{"product_id":"9780393247121","title":"Tennessee Williams: Mad Pilgrimage of the Flesh","description":"\u003cp\u003eNational Book Critics Circle Award Winner: Biography Category\u003cbr\u003e National Book Award Finalist\u003cbr\u003e 2015 Winner of the Sheridan Morley Prize for Theatre Biography\u003cbr\u003e American Academy of Arts and Letters’ Harold D. Vursell Memorial Award\u003cbr\u003e A \u003cem\u003eChicago Tribune\u003c\/em\u003e 'Best Books of 2014'\u003cbr\u003e \u003cem\u003eUSA Today\u003c\/em\u003e: 10 Books We Loved Reading\u003cbr\u003e \u003cem\u003eWashington Post\u003c\/em\u003e, 10 Best Books of 2014\u003cbr\u003e \u003cbr\u003e The definitive biography of America's greatest playwright from the celebrated drama critic of \u003cem\u003eThe New Yorker.\u003c\/em\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e John Lahr has produced a theater biography like no other. \u003cem\u003eTennessee Williams: Mad Pilgrimage of the Flesh\u003c\/em\u003e gives intimate access to the mind of one of the most brilliant dramatists of his century, whose plays reshaped the American theater and the nation's sense of itself. This astute, deeply researched biography sheds a light on Tennessee Williams's warring family, his guilt, his creative triumphs and failures, his sexuality and numerous affairs, his misreported death, even the shenanigans surrounding his estate. \u003cp\u003eWith vivid cameos of the formative influences in Williams's life—his fierce, belittling father Cornelius; his puritanical, domineering mother Edwina; his demented sister Rose, who was lobotomized at the age of thirty-three; his beloved grandfather, the Reverend Walter Dakin—\u003cem\u003eTennessee Williams: Mad Pilgrimage of the Flesh\u003c\/em\u003e is as much a biography of the man who created \u003cem\u003eA Streetcar Named Desire\u003c\/em\u003e, \u003cem\u003eThe Glass Menagerie\u003c\/em\u003e, and \u003cem\u003eCat on a Hot Tin Roof\u003c\/em\u003e as it is a trenchant exploration of Williams’s plays and the tortured process of bringing them to stage and screen.\u003c\/p\u003e \u003cp\u003eThe portrait of Williams himself is unforgettable: a virgin until he was twenty-six, he had serial homosexual affairs thereafter as well as long-time, bruising relationships with Pancho Gonzalez and Frank Merlo. With compassion and verve, Lahr explores how Williams's relationships informed his work and how the resulting success brought turmoil to his personal life.\u003c\/p\u003e \u003cp\u003eLahr captures not just Williams’s tempestuous public persona but also his backstage life, where his agent Audrey Wood and the director Elia Kazan play major roles, and Marlon Brando, Anna Magnani, Bette Davis, Maureen Stapleton, Diana Barrymore, and Tallulah Bankhead have scintillating walk-on parts. This is a biography of the highest order: a book about the major American playwright of his time written by the major American drama critic of his time.\u003c\/p\u003e","brand":"Norton, W. W. \u0026 Company, Inc.","offers":[{"title":"Default Title","offer_id":47104263717104,"sku":"9780393247121","price":19.95,"currency_code":"USD","in_stock":true}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0737\/7593\/9824\/files\/9780393247121_p0.jpg?v=1763696906","url":"https:\/\/shop-qa.barnesandnoble.com\/products\/9780393247121","provider":"Barnes \u0026 Noble (DEV)","version":"1.0","type":"link"}