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Tennessee Williams: Mad Pilgrimage of the Flesh Paperback – September 21, 2015

by John Lahr (Author)

4.4 456 ratings

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National Book Critics Circle Award Winner: Biography Category
National Book Award Finalist
2015 Winner of the Sheridan Morley Prize for Theatre Biography
American Academy of Arts and Letters’ Harold D. Vursell Memorial Award
A Chicago Tribune 'Best Books of 2014'
USA Today: 10 Books We Loved Reading
Washington Post, 10 Best Books of 2014

The definitive biography of America's greatest playwright from the celebrated drama critic of The New Yorker.

John Lahr has produced a theater biography like no other. Tennessee Williams: Mad Pilgrimage of the Flesh gives intimate access to the mind of one of the most brilliant dramatists of his century, whose plays reshaped the American theater and the nation's sense of itself. This astute, deeply researched biography sheds a light on Tennessee Williams's warring family, his guilt, his creative triumphs and failures, his sexuality and numerous affairs, his misreported death, even the shenanigans surrounding his estate.

With vivid cameos of the formative influences in Williams's life―his fierce, belittling father Cornelius; his puritanical, domineering mother Edwina; his demented sister Rose, who was lobotomized at the age of thirty-three; his beloved grandfather, the Reverend Walter Dakin―Tennessee Williams: Mad Pilgrimage of the Flesh is as much a biography of the man who created A Streetcar Named Desire, The Glass Menagerie, and Cat on a Hot Tin Roof as it is a trenchant exploration of Williams’s plays and the tortured process of bringing them to stage and screen.

The portrait of Williams himself is unforgettable: a virgin until he was twenty-six, he had serial homosexual affairs thereafter as well as long-time, bruising relationships with Pancho Gonzalez and Frank Merlo. With compassion and verve, Lahr explores how Williams's relationships informed his work and how the resulting success brought turmoil to his personal life.

Lahr captures not just Williams’s tempestuous public persona but also his backstage life, where his agent Audrey Wood and the director Elia Kazan play major roles, and Marlon Brando, Anna Magnani, Bette Davis, Maureen Stapleton, Diana Barrymore, and Tallulah Bankhead have scintillating walk-on parts. This is a biography of the highest order: a book about the major American playwright of his time written by the major American drama critic of his time.

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Editorial Reviews

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"Scrupulously researched and elegantly written…makes you feel the day-to-day life of Tennessee, onstage and off, like no other I’ve read…required reading for anyone in the theater."
― Nathan Lane, New York Times Book Review

"Offers plenty of backstage anecdotes and high private drama…. But Mr. Lahr, ever the critic, keeps the plays themselves front and center…. The book has already won enthusiastic advance notice…along with blurbs from a kick line of A-list ‘theatricals’ including Helen Mirren, John Guare and Tony Kushner."
― Jennifer Schuessler, New York Times

"Scintillating on the backstage and bedroom dramas and almost intrusively perceptive on the autobiographical nature of Williams’ art."
― Charles McNulty, Los Angeles Times

"Intricately detailed… gripping."
― Janet Maslin, New York Times

"A masterpiece."
― Hilton Als, New Yorker

"A crucial contribution to the arguments that should always rage around a man who was one of the greatest American playwrights of his tempestuous century."
― Chris Jones, Chicago Tribune

"Raises the curtain on Tennessee Williams."
― Elissa Schappell, Vanity Fair

"There is only one word for this biography: superb."
― Kirkus Reviews, Starred Review

"Brilliant… [Lahr’s] achievement is not likely to be surpassed."
― Publishers Weekly

"Splendid beyond words. It would be hard to imagine a more satisfying biography."
― Bill Bryson

"This is a masterpiece about a genius. Only John Lahr, with his perceptions about the theater, about writers, about poetry, and about people could have written this book. What a marvelous read."
― Helen Mirren

"Unsurpassable…An eloquent, spellbinding narrative that emerges as an instant classic."
― Ron Chernow, Pulitzer Prize–winning author of Washington: A Life

"It is a MAGNIFICENT work. Mesmerizing, illuminating, and heartbreaking."
― André Gregory

