For a small price you get the best of Tennessee Williams with forty-nine stories packed into 570 pages of crisp oblique dialogue that will keep you awake at night as you laugh in bed with the turn of each page. His characters are so unusual that you can only describe them as cast of freeks that we all recognize at one time or another in our travels. Mr. Williams short stories are a wonderful contribution to his craft and the American reader. The only negative is that I could not buy this in hardcover so I could share it with my yet-to-be-born children and grandchildren!

Tennessee Williams wrote "Eccentricities" in hopes that it would be produced in London in 1951. Unfortunately, the original version of "Summer and Smoke" was already in rehearsal. This new play cannot really be called a revision, as it consists almost entirely of new dialogue and situations. Certain characters from "Smoke" are absent (the Gonzales', Nellie, John's father) while another is added to "Eccentricities" -- John's mother. How does the play compare to "Summer and Smoke?" It is tighter, simpler, more direct, and the character of Alma is clearly more of a social outcast. However, Alma's transformation of John Buchanan is absent here, which keeps him in the background. "Eccentricities" is really Alma's play, whereas "Summer and Smoke" was a story of John and Alma. For fans of Williams, I recommend reading both and comparing -- a rewarding experience for any lover of the theatre and especially admirers of this fantastic author.

I love this book. It is a collection of letters primarily from Tennessee Williams to Maria St. Just. Maria and Tenn (as he is known to close friends) have a long-standing friendship and close connection. Only a few letters of Maria to Tennessee survive but Tennessee's letters reveal an intimate portrait of Tennessee's world, family, loves and life.

I felt I was a part of this wonderful world of Tenn in Florida, Tenn and his mother & sister, Tenn in Italy and London, Tenn and his companion, Frank ("the Horse") and all that makes up Tennessee's talented world.

Maria St. Just has provided her insights and notes about the letters.

I wish this book was still in print! I would love a copy for my personal delectation and collection -- for the letters are DELICIOUS.

I wish I had read this play earlier. It really is a great story. I say it is mysterious because it is told from the memory of one of the characters. Laura, a crippled girl who has dropped out of school, spends all her time playing with small animals made of glass (i.e., the glass menagerie). She has never had a boyfriend, but one day her brother Tom brings home a man from his work. It turns out that in high school Laura had a crush on this man, who went to school with her. It takes some thinking, but it is a wonderful work. See for yourself--find a copy of this somewhere. It can be read in no time at all.

If you want to understand the making of great literature, I recommend reading this biography of Tennessee Williams. Written by the playwright's brother Dakin and best selling author Shepherd Mead, this book provides an unparalleled look at the details of Williams' personal and professional life -- and the broad context in which he lived it. It makes the case that the creation of literary art is immeasurably complex, incalculably random, and probably painful. A successful author must do infinitely more than "Pass Go and Collect $200".

In this biography we learn of Williams' unbelievable drive to express himself through the written word. With an inborn skill and restless energy, he strove to express his innermost feelings, and he did so with an honesty that stripped naked his tortured soul.

To Williams, life was a contest between the demons and angels that dwell within us all. It was a competition between the noblest human aspirations and the undisciplined indulgence of the basest human urges. But more than this, Williams drew his material from acute yet sympathetic observations of the entire human race, from the mighty to the dregs of society. To this, Williams added a creative use of symbols more powerful in eliciting emotions and comprehension than a mere reconstruction of graphic reality.

Lest one think all of this came easily for Williams, his daily routine usually began with writing at the crack of dawn, fueled by strong black coffee, and proceeded uninterrupted until lunch time. Ideas for plays often began as poems, evolved through one-act plays, and then grew into full fledged films and dramas -- a process that could span even decades and then conclude with new lines written during rehearsal.

One final note: Williams' success also depended on the fortunate and unfortunate happenings of life, happenings beyond a grand plan -- chance meetings with producers, directors, actors and actresses who were perfectly suited -- or incompetent -- for projecting the messages Williams committed to paper. All of us depend at some point on "the kindness of strangers."

If you want to know more about these things, you should read this truly "intimate biography" of Tennessee Williams, one of the world's greatest and most honored dramatists, from his birth in Mississippi as the son of a traveling salesman for a men's clothing company, to the unnatural end of his life in a New York City luxury apartment.

Impressively detailed account of the life of one of America's great southern writers.

In her lifetime, Carson McCullers was many things to many people, and the conflicting accounts are fascinating. She could be very charming and attentive, a soft-spoken original with deeply engaging, large eyes. But she was a difficult friend to many, becoming obsessively clingy and demanding of attention. A bitch and an angel; as unshakably sulky or as light-hearted as a child. Her hair she always carefully brushed, and yet sometimes she wore outfits so outlandish, she was mistaken for a tramp. (that's hobo, not slut). She was a sensitive and imaginative author who touched many hearts with her unsentimental writings about human longing.

Reading this book has been a strange ride. As impartial as the text is, it is next-to-impossible to avoid getting emotional as the reader, as I will explain in a moment.

The biographer has done a fantastic job of getting those who knew Carson to come forward with their various memories. It is very well-written, with family trees, thorough footnotes, many voices, interesting photos, an appendix consisting of summarized events in McCullers' life, and an excellent index. A generally well-edited and constructed biography, I find no fault with the biographer. It's the life of Carson McCullers that is so twisted and sour. That said, there are fun stories about living with Gypsy Rose Lee and of staying at Yaddo, the famous writers' retreat. But Carson's life was not easy. Tales of her drinking and near-delusional imagination, of her horrendous fights with husband Reeves McCullers, of lingering ill health, and of her leeching on friends has made reading this quite impartial book a considerably saddening adventure. Nestled in the text is the rather interesting nugget stating that, soon after McCullers hit the literary big time with her The Heart is a Lonely Hunter, she was told during a psychiatric Rorschach evaluation that if her neuroses were to be cured, she would lose her ability to write so sensitively. (!)

Increasingly, McCullers lived her life with a disturbing mix of exaggerated suffering, of need and meanness, along with what the biographer saw as an irresistible love of love itself. But this reviewer is sure that some of her friends must have felt like flies caught in a puddle of spilt honey.

It has been interesting to read about how McCullers worked, and how she drew inspiration from real life events, acquaintances and their own tales. This haunting biography could be of interest to other writers, if only as a kind of caveat. The thoroughness of Carr's work allows an observant reader to glean lessons about the power of the human spirit and the destructiveness of the attitude that insanity fuels talent.

"Night of the Iguana" is a Tennessee Williams play unlike any other. Set at a Mexican hotel in the early 1940's, the drama presents several character portraits of searing intensity. The minister Shannon -- tortured with self-loathing over his inability to control his sexual appetite -- has abandoned a tour bus he has been leading and has come to stay with an old friend, Maxine. Shannon is suffering a nervous breakdown, and it is only through the near-angelic presence of Hannah Jelkes, a visitor at Maxine's, that he is able to understand himself and the actions which have brought him to this state. While so many of Williams' characters (including Shannon) feel shamefully about love and sex, in Hannah Jelkes he has created a character entirely without shame. Hannah is Williams' ideal -- a person living living free of societal mores, who (like Blanche DuBois) is offended only by deliberate cruelty and unkindness. The third act, in particular, is transfiguring; had Williams written nothing else, this act alone would guarantee him his place among the greats.

Exceptional play fitted with perfectly great performers. I saw it first hand here in Des Moines, IA. It was sad, funny, inspiring, dangling, ramantic and beautiful.

i felt that the book was among the best i've read.

This book was well writing, with many unknown facts on the movement of American families caming to the Southern states. It is a shame that it is out of print.