Tom: The Unknown Tennessee Williams

Leverich, Lyle

ISBN 10: 0517702258 ISBN 13: 9780517702253

Publisher: Crown, 1995

Synopsis

The bedrock, authoritative account of the little-known early life of Tennessee Williams. "Plainly a work of distinction...It will be great service to Williams's reputation and among other things may bring more of the young to an appreciation of his achievement."--Arthur Miller. Black-and-white photographs.

About this title

About the Author

Lyle Leverich was artistic director of the Atheneum Arts Foundation, and presently heads the editorial board of the Tennessee Williams Literary Review.

From the Inside Flap

authoritative account of the little-known early life of Tennessee Williams. "Plainly a work of distinction...It will be great service to Williams's reputation and among other things may bring more of the young to an appreciation of his achievement."--Arthur Miller. Black-and-white photographs.

Reviews

After a protracted squabble over private papers with the playwright's estate, Leverich delivers this hefty but only slightly bloated first volume of a projected two-volume life of Tennessee Williams (1911-1983). In it, Leverich?who produced several of Williams's plays and calls himself Williams's "chosen biographer"?covers the years through 1945, when The Glass Menagerie opened on Broadway. Treated are Williams's youth in Mississippi and St. Louis; the college years at the universities of Missouri and Iowa; bumming around (but always writing) in New Orleans and Greenwich Village; the disaster of his first Broadway play (it closed in Boston); script writing?or avoiding it?at MGM's Hollywood mill; and, finally, the evolution of Menagerie, a wonderfully detailed and dramatic case history in itself. Leverich's overworked conceit, which he restates at intervals, is that this is the life of Tom Williams, a "repressed puritan" poet, who in time created a more flamboyant public persona called Tennessee. A few matters are set straight. Leverich maintains his subject's active homosexual life started in his late 20s, later than Williams stated in his memoirs, and that his sister's infamous lobotomy came later than his mother claimed. Although the accumulation of information is impressive, the lower Leverich keeps his own profile and editorial commentary the better his book is, which means it is at its best when it simply reproduces Williams's sporadically kept journal. If you believe that all the details of a life are but preparation for a single event?in this case, the opening of a remarkable play?this is an impressively argued biography. Even if you don't, it is a compulsively readable story. Photos not seen by PW.
Copyright 1995 Reed Business Information, Inc.

Theatrical producer Leverich was personally selected by Williams to write his biography (this is the first of two books; the second will focus on Williams once he became famous). It is clear that Leverich understands Williams as poet, dramatist, and human being-and the impact of each on the other. Concerning his outrageous behavior, Williams once wrote that "when I now appear in public the children are called indoors and the dogs are pushed out!" What lasted longest in Williams's life was his passion for writing-even when what he wrote was no longer successful. Williams battled his "blue devils"-his fear of madness; addictive, promiscuous homosexual behavior; and alcoholism-for most of his adult life. His mother, father, and sister contributed greatly to the creation of characters in his plays. Williams became a wayfarer, constantly seeking comfort in distant places with strangers, haunted by the nightingale (his own word for sexual intrigue). If Williams were here to read this book, he would undoubtedly use one of his favorite phrases, En avant! ("Forward march!"). Highly recommended.
Robert L. Kelly, Fort Wayne Community Schs., Ind.
Copyright 1995 Reed Business Information, Inc.

The slow but nonetheless miraculous transformation of shy, romantic, easily wounded Thomas Lanier Williams into flamboyant, prolific, profligate Tennessee Williams is the subject of Leverich's fascinating, exhaustive book. Consisting of some 600 pages of text and packed with copious quotations from Williams' letters and journals and the letters and diaries of friends, family members, and assorted acquaintances, Tom ends at the very moment--the Broadway premiere of The Glass Menagerie that Williams became a full-fledged celebrity. (A second volume, Ten, scheduled for 1997 publication, will cover the rest of Williams' life.) Before fame thrust him into the "catastrophe of success," Leverich argues, Williams lived The Glass Menagerie. Leverich proves his case with an absorbing account of Williams' talented but desperately unhappy extended family, many of whom appear in the great memory play: his mentally ill sister; his sharp-tongued, long-suffering mother; even his emotionally absent father, who is literally absent from the play. In recounting the wildly dysfunctional Williams clan, however, Leverich never loses sight of Williams the artist-in-the-making. He documents Williams' slow, sometimes painful evolution from Tom to Tennessee in such painstaking detail that his biography is sure to please scholars as well as general readers. Jack Helbig

Edition details

• Publisher: Crown
• Publication date: 1995
• Language: English
• ISBN 10: 0517702258
• ISBN 13: 9780517702253
• Edition number: 1
• Number of pages: 644