• Skip to main content
  • Skip to primary sidebar
  • Skip to footer

Meg Waite Clayton

New York Times Bestselling Author

  • Meg
    • Bio
    • Short Works
    • Meg’s Writing Process
  • Books
    • The Postmistress of Paris
    • The Last Train to London
    • Beautiful Exiles
    • The Race for Paris
    • The Wednesday Sisters
    • The Four Ms. Bradwells
    • The Language of Light
    • The Wednesday Daughters
    • International Editions
  • Events
  • News
  • Videos
  • Bookgroups
    • The Postmistress of Paris
    • The Last Train to London
    • The Race For Paris
    • The Wednesday Sisters
    • The Four Ms. Bradwells
    • The Language of Light
    • The Wednesday Daughters
    • My Bookclubs
  • Writing Tips
    • Tips for Writers
    • How Writers Get Started
    • On Agent Queries
    • Publishing Tips
  • Contact

December 3, 2012 By Meg Waite Clayton

Streetcars and Desire, Tennessee Williams and Writing

What is straight? A line can be straight, or a street, but the human heart, oh, no, it’s curved like a road through mountains.” – Tennessee Williams, A Streetcar Named Desire

Today is the 55th anniversary of the Broadway opening of “A Streetcar Named Desire,” which went on to win the Pulitzer Prize. Tennessee Williams was well-known by the time the play opened thanks largely to the tremendous success of The Glass Menagerie, but his path to success, like so many writers, wasn’t an easy streetcar ride. His college days ended with the Depression and without a diploma, and he was left to spend his early twenties working full shifts in a shoe factory and writing at night. His mother, according to Margaret Bradham Thornton, writing in Notebooks, said he would “go to his room with black coffee and cigarettes and I would hear the typewriter clicking away at night in the silent house. Some mornings when I walked in to wake him for work, I would find him sprawled fully dressed across the bed, too tired to remove his clothes.”
A Streetcar Named Desire opened at the Ethel Barrymore Theater with two relative unknowns in the lead roles, but they aren’t unknown now: Marlon Brando and Jessica Tandy.
Everyone starts somewhere if they are going to get anywhere. The thing is to get out there and start, even if it seems hard to do.
Writers from all over the world benefit from Williams’ generosity: he left his literary rights to the University of the South in honor of his grandfather; the royalties now help fund the school’s theater and writing programs, including the Sewanee Writers Conference, which is the finest writers conference I personally have attended. I’ve attended three times, including once as a Tennessee Williams Scholar, a direct beneficiary of William’s work and his generosity to other writers.
And any of us can benefit from reading his work. I’d use the G-word to describe him, but as he wrote in his memoirs, “When people have spoken to me of ‘genius,’ I have felt the inside pocket to make sure my wallet’s still there.” – Meg

 
 

Share:

Filed Under: Writing Tips Tagged With: a streetcar named desire, broadway, jessica tandy, marlon brando, plays, playwright, Tennessee Williams, theater, writing, writing quotes

Meg Waite Clayton

Meg Waite Clayton is a New York Times and internationally bestselling author of THE LAST TRAIN TO LONDON, a Jewish Book Award finalist based on the true story of the Kindertransport rescue of ten thousand children from Nazi-occupied Europe—and one brave woman who helped them escape. Her six prior novels include the Langum-Prize honored The Race for Paris and The Wednesday Sisters, one of Entertainment Weekly's 25 Essential Best Friend Novels of all time. A graduate of the University of Michigan and its law school, she has also written for the Los Angeles Times, The New York Times, The Washington Post, The San Francisco Chronicle, Forbes, Runners World, and public radio, often on the subject of the particular challenges women face. megwaiteclayton.com

Primary Sidebar

Categories

  • Book Marketing Tips (23)
  • Bookstores worth Browsing (34)
  • Guest Authors (215)
  • How a Book Gets Published (32)
  • Literary Travel (4)
  • Meg's Posts (388)
  • Poetry Tuesdays (24)
  • Publishing Tips (20)
  • Top Writing Tips (10)
  • Uncategorized (6)
  • Writing Quotes and Other Literary Fun (115)
  • Writing Tips (61)

Archives

Footer

Post Archives

Follow Meg on Goodreads

Follow

  • Facebook
  • Instagram

Copyright © 2022 Meg Waite Clayton · Site design: Ilsa Brink