CECIL BROWN
303
these girls! I didn't think I'd get out of there alive!
It
was near riot!"
He threw his head back and roared with laughter.
The most important event in Tennessee Williams' life was when
he realized how his weaknesses were to be his strengths. A cruel
father frustrated his hopes of romance with a girl whom he wanted to
attend college with, but the strict father felt the girl would distract
from his son's studies . So, Tom went to a different college. Then, the
father took him out of that one in his third year to work in his shoe
concern. Tennessee turned this into a strength: he disciplined
himself, hammering on his typewriter after work into daybreak.
Finall y after two years of this he went back to college, this time
to
the
University of Iowa, where he graduated at age twenty-seven. Then,
he moved to the Latin Quarter of New Orleans, the Greenwich
Village and Berkeley of its time, known affectionately as "sin city," a
world far from what his father would ever admit to. Tennessee never
returned to Mississippi or St. Louis to live, although he traveled
everywhere else in the world, Taos, New Mexico, California, and
New York when he was still poor, and Europe and Indonesia when
he became rich. His choice of where he lives-New Orleans and Key
West-are expressive of the folly and fantasy in the southern temper–
ament, which he loves so well. His captivating charm is due to his
having
to
make peace with two extremes of a man possessed by a very
sensual nature and a memory of a guilt-ridden past hovered over by a
cruel, inhibiting and ruthless father. He used art to remake his
familial and personal shortcomings into one of the strongest person–
alities in America.
" Yevtushenko is a very charming man, but not very diplo–
matic, " Tennessee said in his serious voice. "He saw my play
Small
Crafts Warning
and we met for lunch the next day. He said to me,
'Tennessee, you have only put thirty percent of yourself into that
play. I am not alone in this opinion. Everyone around me is saying
the same thing.' I said to him-hahaha-isn 't it fortunate that I
have thirty percent
left!
hahaha! "
What about Solzhenitsyn?"
I have only read
Cancer Ward.
It
lacks poetry, you know" he
paused, "but I would like to translate Chekov some day." This
evening's conversation took a serious turn as Tennessee got on the
subject of contemporary playwriting and playwrights. "The whole
of a play is exaggerated," he said, "But Harold Pinter has solved that
in his last play. The one about two women and a man. Marie, what's
the name of that play. We saw it together. It's Pinter's last play. "
