In the Shadow of Tennessee Williams
Tennessee Williams makes me wonder why I even try. I spent my lunch hour today at the Monteleone Hotel, buying tickets to this weekend’s Tennessee Williams Festival. One of the events is a play about the author’s terrible relationship with his macho father, who hatefully called him Miss Nancy.
In spite of the father’s lifelong hostility toward him, the legendary playwright tried, but struggled, to love him.
Listen to this . . .
“The play that I want to write as a final play, some day is the story of my father . . . the angry hedge-hog under a floor lamp whose fading silk-fringe appeared to be weeping for him with more forgiveness and compassion than we were old enough or wise enough to give him.”
In just a few words he gives you, unforgettably, everything you need to know about his dad’s appearance, his disposition and his relationship with his children – enough to allow your imagination to fill in the blanks. He gives it to you in the slow, thoughtful writing voice of a Southern aristocrat.
When he writes about New Orleans, it’s the same. What can anyone write about the timeless moments that can transpire in the French Quarter after reading this, from “A Streetcar Named Desire”:
“Don’t you just love those long rainy afternoons in New Orleans when an hour isn’t just an hour – but a little piece of eternity dropped into your hands – and who knows what to do with it?”
Guy D. Johnson is a writer and marketing communications professional. Previously an animation studio owner, daily newspaper editor, reporter and photographer, volunteer fireman, railroad bridge gang helper, FM radio station underling and cave guide. He has lived on farmland trusted to the sun and rain; atop a wooded hill; beside great rivers; upon an arid, high plateau; and at the subtropical coast of the Gulf of Mexico. For 20 years, he worked and wrote in New Orleans.