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HIGH GEAR/APRIL 1978

WILLIAMS... WINDHAM

By George Brown

TENNESSEE WILLIAMS' LETTERS TO DONALD WINDHAM, 1940-1965. Edited and with comments by Donald Windham. 333 pages. Holt, Rinehart and Winston. 1977. $10.00

Facing page ninety-nine of Tennessee Williams' MEMOIRS, published in 1975, is a photograph, intriguingly artistic in a virile manner, of a handsome young man sitting on the floor, legs casually apart, with his arms and hands loosely clasped around his knees. Several inches of his bare legs show between his socks and trousers; he wears a checked shirt with a dark necktie; and his shadow falls on the wall. Under the picture Williams writes, "Donald Windham, my collaborator on 'You Touched 'Me!' in 1946, and an early friend in New York City, whose present disaffection

much regret." There are three smaller pictures of Windham in the book, all with Williams, but in the text Williams mentions his early friend only three times, all in swift passing. It probably was this picture and its caption that motivated Windham to assemble TENNESSEE WILLIAMS' LETTERS ΤΟ DONALD WINDHAM, 1940-1965 and to write an introduction, a running commentary with footnotes, and an appendix. Here we see the great playwright in his own words as he hasn't been revealed elsewhere, including in his own MEMOIRS. And Windham's writing is incisive and lucid. True, these are only fragments of Williams' life, but they are highly meaningful fragments. The book is a gold field of information about the creator of some of the best plays in the American theatre, including "The Glass Menagerie," "A Streetcar Named Desire", "Summer and Smoke," "The Rose Tattoo,"

"Camino Real," "Cat on a Hot Tin Roof," "Sweet Bird of Youth", and "The Night of the Iguana."

Tennessee Williams through the years has been a gypsy while Donald Windham remained more or less stationary in New York City, and the letters originate from New Orleans, Key West, St. Louis, Mexico City, Provincetown, Santa Monica, Rome and other places in Europe, New York City itself and elsewhere. Most of the letters were written in the 1940's, for with Williams' continued success in the late 1940's the letters began tapering off. There aren't a great deal for the 1950's and only a minimal amount for the first half of the 1960's. The trouble between the two friends apparently began with Williams' first success, "The Glass Menagerie," in 1945; or perhaps it is better to say that the trouble began with the production of their mutual effort, "You Touched Me!," which opened shortly after "Menagerie" and flopped. Until then their relationship seemed a joyous and carefree one. They apparently were true friends who loved each other but were not in love with each other. When their friendship began, Windham was living with another man, and Williams was friends with both of them.

During one brief period when both of them were unattached, they went out cruising together, something Williams seemed to remember through the years with fondness. Just what happened in the late 1940's? Did success and its complex demands make Williams a different person? Or did Williams' success nettle Windham, who was finding his own success elusive? Or was it a combination of both? The objective reader might find it difficult to reach a conclusion.

In Tennessee Williams' words,

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written at the time of original feeling, we see a bizarre, flaky, interesting, warm and complex individual. We see him witty, sad, kind, tender, campy (sometimes using the feminine gender when referring to males, including himself), occasionally a bit bitchy, and sometimes perhaps a bit cerebral. He gives details, sometimes rather graphic, of his promiscuous sex life. He gives a mini-picture of Hollywood during World War II and a substantial portrait of postwar Rome. We gain insights into Gore Vidal, Truman Capote, Christopher Isherwood and Carson McCullers. We see his tangled relationship with his mother and father, his smooth relationship with his maternal grandparents, and glimpse his relationship with his sister and brother. And there are glimpses of his lovers; the temporary (including the one-night stands) and then the long-term Frank Merlo; but there are never indepth portraits of the lovers.

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This is saying, of course, that Williams didn't want to face his conscience. Windham states that during this period Williams transferred his own feelings to Windham; that is, he would accuse Windham of slighting him when actually he was slighting Windham. According to Windham, Williams would make statements to others similar to the one about disaffection in his MEMOIRS: Windham would hear about it and make a positive disaffection in his MEMOIRS: Windham would hear about it and make a positive overture to his old friend, only to be rebuffed and hurt. Yet a strangely strong bond between the two men remained as each continued reluctant fully to relinquish the other.

