Ogden Nash: A Descriptive Bibliography Book

"Gentlemen Callers" looks at Tennessee William's feelings and attitudes towards homosexuality as expressed in his plays, but unlike most of today's critics he places these thoughts and attitudes in the context of their time and shows a man who was both ahead of his time and of his time. One of the main charges against William's is that his gay characters were self loathing and miserable. What one forgets is that William's in the 1950's was not in denial of his sexuality, nor was he closeted. And they neglect the fact that his straight characters were equally miserable and racked with questions.

The book looks deep into his classics "Glass Menagerie", "Cat On A Hot Tin Roof" and "Suddenly Last Summer" as well as his lesser known later works in which the climate had changed and it was more feasible to place gay characters center stage in a Broadway play, but where the need to conceal as well as reveal was gone and so was a dynamic which gave Williams' work much of it's poignancy.

It helps to be invested in the subject, because the approach can be heavy on the academic, but if you're gay and a Tennessee Williams fan, this book is terrific, and one that gives him his due as an artist fighting, not against his own acceptance of his sexuality, but with society's acceptance of it.