A Streetcar Named Desire (New Directions Paperbook) [Paperback]

Tennessee Williams (Author), Arthur Miller (Introduction)

Book Description

Publication Date: September 2004 | Series: New Directions Paperbook

The Pulitzer Prize and Drama Critics Circle Award winning play—reissued with an introduction by Arthur Miller (Death of a Salesman and The Crucible), and Williams' essay "The World I Live In."

It is a very short list of 20th-century American plays that continue to have the same power and impact as when they first appeared—57 years after its Broadway premiere, Tennessee Williams' A Streetcar Named Desire is one of those plays. The story famously recounts how the faded and promiscuous Blanche DuBois is pushed over the edge by her sexy and brutal brother-in-law, Stanley Kowalski. Streetcar launched the careers of Marlon Brando, Jessica Tandy, Kim Hunter and Karl Malden, and solidified the position of Tennessee Williams as one of the most important young playwrights of his generation, as well as that of Elia Kazan as the greatest American stage director of the '40s and '50s.

Who better than America's elder statesman of the theater, Williams' contemporary Arthur Miller, to write as a witness to the lightning that struck American culture in the form of A Streetcar Named Desire? Miller's rich perspective on Williams' singular style of poetic dialogue, sensitive characters, and dramatic violence makes this a unique and valuable new edition of A Streetcar Named Desire. This definitive new edition will also include Williams' essay "The World I Live In," and a brief chronology of the author's life.

Editorial Reviews

From Publishers Weekly

Williams's classic play begins with Blanche DuBois's arrival in New Orleans to stay with her sister and brother-in-law, Stella and Stanley Kowalski. The determinedly genteel Blanche is shocked by their lower-class lifestyle—and by Stanley's frequently aggressive behavior. As Blanche's secrets catch up with her, a seedy reality trumps her love for romance. Rosemary Harris embodies Blanche with all the flare, attitude and Southern drawl commonly associated with the cultural icon. The role of Stanley is so physical that his presence is diminished by the lack of a visual performance, but James Farentino's Stanley is excellent. The overall production quality is excellent with musical segues and sound effects that enhance without distracting the listeners. This recording captures the cast of the 1973 Broadway revival (which won Harris a Drama Desk award and Farentino a Theatre World award). (Feb.)
Copyright © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved. --This text refers to the Audio CD edition.

Review

“In Streetcar Williams found images and rhythms that are still part of the way we think and feel and move.” (Jack Kroll - Newsweek)

“Lyrical and poetic and human and heartbreaking and memorable and funny.” (Francis Ford Coppola)

“The introductions, by playwrights as illustrious as Williams himself, are the gem of these new editions.” (Ken Furtado - Echo Magazine)

“Blanche is the Everest of modern American drama, a peak of psychological complexity and emotional range.” (John Lahr - The New Yorker)

See all Editorial Reviews

Product Details

• Paperback: 224 pages
• Publisher: New Directions (September 2004)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0811216020
• ISBN-13: 978-0811216029
• Product Dimensions: 5.4 x 0.6 x 8.1 inches
• Shipping Weight: 6.4 ounces (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 4.4 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (161 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #6,651 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)
  • #23 in Books > Literature & Fiction > Drama > United States
  • #23 in Books > Literature & Fiction > Women's Fiction > Sisters
  • #28 in Books > Literature & Fiction > History & Criticism > Criticism & Theory

More About the Author

Tennessee Williams (1911-1983), one of the 20th century's most superb writers, was also one of its most successful and prolific. His classic works include Cat on a Hot Tin Roof, A Streetcar Named Desire, The Glass Menagerie, Summer and Smoke, Camino Real, Sweet Bird of Youth, Night of the Iguana, Orpheus Descending, and The Rose Tattoo.

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

34 of 36 people found the following review helpful

4.0 out of 5 stars Williams's Intense Desire May 14, 2000

By Blaine Bisel

Format:Mass Market Paperback

Tennessee Williams's masterfully written drama explores the extremes of fantasy versus reality, the Old South versus the New South, and primitive desire versus civilized restraint. Its meager 142 page spine is no indication of the complexity and significance that Williams achieves in his remarkable work. A strong aspect of the play is Williams's amazingly vivid portrayal of desperate and forsaken characters who symbolize and presumably resolve his battles between extremes. He created and immortal woman in the character of Blanche DuBois, the haggard and fragile southern beauty whose pathetic last grasp at happiness is cruelly destroyed. She represents fantasy for her many outrageous attempts to elude herself, and she likewise represents the Old South with only her manners and pretentions remaining after the foreclosure of her family's estate. The movie version of A Streetcar Named Desire shot Marlon Brando to fame as Stanley Kowalski, a sweat-shirted barbarian and crudely sensual brother-in-law who precipitated Blanche's tragedy. He symbolizes unrestrained desire with the recurring animal motif that follows him throughout the play. A third major character, Stella Kowalski, acts as mediator between her constantly conflicting husband and older sister. She magnifies the New South in her renounce of the Old pretentions by marrying a blue collar immigrant. Conflicts between these and other vividly colorful characters always in light of the cultural New Orleans backdrop provide a reader with a lasting impression and an awe for Williams's impeccable style and intense dialogue.

