The Mad Pilgrimage of the Flesh

Reading John Lahr’s lucid, eloquent, articulate, informative, revelatory, endearing, passionate, loving, measured, beautiful, literary biography of Tennessee Williams and am loving it, enjoying it, treasuring it, waiting for it night in and night again, or day in day out on the train, on a bench by the bay near my home looking out over to Staten Island and the Verazanno Bridge. What more do I have for you by way of critique–not yet. I am enjoying the book too much to engage in this. I do not know what took me so long to begin reading it after my birthday, when I received it as a gift from one of the two dearest persons in my life . . . I love the fact that Lahr does not begin with the birth of the author, nor does he begin with the author’s death, another tired convention I used to employ myself, and may even be used effectively, but has not been by too many writers who are simply trying to avoid the tired convention of beginning a biography with the beginning of the biogrpahee’s life. The biography begins with the opening night Broadway production of The Glass Menagerie. Bravo! Mr. Lahr.