulness, the shows, like their near relative the English Punch and Judy, were often bawdy and sometimes violent.
[John] Barths & [Philip] Roths: Disparaging reference to John Barth (1930–) and Philip Roth (1933–) who were considered among the “best and the brightest” American novelists of their generation.
184. TLS—2
3/9/73 [Key West]
DEAR JAY:
It is beautifully kind of you to write me about the play [Out Cry]. Its stage-history, at least in this production, seems to be almost finished, so it is a comfort to know that you’ll bring it out as a book: something will survive the holocaust of these years of half-crazed, often impotent effort.
I must prepare a copy for printing myself as I am afraid the only copies available now are the always-mutilated stage-manager copies, in which the original description of business is omitted.
Honestly, I don’t know how much of me has survived, but luckily, I have the retreat of the little compound in Key West to try to put the pieces together again into a simulation of something, and luckily Maria was with me the last two weeks and a young companion, now, Robert Carroll, a veteran of three years in Vietnam who is himself a writer. Maria took an immediate dislike to him but didn’t know his work nor his kindness when alone with me.
I was to have gone to the West Coast almost immediately for various publicity things in connection with Streetcar out there but knew, after reading the magazine notices, that I had to stay in hiding for a while longer. The plan is now for Robert and I to fly out with Barnes from New York about the Seventeenth. After the opening, I hope to catch another one of those “slow boats to China”—the Orient brings out the latent Buddhist in me and the wounded ego is gently medicated.
Sometimes it seems to me that the past twelve years or so has been one long sick ego trip and I don’t see the end of it yet.
The simple natural thing of doing my work was slowly shattered through my collision with the false intensities and pressures of “show-business”—for which I was not cut out. Thank God I have accumulated some capital to carry me through the time of retreat that now seems imperative to me.
I often think of a visit that Maria and I made to Ezra Pound in St. Elizabeths hospital, the humanity and dignity of the man in prison: but then I think of his end in Venice and I hope it wasn’t as desolate as reported.—That was a very lovely interview that you recently gave about him.—People of his stature don’t seem to exist anymore in the fever of these times and the cheapness of them.
There is a variation to that poem for the anthology.—the last two lines.—
Was that a board that creaked as he took leave of us
or did he speak—“I’m going to sleep, good night . . .”
Ever, Tenn>
« • »
with Streetcar out there: A twenty-fifth-anniversary revival of A Streetcar Named Desire opened at the Ahmanson Theater in Los Angeles on March 21, 1973, starring Faye Dunaway and Jon Voight, directed by James Bridges.
Robert Carroll: TW’s last regular boyfriend. They had a volatile on-again/off-again relationship through much of the 1970s. Aside from his housekeeper Leoncia McKee, Carroll was the only individual for whom TW provided a monthly stipend in his final will.
a visit that Maria and I made to Ezra Pound: See note to JL to TW letter of 11/10/56. TW also refers to this episode in his letter to JL of 4/23/71.
SECTION XVI
PF: When I came to New Directions in 1975, Peter Glassgold had been doing all the work on the first five volumes of The Theatre of Tennessee Williams, and he was ready to move on from Tennessee—he’d had Tennessee up to here—and once I started doing editorial work, he turned Tennessee over to me and the first thing I worked on was the Androgyne volume.
JL: Androgyne, Mon Amour, the poetry.
PF: And a few years later they had the London production of Vieux Carré, and I just happened to be going to England on vacation, this would have been ’78, and I picked up the Director’s Script of the London production from the agent in London and brought it back and then worked from the Director’s Script so that we would have the play . . .
JL: To get a real text.
« • »
Vieux Carré: Born out of the journals TW kept during his stay in the French Quarter of New Orleans in 1938 to 1939, the play evolved over the decades in the form of poems, short stories, essays, and one-act plays. The ND edition of Vieux Carré was based on the Nottingham Playhouse Production, which premiered in London in August 1978 (ND 1979). It starred Sylvia Miles as Mrs. Wire and was directed by Keith Hack.
185. TLS—2
6/24/73 [Positano, Italy]
DEAR JAY AND BOB:
Bill Barnes has just told me, to my joy, that you will bring out the latest little collection of stories next Spring. And that this time it will be not only a beautiful publication but one that will be brought more immediately to public attention.