"Brilliant and seamless. A labor of the profoundest love, and it comes from the heart and mind of one of our greatest theater writers."
― André Bishop, artistic director of Lincoln Center Repertory Theater

"A splendid book, one of the finest critical biographies extant."
― Robert Brustein

"The singular achievement of John Lahr’s magisterial book, Tennessee Williams: Mad Pilgrimage of the Flesh is that it’s one betwitching writer’s journey into the lives―public and private―of another."
― Jeremy Gerard, Deadline Hollywood

"Magnificent…one of the best written and most extraordinary biographies I’ve ever read, in any field."
― Mike Fischer, Milwaukee Journal Sentinel

"At once sensitive and magisterial, and it fulfills the ultimate test for a literary biography by convincing you that the works cannot be understood without it. Once you have read it, it becomes part of their meaning."
― John Carey, Sunday Times (UK)

"It is a masterpiece on several levels: of synthesis and analysis (an amazing life apprehended afresh, with great learning lightly borne and a strong streak of showbiz savvy; a page-turner that is almost embarrassingly devourable)."
― Paul Taylor, The Independent

"Essential reading for anyone who cares about the theater."
― Wendy Smith, Daily Beast

"Dazzling… an epic achievement."
― Ann Levin, Associated Press

"Fascinating… Lahr gives us a sense of the ebb and flow of Williams’s life, exercising a critic’s keen eye on the plays, a novelist’s gift for characterization, and a historian’s awareness of the way a changing American society colored his work… As much a biography of the plays as of the playwright―a book that lets the life illuminate the work and the work illuminate the life."
― Charles Matthews, Washington Post

"Excellent… A forceful claim for the playwright’s immortality."
― Laura Collins-Hughes, Boston Globe

"Lahr’s expansive, polished and keenly observed volume is a major work of American theater criticism and biography."
― Gerald Bartell, San Francisco Chronicle

"Elegantly written as well as psychologically acute… Lahr balances quotation and interpretation, sympathy and criticism, in this searing and unforgettable portrait of the artist who gave voice to the repressed, the reviled and the restless."
― Brenda Wineapple, Wall Street Journal

"[P]rodigiously researched… acute and elegant… Lahr is most superb on the relationship between Williams and the director Eliz Kazan, perhaps his greatest collaborator."
― New York Times Holiday Gift Guide

"Witting, moving, ferociously intelligent… essential reading for any theater fan."
― Jocelyn McClurg, USA Today

About the Author

National Book Award finalist John Lahr is the author of Tennessee Williams: Mad Pilgrimage of the Flesh, among other books. He was the senior drama critic of The New Yorker for over two decades. He has twice won the George Jean Nathan Award for Dramatic Criticism and is the first critic ever to win a Tony Award (coauthor, Elaine Stritch at Liberty).

Product details

Publisher ‏ : ‎ W. W. Norton & Company; Reprint edition (September 21, 2015)
Language ‏ : ‎ English
Paperback ‏ : ‎ 784 pages
ISBN-10 ‏ : ‎ 0393351653
ISBN-13 ‏ : ‎ 978-0393351651
Item Weight ‏ : ‎ 1.4 pounds
Dimensions ‏ : ‎ 5.6 x 1.6 x 8.3 inches

Best Sellers Rank: #244,892 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)
- #53 in Performing Arts History & Criticism
- #91 in Theatre Biographies
- #977 in Author Biographies

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4.4 456 ratings

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John Lahr

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John Lahr writes for The New Yorker, where he was for 21 years the Senior drama critic of the magazine. A veteran of all aspects of the theatre, Lahr has contributed behind-the-scenes portraits, reviews, and Profiles, and has expanded the magazine's drama coverage beyond Broadway to include the work of international theatre and regional companies.

