Tom: The Unknown Tennessee Williams Book

Just a hair shy of perfection in literary biography.

What is absent nearly altogether, and what I miss, is analysis of TW's writing before Glass Menagerie. To my mind his thought and perspective on the world must represent events in his inner/imaginary/creative life. These events needn't correspond to happenings that a contemporary could have observed and reported. But even if the poems and plays express momentary feelings, thoughts or experiments in sensibility and expression, these are also biographical facts, and I want to know about the content of his thinking, the absolute presuppositions from which he created his poems and plays. No content of this kind appears in Leverich's biography.

I found the device that Leverich deployed endlessly a bit annoying. He insisted that "Tom," the young poet morphed into "Tennessee" the professional playwright, that "Tom" in fact created "Tennessee" and hid behind that persona in order to protect "Tom," his kinder, gentler self. I don't buy this for a minute - for many reason, not least of which is that Leverich characterizes both "Tom" and "Tennessee" differently as the biography proceeded. Neither "Tom"" nor "Tennessee" became fixed and settled identities as far as I can tell. Moreover, Leverich was primarily a man of the theater - so he appears to like these discontinuities and plot points to enhance the drama of a biography that was sufficiently eventful without resort to an artifical construct. Then there's the point that as a historian, I am very reluctant to accept discontinuity of just about any type. What Leverich sees as discontinuity, I see as maturation.

But this second criticism is a minor quibble with one of the best literary biographies I have read.