; As a token of my pleasure, I thought of titles this morning and here is one that seems right to me, since the stories deal with six ladies, all of them mortal and all of them possessed in one sense or another.
I have taken a big apartment in Positano for the summer. The young gentle (?) man sharing with me has taken flight to a little commune in the town, and among other projects in London, I am looking and hoping for a replacement, since the apartment is too big for a man alone. It’s a good place to work. The water is clear and cold and I have made some charming friends there, including John Cromwell who knew Jay at Harvard and is a very unusual and talented playwright—I’m hoping Barnes will help him get one produced.
Positano is built rather precipitately between the sea and volcanic (inactive) mountains—but I take my time on the steps and the palazzo isn’t far from the beach.
Maria came down there for a week, staying at film-director Zefferelli’s show-place “The Ville.” She’s returning to London before I leave this week.
Meanwhile she is getting Positano society into shape like a drill-sergeant, to its—I guess the mot juste is dismay . . .
With love & thanks ever,
Tennessee
« • »
little collection of stories: “Six Mortal Ladies Possessed,” which became Eight Mortal Ladies Possessed by the time it was published in 1974.
John Cromwell: (1914–1979). Minor actor and playwright, his Broadway debut occurred in The Old Maid in 1935. He was the Harvard roommate of another of JL’s friends, Joe Pulitzer.
186. TL—3
October 3, 1973 [Norfolk]
DEAR TENN:
I was so very pleased when I got back from Wyoming, and managed to sort through the great stacks of mail which had accumulated on the hall table, to find copies which Bob had sent of your three very interesting poems. I think you know how happy I am when you get to writing poetry, I love your poetry, and I hope that before too long we will have enough of it to gather together for another book. I liked “Night Visit” especially, but they are all good.
Would you like me to hold these for the next available Annual, which, actually, wouldn’t be till ND 29 in the fall of 1974, since ND 28 is already at the printer. We would certainly love to have them in the Annual, or would you like to have Bill, or I can work at it if he is too busy, try to place them first for you in magazines? There would be plenty of time for them to come out in magazines before we needed to use them in the Annual.
From all the rumors that I have heard, your new full-length play must be quite a blockbuster, and naturally I’m happy about that, too, and hope that all will go well with it.
As you may have heard, our return from the ranch was considerably delayed, because I managed to involve myself in a stupid accident while out fishing. I guess I must really face up to the fact now that I am no longer the stripling who won the high jump in prep school. I was out fishing on the ranch, and in a big hurry to get to a certain hole on the stream where the day before I had seen a simply enormous cutthroat trout, and came to a cattle fence which had to be crossed, and instead of doing what I usually do, and should do, and certainly will always do in the future, which is to humbly get down on my stomach and shimmy under the lowest strand of barbed wire, I tried to vault over it, and something slipped, and I landed with all my weight on top of the fence post, crushing in three ribs and slightly puncturing the lung. Fortunately, this was fairly near one of the roads on the ranch, and I was able to crawl back to the road, and pretty quickly was picked up and carted off to the hospital, where they kept me for nearly a week, to make certain that I hadn’t ruptured any of my organs.
Actually, the hospital experience wasn’t too bad. The place was full of nymphet Florence Nightingales, some of them very good-looking and quite funny [ . . . ]
Another good by-product of the hospital was that, for the first time in several years, I began writing some poems again, I would wake up in the night, with the ideas for the poems floating around in my head, and then put them down before I called one of the nymphets for a pill to go back to sleep again. Actually, they are all about my experiences as an 18-year-old when I first went to Rapallo, to study with Ezra Pound, and about my romance there with the bank janitor’s daughter. It was as if the shock of the accident had somehow thrown my unconscious back about 40 years in time, so that I was able to remember feelings and details which had been buried, for the most part, in the intervening period. The poems are written partly in English and partly in Italian, as we neither of us really spoke the other’s language, and whether it is corn or Porn or what it is I’m not quite sure yet, I still have several sections to finish to complete the cycle. Since the juicier bits are in Italian, I imagine I can get the new Supreme Court ruling if anybody is foolish enough to want to publish them when I get them finished. Anyway, it’s a new venture for me, as I’ve never tried to do anything of extended length, or rather, as this is, a kind of sequence that tells a story from start to finish. Maybe I can send them along to you for inspection later on, if I do get them finished. You have such an extraordinary sense of how people interact, especially when they are in love, or think they are in love, I’m sure you would be able to spot it immediately if I had gotten off the psychological beam, so to speak, at any point. I want them to be naive, as both of us were at the time, but, I hope, true. But I won’t put in the sequel. I ran into her again about ten years ago in Rome, where she had married a journalist, and she had gotten very fat, and seemed rather stupid. But if you could have seen her at 15, as she was then in her tight white bathing suit!
