To his credit Lahr recognises the limitation of such a reading. John Lahr Tennessee Williams: Mad Pilgrimage of the Flesh Audio CD Unabridged, Septemby John Lahr (Author), Elizabeth Ashley (Reader) 314 ratings 4.2 on Goodreads 825 ratings See all formats and editions Kindle 11.99 Read with Our Free App Audiobook 0. He was attracted to trash." This has elements of truth but Williams's character and dramas were more complex than this categorisation of him as a masochist on the hunt for rough trade. Beloved by an American public, Tennessee Williamss work - blood hot and personal - pioneered, as Arthur Miller declared, a revolution in American theatre. Lahr quotes Elia Kazan, who directed Streetcar, observing "Blanche (heroine of Streetcar) is attracted to murderer Stanley… Blanche wants the very thing that's going to crush her… That's the way Williams was. Such Williams' heroines as Blanche du Bois in A Streetcar Named Desire, Alma in Summer and Smoke, The Princess in Sweet Bird of Youth and Lady in Orpheus Descending are variously afflicted by sexual repression, hysteria, hypochondria, neuroses, terror of ageing and lust for a risky young man – all characteristics which they share with their author. For ever, since the high days of homophobia, Williams has been written up – though not off – as a playwright whose famous heroines are colourfully cross-dressed in elements of the playwright's own personality. To say this is hardly to offer a psychologically revealing comment on the genesis of Tennessee's compulsive need to write.
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