Two formative men of the American Theatre (Books - A Life by Elia Kazan & Tennessee Williams: Mad Pilgrimage of the Flesh by John Lahr)

The life stories of two American Theatre makers monopolized my reading back in January: Elia Kazan: A Life, film and theatre director Kazan's hefty, probing memoir (Alfred A. Knopf, 1988) and Tennessee Williams: Mad Pilgrimage of the Flesh (W.W. Norton & Co. 2014), John Lahr's deftly paced, thoroughly researched, deeply perceptive biography of the great playwright. Two men could not have had a greater influence on the structure and build of action, the feeling of innocence and epiphany, the rhapsodic music of text, the themes of individuality and of sex that were the coming-of-age of the American theatre and film in the 1930s - 1970s, than Williams and Kazan.  Two men could not have been more superficially different - Kazan was the son of Greek immigrants, born in Turkey, a scrappy fighter, and relentless womanizer, Williams a grandson of an American preacher, delicate, gay, a virgin until twenty-six years of age - but fundamentally they were remarkably similar. Aside from their obvious love of theatre, both seemed dissatisfied with the restrictions of their world, were driven to create theatre to give veiled expression to a deep sense of personal failure, both felt outsiders and compulsively pursued relief in work or, failing that, one from drink and the other from sex. John Lahr's quotes a letter from Williams to Kazan:

The startlingly original voice of James Purdy (Books - Eustace Chisholm and the Works; Gertrude of Stony Island Avenue by James Purdy)

James Purdy's voice is dirt plain and when he is telling a gritty story of desperation in depression era Southside Chicago, as he did in Eustace Chisholm and the Works (GMP Publishers Ltd., 1967/1987) his diction is almost like the furniture.  It it is part of the world.  You expect it to be there.

"What do I do, Ace?" Daniel covered his eyes with his palms.

"Tell him you're crazy about him."

"I can't do that."

"Let him tell you then."

"If I had the money, I'd take him with me to some far-off place."

Eustace Chisholm stared at Daniel, incredulous at having heard the last sentence, then, in exasperation, said: "You're in the farthest away place in the world now, mate.  You couldn't get any farther away than where you're living with Amos.  You're in the asshole of the universe and you don't need to waste more than a half cent of shoeleather to get back.  Go home and take him in your arms and tell him he's all you've got.  That's what you are to him too, and you'd better hurry, for it won't last for long for either of you, and so why spend any more of your time, his, or mine."

That story is one in which the main character, a gay poet, is dealt with cruelly by life.  It gives Eustace a cruel eye, from which he writes, and a hard disposition.  But in Gertrude of Stony Island Avenue (William Morrow & Co, 1997), the protagonist is an older woman, diminutive, frightened, and the plot more fantastical. One feels constantly - this is a work of art - but still it is about the cruellest of subjects, the grief of a parent (Carrie) for a deceased child (Gertrude).