Williams was a very sexual person, much more of a libertine than I had guessed all these years, this first being revealed in his frank MEMOIRS. From his work, which I've greatly admired since I saw Uta Hagen and Anthony Quinn in a touring production of "A Streetcar Named Desire" on the stage of an Ohio theatre when I was a junior in high school, I had pictured him as somewhat sexually reserved, rather at war with his erotic desires. But, no, not according to his letters (and to his MEMOIRS); any struggle that might have gone on was purely an inner one or an earlier one. During these years I had also pictured him as somewhat quiet and reserved in manner, at least a bit introverted; but these letters (and his MEMOIRS) refute that. He seems at least since 1940, a full-fledged extrovert.

Windham claims that Williams' art sprang from his self-repressed knowledge and that his writing was his way of dealing with revelations that were too upsetting for him to face realistically. He adds that none of Williams' characters, in the first ten years that he knew him, is a simple self-portrait or symbol of Williams himself but that each is a crucible in which he released part of his selfconcealed knowledge. Windham also states that up to "Camino Real" Williams' work seems to be self-dramatization and that after "Camino" it seems selfjustification. Regardless of how Williams translated his life into art, he remains a genius playwright.

Actually the first correspondence from Williams in the book is a note written in 1976 stating that he could think of nothing lovelier for him in the Bicentennial year than his and Windham's resumed contact, with "the letters to bind it all back together." But apparently they didn't resume contact; and if Windham's interpretation is correct, if he would make a gesture for such contact, Williams would shy from it.

an

just possibly did), then probably ninety percent, or all of them are lost, for Williams is not the orderly type to save such things. From these letters Donald emerges Windham interesting figure. Apparently a serious, dedicated and sophisticated person, his published work includes four novels, a number of short stories and a book of childhood reminiscences. Yet he never was completely successful.

In some of the letters Williams praises Windham's work highly, labeling it as non-commercial writing that would have to be handled specially. In the appendix Windham seems to state what to him must be a bitter admission: that Williams' praise and encouragement of his work was unkind that it was like giving a counterfeit coin to a hungry man. Perhaps | read wrong. I hope so. I had previously heard of Windham in connection with Tennessee Williams. I read "You Touched Me!" years ago and had mostly forgotten what it was about. However, I read his novel set in Rome, TWO PEOPLE, a couple of years after its publication in 1965 and remembered it as a well-written and interesting novel.

This book is an excellent companion to Williams' MEMOIRS. From now on one book can hardly be mentioned without adding the other. In MEMOIRS we see Williams as he sees himself, mainly in retrospect. In LETTERS we see him at the urgent moment, and as Windham sees him in retrospect. Windham claims that Williams' memory wasn't always good when he wrote MEMOIRS and that he has created his own "Bullfinch's anthology" about certain aspects of his life. Windham proceeds to set some things straight. It must be pointed out that in MEMOIRS Williams confessed that he had difficulty in placing events in chronological order; he even says. "Consistency, thy name is not Tennessee!" (A statement which he also made in one of his letters). Windham heartily agrees. Windham does seem more convincing as an accurate recorder. He kept a journal throughout the years, which he refers to in his footnotes, and apparently he kept every scrap which Williams wrote to him. If Windham didn't keep copies of his letters to Williams (and he

Windham feels that long ago Williams selected him as his conscience and this is the reason that beginning with the mid-1940's Williams began avoiding him until he reached the point in the early 1950's when he would hardly see him.

'

I guess it is significant, in the area of commercial success, that I discovered the book, my complete discovery of it, on sale for ninety-eight cents in a small book shop in St. John's Newfoundland. After reading it I considered that I had found a tremendous bargain. Windham is now about fifty-seven years old (Williams is now sixty-seven years old). Perhaps his star will rise, from what he has already written or will write. I am now interested in reading more of his work, particularly his novel, THE HERO CONTINUES, which was based on Tennessee Williams, dedicated to Tennessee Williams, and of which Tennessee Williams seemed to disapprove, at least in part.

The epilogue to the letters, in which Windham quotes James Russell Lowell about friendship as seen in the September of our years is poignant. Apparently Windham remains as reluctant to release Williams as Williams is to release Windham. The two early friends may not see much, or anything of each other; but they seem inextricably bound together in mind or heart-or

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