Something Cloudy, Something Clear (New Directions Paperbook) - Softcover

Williams, Tennessee

Softcover

ISBN 10: 0811213110 ISBN 13: 9780811213110

Publisher: New Directions, 1996

Synopsis

Tennessee Williams returns to a pivotal moment in his stormy youth in Something Cloudy, Something Clear, which introducer Eve Adamson calls "a delicately woven tapestry of past and present, vulnerability and toughness, impetuous action and mature insight."

Something Cloudy, Something Clear is, as Tennessee Williams stated, "one of the most personal plays I’ve ever written." Set in Provincetown, Cape Cod, in 1940, the play records Williams’ experiences during that "pivotal summer when I took sort of a crash course in growing up." On the brink of becoming a successful playwright, Williams was also to "come thoroughly out of the closet" and meet Kip, his first great love. Something Cloudy, Something Clearbrilliantly reimagines that long ago time, now recollected through the filter of all the playwright’s successes and failures, joys and regrets. Eve Adamson, director of the original 1981 production, provides an insightful introduction in which she captures the play’s heart-breaking appeal: "It is a delicately woven tapestry of past and present, vulnerability and toughness, impetuous action and mature insight. It seeks a reconciliation between love and art, life and death, and-to use two phrases which recur in the play––exigencies of desperation and negotiation of terms. The cloudy and the clear."

About this title

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.

From Library Journal

This previously unpublished autobiographical play?it is based on Tennessee Williams: Memoirs (LJ 11/1/75)?was written late in Williams's life and is now being published through his trust. Williams offers a fictionalized remembrance of the pivotal 1940 summer at Provincetown, Cape Cod, where he retreated to rewrite a play intended to be his Broadway debut. While there he had an affair with a Canadian draft-dodger/dancer, Kip, who later died of a brain tumor. Eve Adamson, director of the original 1981 production, maintains in the introduction that the play "seeks a reconciliation between love and art, life and death, and to use two phrases which recur in the play?exigencies of desperation and negotiation of terms." Unfortunately, a thin plot and weak characterizations make it a minor work in Williams's dramatic canon. However, as one of his most personal plays, bearing the mark of Williams's poetic beauty and pathos, it is recommended for all academic and large public libraries.?Ming-ming Shen Kuo, Ball State Univ., Muncie, Ind.
Copyright 1995 Reed Business Information, Inc.

About this edition

• Publisher: New Directions
• Publication date: 1996
• ISBN 10: 0811213110
• ISBN 13: 9780811213110
• Binding: Paperback
• Edition number: 1
• Number of pages: 95