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Tenn at One Hundred: The Reputation of Tennessee Williams
Tenn at One Hundred The Reputation of Tennessee Williams Author:David Kaplan Edited by David Kaplan, Tenn at One Hundred is the first comprehensive look at the reputation of Tennessee Williams, America s greatest playwright. Being published in 2011 on the occasion of Tennessee Williams centennial year, Tenn at One Hundred takes a behind the scenes look at how reputations are made. It s a collection of the leading William... more »s advocates who had something to say, and wanted to say it this year, and in this forum. The book is a must for anyone curious about how American icons are built up, then publicly attacked, and then, rarely given the time, begin to assert their own worth as has happened with Tennessee Williams. Best known for the ground-breaking plays, A Streetcar Named Desire, Cat on a Hot Tin Roof, and The Glass Menagerie, Tennessee Williams began his writing career in the 1930s as a struggling and unknown poet. At the time of his death in 1983, he was the most produced playwright in the country and at the same time one of the most despised and ridiculed American writers. What were the events and decisions that brought Tennessee Williams to these contradictory extremes of reputation? How did Tennessee Williams come to be known as one the most scandalous writers of the post-war era while he was also lauded as America s poet of human heart ? Tenn at One Hundred explores the man and his legacy: the plays, films, reviews, talent, tenacity, good fortune, bad timing, friends, addictions, critics, producers, publishers, directors, actors, and biographers that helped to shape Tennessee Williams' critical reputation and iconic status in the popular imagination over the past seventy years. Chapters include Keeping The Glass Menagerie Alive,Pulp Williams: Tennessee in the Popular Imagination,Camino Real, The 'Worst Play' by the Best Playwright, The Making and Selling of Baby Doll, A Night to Go Down in History: A Streetcar Named Desire Opens, Evaluating Williams the Nobel Prize Committee Report, Audrey Wood and Tennessee Williams: revealing correspondence, Filming the Rose Tattoo, Remarkable Rooming-house: Too Grotesque and Too Funny for Laughter, Mr. Williams is Advised to Stay Silent. Contributors:
John Patrick Shanley, Oscar and Pulitzer-Prize-winning playwright; John Lahr, lead critic for The New Yorker magazine; Amiri Baraka, playwright, poet, musician and winner of the American Book Award; William Jay Smith, U.S. Poet Laureate; Sam Staggs, author of When Blanche Met Brando; Al Devlin, co-author of the two volumes of The Collected Letters of Tennessee Williams; Annette Saddik, author of The Politics of Reputation: The Critical Reception of Williams Later Plays; Thomas Keith, editor of Tennessee Williams titles for New Directions; Kenneth Holditch, co-author of Tennessee and the South, and The World of Tennessee Williams; Robert Bray and Barton Palmer, co-authors of Hollywood s Tennessee: The Williams Films and Post War America; Michael Paller, author of Gentlemen Callers: Tennessee Williams, Homosexuality, and Mid-Twentieth Century Drama; David Kaplan, Curator of the Provincetown Tennessee Williams Theater Festival and author of Tennessee Williams in Provincetown.« less