Vieux Carre: A Play [Paperback]

Tennessee Williams (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: August 1979

Born out of the journals the playwright kept at the time, Tennessee Williams's Vieux Carré is not emotion recollected in tranquility, but emotion re-created with all the pain, compassion, and wry humor of the playwright's own 1938-39 sojourn in the New Orleans French Quarter vividly intact.

The drama takes it form from the shifting scenes of memory, and Williams's surrogate self invites us to focus, in turn, on the various inhabitants or his dilapidated rooming house in the Vieux Carré: the comically desperate landlady, Mrs. Wire; Jane, a properly brought-up young woman from New York making at last grab at pleasure with Tye, the vulgar but appealing strip-joint barker; two decayed gentlewomen politely starving in the garret; and the dying painter Nightingale, who tries to teach the young writer something about love--both of the body and of the heart. This is a play about the education of the artist, and education in loneliness and despair, in giving and not giving, but most of all in seeing, hearing, feeling, and learning that "writers are shameless spies," who pay dearly for their knowledge and who cannot forget. Building on two decades of Williams scholarship since Vieux Carré was originally published, Robert Bray, editor of The Tennessee Williams Annual Review, has provided a new introduction for this edition, giving the most authoritative account yet of its background and genesis.

--This text refers to an alternate Paperback edition.

Editorial Reviews

About the Author

Tennessee Williams (1911-1983) is the acclaimed author of many books of letters, short stories, poems, essays, and a large collection of plays, including The Glass Menagerie, A Streetcar Named Desire, Camino Real, Cat on a Hot Tin Roof, Orpheus Descending, The Night of the Iguana, and The Rose Tattoo. --This text refers to an alternate Paperback edition.

Product Details

• Paperback: 116 pages
• Publisher: W W Norton & Co Inc; reprint edition (August 1979)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0811207285
• ISBN-13: 978-0811207287
• Product Dimensions: 7.7 x 5.1 x 0.2 inches
• Shipping Weight: 4.8 ounces
• Average Customer Review: 5.0 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (1 customer review)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #3,115,980 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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.

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

5 of 5 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars A Wonderful Later Play, April 4, 2001

By A Customer

This review is from: Vieux Carre (Paperback)

*Vieux Carre* is probably the finest play of Williams' "Late" period--and it's terrific, though unfairly neglected. It's much more like the earlier work in terms of a "straight" narrative, and as good as it is I think we'll be seeing many more productions of it in the future.