Tennessee Williams and the South [Hardcover]

Kenneth Holditch (Author), Richard Freeman Leavitt (Author), W. Kenneth Holditch (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: April 2002

No other writer has been more closely connected to the region of his birth than Tennessee Williams. Indeed, he remarked on several occasions that the farther south one went in America, the more congenial life was. Williams never forgot the "more congenial climate" the South afforded him and his creativity and this book underscores that connection by featuring, in addition to a substantial essay, photographs of people and places captioned with quotations from his plays, memoirs, and letters.

Editorial Reviews

From the Inside Flap

Words and pictures that show the South's imprint on the life and works of the great playwright --This text refers to the Paperback edition.

About the Author

Kenneth Holditch is professor emeritus at the University of New Orleans, the editor of the Tennessee Williams Journal, and the coeditor (with Mel Gussow) of the Library of America edition of Williams's works.

Richard Freeman Leavitt (1929-2003) was the editor and compiler of The World of Tennessee Williams and the compiler of the photographs and the genealogical chart for Lyle Leverich's Tom: The Unknown Tennessee Williams.

--This text refers to the Paperback edition.

Product Details

• Hardcover: 111 pages
• Publisher: University Press of Mississippi (April 2002)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 1578064104
• ISBN-13: 978-1578064106
• Product Dimensions: 8.7 x 8.4 x 0.6 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1.2 pounds
• Average Customer Review: 4.0 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (1 customer review)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #2,822,519 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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Customer Reviews

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0 of 1 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars Kinda slim pickins photographically speakin, January 9, 2012

By 

J. Faulk (New York NY USA) - See all my reviews
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This review is from: Tennessee Williams and the South (Paperback)

The restrictive "and the South" limits this picture book to the playwright's childhood in Mississippi; his vivifying transfer to old New Orleans in 1939 and his series of stays there thruout his life; and his periods of residence in Key West. The photos leave the impression that there's not that much to choose from. Since many of his plays have Southern settings, production stills qualify for inclusion.

I don't know if coauthors Leavitt (1929-2003) and Holditch (1933- ) related to each other as friends or more than friends--both got to know TW pretty well. The biographical essay supporting this photo album is fulsome in positive regard for TW: Americ's greatest playwright, a premier poet and short story writer, a fighter never defeated by his demons or indeed the demons of others. Well, in Williams' lifetime (1911-1983) the Broadway stage, the movies subject to the Breen Office, shaky homosexual relations + trade snacks, the writer's shifty psyche, and his mothball suth'n accent cooked up into quite a stew.

Two revelatory must-reads are his Notebooks and his Letters, vol. 2, 1945-1957--both with extensive notes by the editors.