18 of 21 people found the following review helpful

5.0 out of 5 stars An eternal tragedy in our modern world May 28, 2003

By Jacques COULARDEAU

Format:Mass Market Paperback|Amazon Verified Purchase

Tennessee Williams probably signed there his best play, at least the one that is best-known. It is entirely centered on a woman who flees from Mississippi to New Orleans to live, for a while, with her married sister. The two sisters were born in the Southern aristocracy that got bankrupt by not being able, or even refusing, to get into the new flow of time. One went away and married a working class immigrant who is in many ways uncultured and rough, even violent at times. But desire is stronger than that violence and love survives a row from time to time, provided truthfulness and some sensual sincerity exist. But that is only the secondary theme to which Blanche, the other sister, is confronted and this brings back her real drama that is burried in her memory. She married very young. Her husband was also very young and a poet. But she discovered that he also was gay and she could not accept it due to her southern aristocratic principles. He was an abomination and she told him so one night and he went out and killed himself. She never overcame her guilt and she delved into a more and more dissolute life with any man that could come along, till she went back to a substitute of her dead husband, a 17 year old boy. The family protested and she was expelled from the school system (she was a teacher) and from the city. Confronted to the life of her sister and husband, she regresses into southern sophistication. She comes across a man, Mitch, who could and even would like to marry her. But her sister's husband, wanting to get rid of her, exposes her lies about her past to his friend Mitch and his wife. He destroys the dream and Blanche sinks into some psychotic nightmare that becomes a complete breakdown when her brother in law, on the very night when his son was born, rapes her. The end is a lesson about the savage and wild world in which we live and in which life must go on, or, as actors say, the show must go on. Her sister has to come to terms with this sad event, accept it or rather negate it not to be broken up by the event, and sister and husband have to get rid of Blanche. Only one solution : to have her institutionalized. The play is an extremely strong exposure of that simple fact that one has to follow the trend and change along with the world, no matter how hard it may be to adapt, to survive and remain balanced and sane in an insane and completely incomprehensible world. It also exposes that one is in a way one's own victim when one is not able to accept the world the way it is and imposes rules from the past onto it. This is probably the worst crime because it leads other people into suffering or even death, and you into guilt. So what is the desire that is at stake on such a play ? Sexual desire ? Maybe. Sentimental desire ? Maybe. But first of all the desire to survive by paying the price you have to pay for it. It thus becomes the exposure of a society in which feelings, sentiments, sexual impulses are nothing but secondary emotions and pleasures that can gratify your life if you are able to adapt to the world and survive in it. This world is inhumane, dehumanized, extremely savage. Men and women are like animals who can only aim at surviving or satisfying their animal impulses. Culture, civilization, principles, ethics, everything really human becomes a trauma in such a world. At the time of the play the only outcome could be the sacrifice of those who cannot adapt. Has it really changed ?

Dr Jacques COULARDEAU, University of Perpignan

10 of 11 people found the following review helpful

5.0 out of 5 stars What happens when an irresistible force meets an immovable object? October 3, 2010

By Jason Kirkfield VINE™ VOICE

Format:Mass Market Paperback

This is another classic from my high school days that seems wasted on youth. How can a fifteen-year-old in prep school appreciate the desperation and human frailty of Blanche DuBois? Or the dichotomy inherent in Stanley Kowalski's passionate brutality?

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BLANCHE: What you are talking about is brutal desire--just--Desire!--the name of that rattle-trap street-car that bangs through the Quarter, up one old narrow street and down another...
STELLA: Haven't you ever ridden on that street-car?
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Many will have seen either the stage or film versions of Streetcar, but reading through Tennessee Williams' Pulitzer Prize-winning play allows for the depression to really set in. Readers may even recognize qualities in friends and family members approximating those of alcoholism or domestic violence.

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BLANCHE: A hot bath and a long, cold drink always give me a brand new outlook on life!
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There are so many great dialogue exchanges here, outside of the classic "kindness of strangers" quote. I'll snip a few of my favorites.

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MITCH: You ought to lay off his liquor. He says you been lapping it up all summer like a wild-cat!
BLANCHE: What a fantastic statement! Fantastic of him to say it, fantastic of you to repeat it!
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The abusive domestic relationship seemed a common theme in mid-20th Century America; witness both Streetcar and The Honeymooners. "One of these days...POW! Right in the kisser! One of these days Alice, straight to the Moon!"

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STANLEY: When we first met, me and you, you thought I was common. How right you was, baby. I was common as dirt. You showed me the snapshot of the place with the columns. I pulled you down off them columns and how you loved it.
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Very easy to get through this in a sitting or two. Very hard not to be emotionally moved, even if the dénouement, vis-a-vis Stanley and Blanche, was not obvious to me after that first reading many years ago.

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BLANCHE: Don't you just love these long rainy afternoons in New Orleans when an hour isn't just an hour--but a little piece of eternity dropped into your hands--and who knows what to do with it?
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Postscript: My own copy is the mid-80s Signet printing, which includes a 4-page Introduction by the author.