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The definitive biography of America's greatest playwright from the celebrated drama critic ofThe New Yorker.
John Lahr has produced a theater biography like no other. Tennessee Williams: Mad Pilgrimage of the Flesh gives intimate access to the mind of one of the most brilliant dramatists of his century, whose plays reshaped the American theater and the nation's sense of itself. This astute, deeply researched biography sheds a light on Tennessee Williams's warring family, his guilt, his creative triumphs and failures, his sexuality and numerous affairs, his misreported death, even the shenanigans surrounding his estate.
With vivid cameos of the formative influences in Williams's life—his fierce, belittling father Cornelius; his puritanical, domineering mother Edwina; his demented sister Rose, who was lobotomized at the age of thirty-three; his beloved grandfather, the Reverend Walter Dakin—Tennessee Williams: Mad Pilgrimage of the Flesh is as much a biography of the man who createdA Streetcar Named Desire, The Glass Menagerie, and Cat on a Hot Tin Roof as it is a trenchant exploration of Williams’s plays and the tortured process of bringing them to stage and screen.
The portrait of Williams himself is unforgettable: a virgin until he was twenty-six, he had serial homosexual affairs thereafter as well as long-time, bruising relationships with Pancho Gonzalez and Frank Merlo. With compassion and verve, Lahr explores how Williams's relationships informed his work and how the resulting success brought turmoil to his personal life.
Lahr captures not just Williams’s tempestuous public persona but also his backstage life, where his agent Audrey Wood and the director Elia Kazan play major roles, and Marlon Brando, Anna Magnani, Bette Davis, Maureen Stapleton, Diana Barrymore, and Tallulah Bankhead have scintillating walk-on parts. This is a biography of the highest order: an audiobook about the major American playwright of his time written by the major American drama critic of his time.
"synopsis" may belong to another edition of this title.
Review:
A masterpiece about a genius (Helen Mirren)
Testimony to the crazy exhilaration of the entire theatrical process, and to the self-destructive solipsism of a great artist (Nicholas Hytner, Observer Books of the Year)
John Lahr's monumental tribute to the play's 34-year-old creator, the son of a frigid, hysterical virago and a combustible father - a travelling shoe-salesman whose ear was bitten off in a poker fight . Lahr's understanding of Williams is stamped on every page. "In playwriting, he found a strategy both to hide himself away and to vent his murderous feelings" (Nicholas Shakespeare, Daily Telegraph Biographies of the Year)
John Lahr's subtitle points to the spicier ingredients the reader can feast on in this very long but never dull book . He is supremely qualified for his task (Financial Times)
A thrilling roller-coaster ride from its opening act to the tragic last scene, with Williams lying dead on the floor of a New York hotel room, his bloated body overwhelmed by drink, drugs, and sadness (Marcus Field, Independent Books of the Year)
Dazzling, insightful ... It is a masterpiece on several levels: of synthesis and analysis (Paul Taylor, Independent)
Riveting accounts of Williams's plays in production, skilfully handled flashbacks to the early life, plenty of gossip, lavish quantities of photographs and yards of quotation. The result: total immersion, and a masterful analysis of a "self-cannibalising" writer "prepared to destroy himself for meaning" (Sunday Times Books of the Year)
Marvellous, huge, almost out-of-control biography (The Times Book of the Week)
By far the best book ever written about America's greatest playwright. John Lahr, the longtime drama critic for the New Yorker, knows his way around Broadway better than anyone. He is a witty and elegant stylist, a scrupulous researcher, a passionate yet canny advocate (Wall Street Journal)
What lifts Lahr's book into the canon of biographical masterpieces (not a word I bandy about daily) is that, in chronicling the prurient excesses of Williams's existence, he also explores, with critical and psychological acuity, the way in which great art emerged from such a profoundly unsettled and disquieting life ... Lahr's biography is awash with wonderfully skewed backstage anecdotes from Williams's career ... The seminal importance of Tennessee Williams shines through the biography - and so does the seminal sadness of his tortured life (New Statesman)
Book Description:
Testimony to the crazy exhilaration of the entire theatrical process, and to the self-destructive solipsism of a great artist (Nicholas Hytner, Observer Books of the Year)
John Lahr's monumental tribute to the play's 34-year-old creator, the son of a frigid, hysterical virago and a combustible father - a travelling shoe-salesman whose ear was bitten off in a poker fight . Lahr's understanding of Williams is stamped on every page. "In playwriting, he found a strategy both to hide himself away and to vent his murderous feelings" (Nicholas Shakespeare, Daily Telegraph Biographies of the Year)
John Lahr's subtitle points to the spicier ingredients the reader can feast on in this very long but never dull book . He is supremely qualified for his task (Financial Times)
A thrilling roller-coaster ride from its opening act to the tragic last scene, with Williams lying dead on the floor of a New York hotel room, his bloated body overwhelmed by drink, drugs, and sadness (Marcus Field, Independent Books of the Year)
Dazzling, insightful ... It is a masterpiece on several levels: of synthesis and analysis (Paul Taylor, Independent)
Riveting accounts of Williams's plays in production, skilfully handled flashbacks to the early life, plenty of gossip, lavish quantities of photographs and yards of quotation. The result: total immersion, and a masterful analysis of a "self-cannibalising" writer "prepared to destroy himself for meaning" (Sunday Times Books of the Year)
Marvellous, huge, almost out-of-control biography (The Times Book of the Week)
By far the best book ever written about America's greatest playwright. John Lahr, the longtime drama critic for the New Yorker, knows his way around Broadway better than anyone. He is a witty and elegant stylist, a scrupulous researcher, a passionate yet canny advocate (Wall Street Journal)
What lifts Lahr's book into the canon of biographical masterpieces (not a word I bandy about daily) is that, in chronicling the prurient excesses of Williams's existence, he also explores, with critical and psychological acuity, the way in which great art emerged from such a profoundly unsettled and disquieting life ... Lahr's biography is awash with wonderfully skewed backstage anecdotes from Williams's career ... The seminal importance of Tennessee Williams shines through the biography - and so does the seminal sadness of his tortured life (New Statesman)
SHORTLISTED FOR THE 2014 NATIONAL BOOK AWARD FOR NONFICTION
The definitive biography of America's most impassioned and lyrical twentieth-century playwright from acclaimed theatre critic John Lahr
"About this title" may belong to another edition of this title.
- PublisherBrilliance Audio Lib Edn
- Publication date2014
- ISBN 10 149151972X
- ISBN 13 9781491519721
- BindingAudio CD
- Rating
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