Camino Real (New Directions Paperbook) - Softcover

Williams, Tennessee

Softcover

ISBN 10: 0811218066 ISBN 13: 9780811218061

Publisher: New Directions, 2010

Synopsis

The acclaimed classic in a new edition, now with a new introduction, the author's original foreword and afterword, the one-act play "10 Blocks on the Camino Real," plus an essay by noted Tennessee Williams scholar, Michael Paller.
In this phantasmagorical play, the Camino Real (pronounciation: "Ca-mino Real") is a long highway, a dead end, a police state in a vaguely Latin American country, a nightmare, and an inescapable condition. Characters from history and literature--Don Quixote, Casanova, Camille, Lord Byron--inhabit a place where corruption, starvation, indifference and greed have immobilized anyone who tries to escape. Then, into this netherworld, the archetypal Kilroy arrives--a sailor and all-American guy with "a heart as big as the head of baby." Like others before him in the Camino Real, Kilroy is robbed, conned, turned into a patsy, and he very nearly breaks...but not quite. When this experimental epic opened on Broadway in 1953, it confounded the critics, but not the audiences. The play's iconic/ironic humor, playful conceits, and towering concerns about society's demand for conformity, the courage of the artist, and the power of compassion have made it a classic.

About this title

Review:

Camino Real has a very small bull's eye. It's difficult to hit, but when you do, when you do - the world's a brand new place.--John Guare

About the Author:

Tennessee Williams (1911-1983) is the acclaimed author of many books of letters, short stories, poems, essays, and a large collection of plays, including The Glass Menagerie, A Streetcar Named Desire, Camino Real, Cat on a Hot Tin Roof, Orpheus Descending, The Night of the Iguana, and The Rose Tattoo.

About this edition

• Publisher: New Directions
• Publication date: 2010
• ISBN 10: 0811218066
• ISBN 13: 9780811218061
• Binding: Paperback
• Number of pages: 186