A former theatre critic at The Nation, The Village Voice, and British Vogue, among other publications, Lahr has published seventeen books on the theatre and two novels, "The Autograph Hound," and "Hot to Trot." His book "Dame Edna Everage and the Rise of Western Civilization," won the 1992 Roger Machell Prize for best book on the performing arts. His other works include "Light Fantastic: Adventures in Theatre," (1996) and "Show and Tell: New Yorker Profiles," (2000). In 2001, he edited "The Diaries of Kenneth." His expanded New Yorker article on Frank Sinatra was made into a book with photographs, "Frank Sinatra: The Artist and the Man." Lahr's most recent book is "Honky Tonk Parade: New Yorker Profiles of Show People," published in 2005.

Lahr served as literary adviser to the Tyrone Guthrie Theatre in Minneapolis in 1968, and as Literary Manager of the Vivian Beaumont Theatre from 1969 to 1971. He was the co-producer of the 1987 film "Prick Up Your Ears," based on his Joe Orton biography of the same title, and was the editor of "The Orton Diaries." Lahr has also written numerous movie scripts. His short film "Sticky My Fingers. . . Fleet My Feet" (directed by John Hancock) was nominated for an Academy Award in 1971.

Lahr is a two-time winner of the George Jean Nathan Award for Dramatic Criticism. In 1968, he became the prize's youngest recipient; he was honored again in 1993. Lahr has written many stage adaptations, which have been performed in England and the United States, including:"Accidental Death of an Anarchist," "The Manchurian Candidate," "The Bluebird of Unhappiness: A Woody Allen Revue," and "Diary of a Somebody," which began at the Royal National Theatre, played the West End, and later toured England. He co-authored the Tony Award-winning "Elaine Stritch at Liberty," which won the 2002 Drama Desk Award for outstanding book of a musical. Lahr, who was the first drama critic to win a Tony Award, is the son of the comedian Bert Lahr, whom he wrote about in his biography "Notes on a Cowardly Lion." He divides his time between New York and London and maintains a Web site at www.johnlahr.com.

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Margot McDonnell

A True but Depressing Portrait of an American Artist

Reviewed in the United States on December 19, 2014

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Author John Lahr had a mountain to climb when he took on the burden of writing Tennessee Williams' bio. The result of his exhaustive research spill 100 pages beyond the story in notes and references, leaving one to conclude that only a biographer obsessed could have accomplished what John Lahr did in this portrait of a literary genius who destroyed himself with booze and drugs out of frustration, self hatred, even boredom.

However, Williams' characterization, his attitude toward his craft, the fervor with which he vowed to tell his story make up the heart of this book. We learn what it means to live for your art and that also in the world of producers, directors, actors, you're only as good as your last play. Williams' life was just as wild as his plays, and even though many of his works won great acclaim (The Glass Menagerie, Streetcar Named Desire, Cat on a Hot Tin Roof), he suffered often from a lack of confidence. He also had trouble with relationships, though as a gay man, he had partners for fairly long periods but not particularly happy ones.

Lahr also takes us through the process of getting a play to Broadway, a much more grueling ordeal than one can imagine, but fascinating. The director, the actors, the producer, the rewrites, the haggling, especially of Williams refusing to revise. Then the play becomes a movie, which comes with a new set of problems.

For certain, some of this biography was hard to read, not because of the prose style or book length (766 pp.) but because of Williams' dreadful life (his father called him Miss Nancy, and his mother had Williams' beloved sister lobotomized). Often he went into hysterics, ran off to Europe, threw money around, tried to kill himself, and was stuck with unsavory characters because of his generosity. One of them, Maria St. Just, nearly ruined his legacy after his death. St. Just was appointed as the overseer of his literary collection and refused almost everyone the right to quote any work or perform it. Williams had known she was an opportunist but hadn't gotten around to changing his will.

There was no hope by the end of this biography, yet the book was satisfying to read because of John Lahr's talent for characterization by gathering and synthesizing Williams' thoughts and actions through hundreds of letters, sometimes so well that I felt I knew this man with the emotions of a child as well as the will and talent to define the human condition as few ever could. It will stay with me for a long time.

