Memoirs (Penguin Modern Classics)

by Allean Hale (Afterword), TENNESSEE WILLIAMS (Author), John Waters (Introduction)

• New

  Paperback
  2007

  $13.92

  When Memoirs was first published in 1975, it created quite a bit of turbulence in the media - though long self-identified as a gay man, Williams' candour about his love life, sexual encounters, and drug use was found shocking in and of itself, and such revelations by America's greatest living playwright were called a raw display of private life by The New York Times Book Review . As it turns out, more than thirty years later, Williams' look back at his life is not quite so scandalous as it once seemed; he recalls his childhood in Mississippi and St. Louis, his prolonged struggle as a starving artist, the overnight success of The Glass Menagerie in 1945, the death of his long-time companion Frank Merlo in 1962, and his confinement to a psychiatric ward in 1969 and subsequent recovery from alcohol and drug addiction, all with the same directness, compassion, and insight that epitomize his plays.