The Kindness Of Strangers: The Life Of Tennessee Williams [Paperback]

Donald Spoto (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: August 22, 1997

This is the first complete, critical biography of Tennessee Williams (1911–1983), one of America's finest playwrights and the author of (among many important works) The Glass Menagerie, Summer and Smoke, A Streetcar Named Desire, Cat on a Hot Tin Roof, Suddenly Last Summer, and The Night of the Iguana. Award-winning biographer Donald Spoto gives us not only a full and accurate account of Williams's life, he also reveals the intimate connections between the playwright's personal dramas and his remarkably autobiographical art. From his birth into a genteel Southern family, through his success, celebrity, and wealth, to his drug addictions, promiscuity, and creative struggles, Tennessee Williams lived a life as gripping as his plays. The Kindness of Strangers, based on Williams's own papers, his mother's diaries, and interviews with scores of friends, lovers, and professional associates, is, in the author's words, a portrait of "a man more disturbing, more dramatic, richer and more wonderful than any character he created."

Editorial Reviews

From Library Journal

Drawing on a broad range of sources, Spoto weaves Williams's successes, failures, obsessions, and suffering into a "tightly woven chronicle" (LJ 5/1/85). "Spoto's readable biography corrects the...one-sided accounts in Williams's own memoirs and his brother Dakin's `intimate biography.'" This title is for both the serious theater scholar and lay reader alike.
Copyright 1998 Reed Business Information, Inc.

About the Author

Donald Spoto is the author of many books, among them internationally best-selling biographies of Alfred Hitchcock, Laurence Olivier, Marilyn Monroe, Elizabeth Taylor, James Dean, and Ingrid Bergman. He lives in Beverly Hills, California.

Product Details

• Paperback: 448 pages
• Publisher: Da Capo Press (August 22, 1997)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0306808056
• ISBN-13: 978-0306808050
• Product Dimensions: 8.9 x 6 x 1.2 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1.4 pounds (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 4.0 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (3 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #839,641 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

32 of 32 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars The Broken World of Tennessee Williams, April 28, 2000

By 

Gianmarco Manzione (Tampa, FL USA) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: The Kindness Of Strangers: The Life Of Tennessee Williams (Paperback)

The last words of the book, "at last there was stillness," exemplify Spoto's ability to capture the chaos of this genius's life. Although the book is somewhat fast paced and races over portions of Williamss life, it is meticulously researched and digs up every facet of Tennessee Williams. Spoto reveals the glory days of the pulitzer prize winning playwright and the nightmare of his last two decades in which he watched success wane as fastidious critics, ignorantly demanding that Williams continue to deliver plays in the vein of Glass Menagerie and Streetcar Named desire, beat him literally to death. One must have emotions of steel to get through the book's later chapters, in which Williams suffers a miserable descent into drug addiction and madness. Despite Williams's wealth and fame, the man lived a terribly difficult life. From his chaotic childhood to his drugged, alcoholic and lonely end, Williams's life was perhaps his greatest drama, as Spoto reveals.

36 of 37 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars A thorough life tour of "10," but with a sour thesis., March 17, 2000

By 

A Customer - See all my reviews

This review is from: The Kindness Of Strangers: The Life Of Tennessee Williams (Paperback)

Yes, Tennesee Williams signed some of his letters as "10." That's just one of the many things you'll learn from reading Spoto's 1985 biography of this famous American playwright. More complete, thorough and sympathetic biographies have been issued since this one, but Spoto's is still worth reading. It has the virtue of concision (it runs about 400 pages, which for a crowded life like Williams had isn't long), at least. I don't argue with Spoto's view that Williams lived a largely miserable life, sank into rampant substance abuse, and hurt most of the people who cared for him. By the time he died, he couldn't get a good review for any new play he wrote. No one in the theater world liked him. It took his death for his career to start to recover, but at this point the late plays are getting better-reviewed productions, and the scope of his entire achievement (including his work in fiction and poetry) is finally being assimilated. From this distance, the only American playwright of the 20th century who might be put into the same class is O'Neill. I would vote for Williams. Anyone who reads this book will have to be willing to take Spoto's unsympathetic reading of Williams's life. At times he lectures the dead subject of the book like a prim schoolmarm (he did the same in his Hitchcock biography). The book is still a gripping portrait of one of the greatest, and saddest, literary giants America has produced. I believe the tragedy of his genius rivals Poe's.

3 of 3 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars Great Book on Tennessee, June 21, 2009

By 

Jeff Sartain "Jeff" (Olive Branch, MS USA) - See all my reviews
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This review is from: The Kindness Of Strangers: The Life Of Tennessee Williams (Paperback)

I read this book after it was recommended by a good friend of mine, Colby Kullmanm, who is an English professor at Ole Miss. Colby is an expert on Mr. Williams. I found the book to be very fair to Mr. Williams. It helps to explain the pain of his childhood, the many demons he fought as an adult, the pain of writing and rejection, and his humor. I would recommend the book to anyone that want to have a good general knowledge of Williams. It opened my eyes to the fact that all humans have faults - none of us is perfect.