16 people found this helpful

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Philip L. Tudor

The Best Biography I Have Ever Read

Reviewed in the United States on September 19, 2014

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I have always wanted to read a biography of Tennessee Williams after I saw "Summer and Smoke" many years ago in the early morning hours. A few years ago, I made my first try by starting "Tom", which was supposed to be the first of two comprehensive books about Williams' life. Unfortunately, the author died before Book Two could be completed; and, in addition, I found "Tom" to be one of the driest books I had ever read, full of facts but not written in a way that I wanted to turn to the next page. Thus, I gave up after a few pages.

John Lahr was supposed to pick up where the author of "Tom" left off, and thankfully decided to write an entirely new and excellent biography. This book not only covers Williams' life in a readable way that engages the reader; but also analyzes each of Williams' works as they related to events of, and the psychology of, Williams own life and emotions. It also provides, through letters and remembrances of the people involved, the inside dealings of Broadway and Hollywood. The reader feels like she or he is actually present as the plays and films are created.

Although to the dismay of some gay liberation groups, Williams' "coming out" as a statement was far from dramatic, the book shows that Williams was a pioneer of gay liberation long before there WAS a gay liberation movement. Williams never attempted to hide his sexuality, even when he was the object of intense public focus after he became famous. He simply lived his life, which happened to include a gay lifestyle, and those around him accepted him for who he was. During the ugly McCarthy years, the book shows that not only did America become super paranoid about Communism in the entertainment world, it also became blatantly homophobic in a way it had not been in the 1930s and 1940s. Nonetheless, Williams continued to live his life.

In regard to the alcohol and drug abuse that eventually killed Williams, the book shows how the rich and famous have access to doctors who readily cater to their needs to get high, whether through the unnatural brightness of speed, or the false sense of security and induced sleep by tranquilizers. For example, Williams received injection amphetamines perfectly legally from a doctor called "Dr. Feelgood", who was not only a doctor for Williams but also for John F. Kennedy (who exclaimed, "I don't care if its piss, it works"). Always, there was the ready access to legal drugs, as well as the wealth to endlessly engage in them.

I have never read a biography which so readably shows the outside and inside or its subject so thoroughly. The reader will feel that he or she is right beside Williams through his entire life.

60 people found this helpful

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G.R.Egoville

Playwriters must read

Reviewed in the United States on December 22, 2014

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This book is very well written. John Lahr has captured the tortured personality of this 20th Century genius as well as anyone could. One wants to believe that Tennessee Williams lived his life as an openly gay man on his terms. His choice took enormous courage at the time. But he had demons that no amount of courage could conquer. This fact made the book hard to read and harder to enjoy as much as one did his plays. Mr. Lahr used Tennessee's poetry throughout this book and they were significant insights into his life and relationships. I would recommend this book to anyone interested in theater, mid century geniuses and the writer's life.

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Jose

Excepcional

Reviewed in Brazil on October 10, 2019

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Excepcional

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Any Book Supply Deepak Shaw

Good

Reviewed in India on July 21, 2019

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Good

Antón Barrio

Una gran obra para amantes de Williams.

Reviewed in Spain on November 15, 2017

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Tanto si adoras a Tennesse Williams, como si no estás del todo familiarizado con él, la obra llega tanto a fanáticos como a lectores ocasionales. Una nueva perspectiva de la vida y obra del autor americano.

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Can Çömlekçi

Talented and Troubled

Reviewed in Canada on January 17, 2016

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This is a definitive biographer of arguably the greatest American playwright of the 20th century. The biography is meticulously written, a literate and fascinating journey for the reader into the talented and troubled professional and personal lives of Tennessee Williams. Any serious aficionado of the theater and film must read this engrossing book. It makes one realize that Williams and his legacy is not only secure, but continues to grow with the passing of time. His life may have been troubled, but his talent is timeless. The world of the theater is not often blessed with the likes of a Tennessee Williams. We are in his debt.

Bookworm53

long book on a wild and wildly talented playwright

Reviewed in Italy on December 19, 2015

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Lahr was a noted theatre critic who took 12 years to write this book. Exhaustive and well written although oddly since Williams died a long time ago it doesn't really revisit the durability of his plays. Will TW still be considered one of the greats in 50 or 100 years? Lahr doesn't hazard a guess, which would have been the icing on the cake of his book.

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