The great surprise of these previously unpublished letters between Tennessee Williams and his publisher/confidant James Laughlin is that they show Williams’s playwriting taking on an almost secondary role to his desire to be a poet and novelist, giving at times the impression of Williams as a somewhat accidental playwright.
Spanning 40 years and covering the glory days of Menagerie and Streetcar to the lower depths of the 1970s and early 80s when rejection, struggle and self-doubt had come to shape him, the letters reveal an encouraging, yet critical relationship continuing as Williams gradually accepts that his best work is behind him. They cease just weeks before his tired and broken spirit gives way to an accidental overdose on the day he was a to attend an awards ceremony in honour of Laughlin.
Ultimately these letters show us that while Tennessee Williams’s own tragic ending left theatre the poorer for it, their unique insight in to one of the greatest dramatists of the 20th century leaves us all the richer.
