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The Glass Menagerie Tennessee Williams Robert Bray 9780811214049 Books

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The Glass Menagerie Tennessee Williams Robert Bray 9780811214049 Books

Tennessee Williams won the Pulitzer Prize and the New York Drama Critics Circle Award for his 1945 play, "The Glass Menagerie". The work was the first success for its 34-year old author and the product of many years of hard work and frequent failure. The play quickly became an iconic part of American literature. John Lahr's biography, "Tennessee Williams: Mad Pilgrimage of the Flesh" (2014) inspired me to revisit Williams and "The Glass Menagerie".

The play is memory as Tom, the narrator and a character, states at the outset; and its predominant mood, according to Williams, is nostalgia. It is thus appropriate to recall my early experience with the play. In the early 1960s, we studied American literature in the junior year of high school. Our teacher assigned each member of the class to read and do an oral report on an American play. My play was "The Glass Menagerie". The teacher made plain her dislike for Williams based on what she saw as the sexual, violent character of most of his work. I had already seen Williams "Cat on a Hot Tin Roof" and "Summer and Smoke" performed on stage. I am afraid I disagreed with her broad opinion about Williams too vehemently for the time and place. I read "The Glass Menagerie" and gave what I recall as a bloated oral report which would have been defensive in tone given what I knew about my teacher's view of Williams. It probably wasn't so much a matter of not understanding the play. "The Glass Menagerie" was already standard high school reading and its themes and beautiful language are within the grasp of most high school students, including me at the time. I may have missed the play for itself in trying to impress the class -- a universal high school failing in such things -- and in rebelling against what I knew of my teacher's thinking.

The play is about memory and I remember my first reading, subsequent readings over the years, other readings of Williams, and life experiences which have informed my recent readings. Associations come from odd places. To take not the most important example, I studied Plato in college and, as with Williams, have gone back to him repeatedly over the years. I have recently reread a study of Plato I read in college. Plato taught the importance of "recollection" or "remembering" what one already knows as critical to knowledge and understanding. Williams stresses "memory" but in a different way from Plato. Plato's recollection is of the mind and Williams states explicitly that his memory speaks to his heart and to the hearts of those who see and read his work. Both types of memory are important, but it is probably more difficult to remember the heart.

Williams throughout and in "The Glass Menagerie" is a heavily autobiographical playwright. The play recollects Williams' life as a young man in St. Louis before he moved to New Orleans, explored his sexuality, and continued the process that eventually would lead to "The Glass Menagerie" and to his long career as a writer. The frustrated young poet Tom Wingfield, the narrator who both stands apart from the play and participates in it, is Williams' depiction of himself while Amanda, the former Southern belle who has been abandoned by her husband, depicts Williams' mother and the shy, withdrawn, and tragic Laura is based upon Williams' sister Rose who underwent a lobotomy in the 1930s which forever haunted her brother Tennessee. In its entirety, the play is set in a shabby apartment where Tom, 22, works in a shoe factory to support the lonely, unhappy family and Amanda tries with increasing intensity to find a job or a suitor for the 24 year old Laura, who has no apparent interests other than playing with small glass animals and listening to old records on the victrola. Tom needs to get away to pursue his life as a writer. When he chafes at his role, Amanda denounces his selfishness and enlists his help in finding a prospective suitor for Laura, a "gentleman caller". The caller happens to be an old high school acquaintance of both Tom and Laura, who had a secret crush on him. During an eventful dinner, Laura becomes enamored of her "gentleman caller" again; but the straightforward, conventional young man proves to be already engaged. Amid recriminations from his mother, Tom leaves the home at last, leaving Amanda to comfort her unhappy daughter. "Blow out your candles, Laura -- and so good-bye" the torn but resolute narrator concludes as he leaves to learn about the world.

The play is both lyrical and tightly controlled and constructed. It is about people unhappy, lonely, and lost, each in their different way including the "gentleman caller". The three Wingfield's each contend with their dreams and their difficulties in facing reality. Tom escapes at great cost to himself and to the family. In reading the play when young, I, together with most readers, would tend to think forward and out -- about young Tom trying to break free. In reading the play when much older, I thought of being out and of what has happened with the freedom that has been won in youth. "The Glass Menagerie" remains personal and poignant.

