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 Carre: 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 Carre 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.

About the Author
Tennessee Williams (1911-1983) was America's most influential playwright. Readers have devoured his poetry, essays, short stories, and letters, as well as his fantastic late plays, his remarkable corpus of one-acts, and his greatest plays-The Glass Menagerie, A Streetcar Named Desire, Cat on a Hot Tin Roof, The Night of the Iguana, The Rose Tattoo, Suddenly Last Summer, and Camino Real. Williams is a cornerstone of New Directions-we publish everything he wrote. He is also our single bestselling author. Robert Bray is an author, editor, and Tennessee Williams scholar.


Book Information
ISBN 9780811214605
Author Tennessee Williams
Format Paperback
Page Count 116
Imprint New Directions Publishing Corporation
Publisher New Directions Publishing Corporation
Weight(grams) 130g
Dimensions(mm) 206mm * 132mm * 13mm