The rivers of mutual affection, admiration, and artistry form a powerful confluence in these deeply affecting exchanges.
A collection of revealing and moving letters, spanning nearly 40 years, between the celebrated playwright and his publisher and friend at New Directions.
Laughlin, a poet in his own right, emerges in these pages as an exemplar of a friend. Invariably supportive, encouraging, and compassionate, the publisher was steadfast in his belief in Williams’ work—not just plays, but also poems and short stories—and his deep affection for the man. The early letters here, the majority of which are from Williams when he was young and barely known, ripple with hope and ambition. Even as early as 1942, Laughlin was writing that a script was “extremely interesting and very beautiful in places.” This sort of language continued until Williams’ death in 1983. As his career began to skyrocket (with The Glass Menagerie and A Streetcar Named Desire), he showed his own loyalty to Laughlin and ND by having his work published entirely with them. Later, however, we read that ND did not really have an interest in Williams’ projected memoir. His letters—even the brief ones—often contain luminescent sentences and a refreshing wryness: “The evils of promiscuity are exaggerated,” he wrote in 1945. “Of course, the primary and ultimate object is to remain alive,” he said in 1971. Occasionally, Williams offers snarky comments—e.g., about Gore Vidal—and some harsh ones for various critics, including Paul Goodman and Robert Brustein. Throughout, both Williams and Laughlin emerge as avid readers and admirers of the work of other writers, including Paul Bowles and others. The text is gracefully edited and thoughtfully and unobtrusively annotated by Fox, former president and publisher of ND, Williams’ last editor, and Laughlin’s co–literary executor; and Keith, an acting teacher and consulting editor at ND. The editors inform us about the people in Williams’ life and the specifics of the Williams productions that the letters discuss: cast members, director, critical and popular responses, etc.
The rivers of mutual affection, admiration, and artistry form a powerful confluence in these deeply affecting exchanges.Pub Date: March 13, 2018
ISBN: 978-0-393-24620-9
Page Count: 384
Publisher: Norton
Review Posted Online: Dec. 23, 2017
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 15, 2018
The author's youthfulness helps to assure the inevitable comparison with the Anne Frank diary although over and above the...
Elie Wiesel spent his early years in a small Transylvanian town as one of four children.
He was the only one of the family to survive what Francois Maurois, in his introduction, calls the "human holocaust" of the persecution of the Jews, which began with the restrictions, the singularization of the yellow star, the enclosure within the ghetto, and went on to the mass deportations to the ovens of Auschwitz and Buchenwald. There are unforgettable and horrifying scenes here in this spare and sombre memoir of this experience of the hanging of a child, of his first farewell with his father who leaves him an inheritance of a knife and a spoon, and of his last goodbye at Buchenwald his father's corpse is already cold let alone the long months of survival under unconscionable conditions.
Pub Date: Jan. 16, 2006
ISBN: 0374500010
Page Count: 120
Publisher: Hill & Wang
Review Posted Online: Oct. 7, 2011
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 15, 2006
Well-told and admonitory.
Young-rags-to-mature-riches memoir by broker and motivational speaker Gardner.
Born and raised in the Milwaukee ghetto, the author pulled himself up from considerable disadvantage. He was fatherless, and his adored mother wasn’t always around; once, as a child, he spied her at a family funeral accompanied by a prison guard. When beautiful, evanescent Moms was there, Chris also had to deal with Freddie “I ain’t your goddamn daddy!” Triplett, one of the meanest stepfathers in recent literature. Chris did “the dozens” with the homies, boosted a bit and in the course of youthful adventure was raped. His heroes were Miles Davis, James Brown and Muhammad Ali. Meanwhile, at the behest of Moms, he developed a fondness for reading. He joined the Navy and became a medic (preparing badass Marines for proctology), and a proficient lab technician. Moving up in San Francisco, married and then divorced, he sold medical supplies. He was recruited as a trainee at Dean Witter just around the time he became a homeless single father. All his belongings in a shopping cart, Gardner sometimes slept with his young son at the office (apparently undiscovered by the night cleaning crew). The two also frequently bedded down in a public restroom. After Gardner’s talents were finally appreciated by the firm of Bear Stearns, his American Dream became real. He got the cool duds, hot car and fine ladies so coveted from afar back in the day. He even had a meeting with Nelson Mandela. Through it all, he remained a prideful parent. His own no-daddy blues are gone now.
Well-told and admonitory.Pub Date: June 1, 2006
ISBN: 0-06-074486-3
Page Count: 320
Publisher: Amistad/HarperCollins
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: March 15, 2006
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