John Lahr's biography taught me a great deal about Williams and about this play. The Broadway debut starred an aging actress, Laurette Taylor, who gave a legendary performance as Amanda. Lahr describes the casting, the rehearsals, the critical notices and more. But Lahr gets to the heart of Williams' play when he succinctly describes its "dramatic goal": "to redeem life, through beauty, from the humiliation of grief."

The play was fresh to me as I read it. It also was a memory play in reminding me of my first experience with the play and of the intervening years leading to my most recent reading.

Robin Friedman


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The Glass Menagerie Tennessee Williams Robert Bray 9780811214049 Books Reviews

Had to get this for an English class. I would recommend just watching the movie on YouTube. It's word for word what the book/play is.
This Tennessee Williams classic is a multifaceted look at a dysfunctional family in the late 1930’s. It delves into familial obligations, human frailty, and misguided decisions. The play is absolutely timeless, due in large part to Williams’ magnificent job of creating a vivid scene in the reader’s mind. Most, if not all readers, can relate to varying aspects of the play, including the yearning for freedom from familial obligation, memories of our youth as we grow older, shattered dreams, and fear of stepping out of our comfort zone.

It’s most interesting to me that Williams appeals to the masses, young or old, across all generations. I remember this play having been one of the few I enjoyed reading in high school; I still enjoyed it just as much, all these years later, right along with my daughters. It is a true classic that has stood the test of time some 70+ years after it was written!
It tugged at the heart. Poor Laura. Poor Tom. Poor Amanda. All trapped in a world of brokenness and poverty. If you are a fan of Tennessee Williams, this is a must read play.
The book was great when it arrived. But and came with a cheap paper back and the book was way smaller then what I was expecting. Rather than that you get what you get and that's a book.
Good book. For my 14 year old boy it was a hard read when he loves fiction. Tenassee Williams uses so many adjatives in his writing it is a different style of writing.,Yet its a good lesson that details matter where writing is concerned.
…with honorable and not so honorable intentions.

I first saw this play produced in Atlanta, in the ‘70’s, and fragments of it have rolled around in my brain ever since. First and foremost there was the character of Amanda Wingfield, firmly stuck in the past, recalling her “glory days” as Bruce Springsteen would phrase it, in his famous song about two people in their ‘20’s, recalling how their life had peaked out in high school. For Amanda Wingfield, her “glory days” were from her teenage years also, in the Mississippi Delta, when she had 17 gentlemen callers seeking her hand… and probably a bit more. She tells her daughter, Laura, that a “girl had to be a conversationalist” back then. All those possibilities, the 17, and always the hint of so many more, yet she makes a “poor choice” who would abandon her and the family, and send a post card from Mexico that said simply “Hello, Good-bye.”

Tennessee Williams sets this play in America’s heartland, St. Louis. It is the late 1930’s, with news flashes involving the war in Spain, and Chamberlain. The Wingfield family is lower middle class, living in a tattered apartment, in a building with fire escapes, subsisting off the $65 a month son Tom, who works in a shoe store warehouse, brings home every month. Williams play is straightforward, and so easily understood, and packs so much pathos and heart-break into two hours of viewing, or reading, which chronicles the poverty of human existence. Reading the play after some four decades helped me recall some of the tragic circumstances of the other two members in the Wingfield family.

There is daughter Laura, a “cripple,” and even back then the mother admonishes Tom not to use that word. She has a physical challenge; that is all. But it dominates her life, and she has not been able to overcome it. Now, many years after high school, she still recalls how much noise her brace made, and knew everyone was looking at her. She is painfully, painfully shy, cannot stay in steno school because she threw up on the floor, and pretends to continue to go, but visits the parks instead. Her sole solace in life is her small collection of glass animals, including a unicorn, which mom dubs with the name of the play.