Very best, as ever,
James Laughlin
« • »
about my experiences: The long poem “In Another Country.”
187. TLS—1
4/30/74 [Norfolk]
DEAR TENN—
I’m so sorry about the mix-up over the poems for ND 29 and mighty glad that you caught that in the proofs.
The mistake was mine—culpa mea—I had them up here, and decided, from my reading of the texts, that these were two separate poems, and I marked them that way for Peter, so don’t blame him.
By the way, it’s time already for me to start assembling the material for the next number, ND 30, and hope you will have something for that. Would the new poem I hear you sent Fred be suitable for that, or do you have something else you’d prefer? I hope there will be something and I promise to be more careful and to check with you if in any doubt.
I think it’s terrific you’re going to go down to the ABA convention to sign Mortal Ladies for the adoring Book Ladies. That really will send them! Wonderful of you to do it.
I should be getting down to the city one of these days and will call ahead to see if there is any chance you are free for lunch or something.
Very best,
JL
« • »
ABA convention: The American Booksellers Association is a trade association that promotes independent booksellers in the United States. Its annual “convention” (now called BookExpo America) allows publishers and authors to showcase their new titles for the coming year.
188. TLS—1
May 16, 1974 [New York]
DEAR JAY:
It’s characteristic of you to assume blame for the mix-up in the poems for ND annual but I know you are just being chivalrous, or as Bob puts it—“saintly.” You are the one at ND who is interested in my poetry and who would notice—despite my mistake of putting them in caps—that it was the end of the poem, not another.
I have an advance copy of Eight Mortal Ladies Possessed. It is becomingly modest with no color at all, as if pretending not to be there: at least a great improvement over that malignant cell blow-up with which Gertrude graced the dust-jacket of Dragon Country.
(What’s that girl got against me?)
I hope you and I will be in the city at the same time someday.
When I was in New Orleans last week I found a volume of your poems with a particularly lovely poem in which a lad
y is wryly compared to a trout. I have met some that reminded me of more aggressive water-creatures—but the image was used very charmingly.
With best wishes always,
Tennessee
[P.S.] Particularly want to discuss with you the next volume of the “on-going” series—you know, there is a new version of Kingdom of Earth which ought to be in it. I don’t think Milk Train deserves total exclusion. And then there are all my one-acts and my next season’s long play, The Red Devil Battery Sign.
« • »
dust-jacket of Dragon Country: In an ongoing feud of his own making, TW mistakenly attributes the jacket—and later cover—design of Dragon Country to Gertrude Huston, when in fact the cover image was by F. H. Horn and the design was by David Ford.
lovely poem [ . . . ] compared to a trout: JL’s poem “The Trout” originally appeared in a small book of his poems, The Wild Anemone & Other Poems (1957), printed by JL’s friend, the fine printer and publisher of limited editions, Giovanni Mardersteig, at the Stamperia Valdonega, Verona.
a new version of Kingdom of Earth: TW revised the play for a production produced by Michael Kahn at the McCarter Theater in 1975, which is now published in The Theatre of Tennessee Williams, Vol. 5.
189. TLS—3
June 12, 1974 [New York]
DEAR TENNESSEE:
Please forgive my being so slow in answering your wonderfully kind letter of May 16. I’ve been rather snowed under, trying to assemble the material for the next Annual that is to go to the printer in a few weeks, and also trying to “vet” some translations of Montale, done by an Indian professor who teaches Italian in Ireland, if you can believe that combination, and Montale is certainly the most difficult and strange poet writing today, so it has been quite a job. Montale is so “hermetic” now it is really almost impossible to translate him at all, but I think the Indian gent has made a good stab at it, and I’m just trying to make his version sound a bit more American and less Indian.
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