Memoirs

When Memoirs was first published in 1975 it created quite a bit of turbulence in the media - though long self-identified as a gay man Williams' candor about his love life sexual encounters and drug use was found shocking in and of itself and such revelations by America's greatest living playwright were called a raw display of private life by the New York Times Book Review. As it turns out Williams' look back at his life is not quite so scandalous as it once seemed; he recalls his childhood in Mississippi and St. Louis his prolonged struggle as a starving artist the overnight success of The Glass Menagerie in 1945 the death of his long-time companion Frank Merlo in 1962 and his confinement to a psychiatric ward in 1969 and subsequent recovery from alcohol and drug addiction all with the same directness compassion and insight that epitomize his plays. And of course Memoirs is filled with Williams' amazing friends from the worlds of stage screen and literature as he often hilariously sometimes fondly - sometimes not - remembers them: Laurette Taylor Gore Vidal Truman Capote Elia Kazan Marlon Brando Vivian Leigh Carson McCullers Anna Magnani Greta Garbo Elizabeth Taylor and Tallulah Bankhead to name a few. Contains mature themes.