Customer Reviews

Tom: The Unknown Tennesse Williams

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Meticulously researched and sensitively written, this book is the definitive biography of Tennessee Williams, even though it only covers the period up to the beginning of his success. I haven't found any others that can rival its quality. The depth and detail are unsurpassed in Leverich's finely crafted portrait, revealing the many facets of one of America's greatest playwrights. As a "theater person," Leverich brings a special authority to his work, infusing it with expert analysis and theatrical history. A really great read!

"Tom: The Unknown Tennessee Williams" is a biography
written like a novel. Truly, this is the best account of Williams'
life, both personal and professional. Leverich captures the true Tom -
the man behind the writer, in an objective and sensual way. From
interviews from friends, professional associates and family, Leverich
paints a vivid picture of Williams and reveals his inner most feelings
from personal journal entries. As a poet-playwright, his writings have
established an eternal legacy, as a man, Leverich has provided the
means of understanding this legacy.

This was the most interesting biography I have ever read. I found that I was even reading the footnotes and bibliography!

The book begins with a delve into Tennessee Williams' genealogy (including a chart, which I referred to frequently while reading the book). The author goes on to describe Tennesee's formative years, home life, and young-adulthood. The book takes the reader up through Tennessee's overwhelming success with "The Glass Menagerie."

I found the book (and, therefore, Tennessee Williams) so interesting that I began researching Williams' works and also his favorite writers (Hart Crane, DH Lawrence). I call a biography a complete success that could have such an effect as it has on me.

I look forward to the next edition, though I wonder if it will ever be in print.

This is a wonderfully done book. I feel I've lived in "Tom's" shoes and appreciate who he was and the struggles he faced. It's a loving portrait that doesn't shy away from the honest details of the life of the young Tennessee. I hope the sequel that's to take us from the Glass Menangerie to the end of Tennessee's life comes out soon----I'll be waiting!!!

... read this book! No other book on the market about the poet-playwright provides such an extensive researched and interpretative view Williams' early life and its reflection in his work. Written with exhaustive and pain-staking detail, it is not devoid of a fluid style that Tennessee and Tom would have both been proud of. This reader/admirer is impatiently awaiting the second volume.

I've read them all, everything from his highly "colored" memoirs to Dotson Rader's companion-book (literally). "Tom" is both a scholarly and exhaustive work that blows away the veils of mystery and hyperbole and just, plain apocraphy surrounding Thomas Lanier Williams, the man. I highly recommend this book for T. Williams fans, for it is not only a history of the man but an artistic history of his progress toward the pinacle of his success in the theatre, the days of his wine and roses and menageries and streetcars. Mr. Leverich parallels the grow in Mr. William's theatre as well as personal "self". And when I get the cash, I'm a gonna buy me a copy, but for now, I just read it in the library! Read it. Enjoy it. Keep it forever.

"Tom" by Lyle Leverich is a truly outstanding work. Tennessee Williams himself picked Leverich to be his "official" biographer before he died. Indeed, Leverich was quite friendly with Williams the last few years of his life, and came to know him quite well. Ordinarily friendship can cause the biographer to lose his objectivity. That's not the case here. But the book isn't simply a collection of dates and events - it reads like a good novel, and is extremely well-written and well-researched. I'll be very surprised if "Tom" isn't nominated for a major literary award this year.

This is the first half of Lyle Leverich's literary biography. Leverich, who comes to letters from the theater, does a magnificent job at presenting a balanced picture of this most intriguing personality. Even leaving off at the raging success of THE GLASS MANAGERIE, Leverich has assured his place among literary biographers, and been granted prayers from many of us that he live long enough to accomplish the second half of the story.

This book is a new book, never used. And what an interesting book it is.
Williams is a very interesting man and the book gives many details of his
personal life....excellent reading

I always thought I knew a little bit about Tennessee Williams, but after reading this, the first of a projected two-volume biography of the man who is arguably one of America's greatest playwrights, I felt like I had spent evenings listening to Williams tell stories or even tap-tap-tapping away on his old manual typewriter in a sweltering apartment in St. Louis or New Orleans.

This biography is massive enough to be an exhaustive portrait and yet intimate enough that, coming away from it, the reader feels like he or she has been a part of Williams' world.

Covering Williams' life up until 1945 when The Glass Menagerie debuted on Broadway, this book provides a look at a gifted young author whose work is just beginning to hit its stride. That Tennessee Williams achieved the acclaim that he did is more surprising given the fractured family life that produced him. A father who could be distant even under the same roof; a mother whose outward sweetness concealed a very real monster; a sister who descended into madness despite her brother's love for her ... all are elements in Williams' life that found their ways into his work are spread out for the reader. Yet despite Williams' flaws - his drinking, his promiscuity, and more - he emerges as a fully realized human in much the way that his greatest characters become real on the stage.

With such a colorful subject as Tennessee Williams, it would be difficult to write a boring biography. In Tom: The Unknown Tennessee Williams, Lyle Leverich has produced a superb biography.