I had completely forgotten – or perhaps never realized the equal pathos in the life of son Tom. Stuck in a dead-end warehouse job, living with a mother and sister who are each in their very different worlds. The “breadwinner,” of sorts. He “escapes” from his humdrum life via the movies and alcohol, and endures the nagging of his mother. But he has his own plans… for a little real adventure in life, instead of living vicariously through the movies. “Chamberlain” haunts the au courant reader, with the realization that World War II is so near, and so now, on reflection, one must wonder how many bored warehouse clerks, from America’s heartland, found their adventure wading into the surf at Iwo Jima or Normandy? The climatic part of the play, which is what I will leave for the reader, is when Tom brings home a “gentleman caller” for Laura. As one might suspect, Williams remains true to his theme of pathos.

The author makes very effective use of a shadow screen on stage, and the New Directions version helped recall it after those four decades. When there was a flashback in the play, behind the screen, there were the shadows that captured the essence of the flashback. And when needed, certain words would be flashed on the screen. As is so often the case, the foreword and afterword provide limited value to the reader, and I think should be simply skipped. As for the play itself, it merits 5-stars, plus, and a re-read, a few years down the line.
Tennessee Williams won the Pulitzer Prize and the New York Drama Critics Circle Award for his 1945 play, "The Glass Menagerie". The work was the first success for its 34-year old author and the product of many years of hard work and frequent failure. The play quickly became an iconic part of American literature. John Lahr's biography, "Tennessee Williams Mad Pilgrimage of the Flesh" (2014) inspired me to revisit Williams and "The Glass Menagerie".

The play is memory as Tom, the narrator and a character, states at the outset; and its predominant mood, according to Williams, is nostalgia. It is thus appropriate to recall my early experience with the play. In the early 1960s, we studied American literature in the junior year of high school. Our teacher assigned each member of the class to read and do an oral report on an American play. My play was "The Glass Menagerie". The teacher made plain her dislike for Williams based on what she saw as the sexual, violent character of most of his work. I had already seen Williams "Cat on a Hot Tin Roof" and "Summer and Smoke" performed on stage. I am afraid I disagreed with her broad opinion about Williams too vehemently for the time and place. I read "The Glass Menagerie" and gave what I recall as a bloated oral report which would have been defensive in tone given what I knew about my teacher's view of Williams. It probably wasn't so much a matter of not understanding the play. "The Glass Menagerie" was already standard high school reading and its themes and beautiful language are within the grasp of most high school students, including me at the time. I may have missed the play for itself in trying to impress the class -- a universal high school failing in such things -- and in rebelling against what I knew of my teacher's thinking.

The play is about memory and I remember my first reading, subsequent readings over the years, other readings of Williams, and life experiences which have informed my recent readings. Associations come from odd places. To take not the most important example, I studied Plato in college and, as with Williams, have gone back to him repeatedly over the years. I have recently reread a study of Plato I read in college. Plato taught the importance of "recollection" or "remembering" what one already knows as critical to knowledge and understanding. Williams stresses "memory" but in a different way from Plato. Plato's recollection is of the mind and Williams states explicitly that his memory speaks to his heart and to the hearts of those who see and read his work. Both types of memory are important, but it is probably more difficult to remember the heart.

Williams throughout and in "The Glass Menagerie" is a heavily autobiographical playwright. The play recollects Williams' life as a young man in St. Louis before he moved to New Orleans, explored his sexuality, and continued the process that eventually would lead to "The Glass Menagerie" and to his long career as a writer. The frustrated young poet Tom Wingfield, the narrator who both stands apart from the play and participates in it, is Williams' depiction of himself while Amanda, the former Southern belle who has been abandoned by her husband, depicts Williams' mother and the shy, withdrawn, and tragic Laura is based upon Williams' sister Rose who underwent a lobotomy in the 1930s which forever haunted her brother Tennessee. In its entirety, the play is set in a shabby apartment where Tom, 22, works in a shoe factory to support the lonely, unhappy family and Amanda tries with increasing intensity to find a job or a suitor for the 24 year old Laura, who has no apparent interests other than playing with small glass animals and listening to old records on the victrola. Tom needs to get away to pursue his life as a writer. When he chafes at his role, Amanda denounces his selfishness and enlists his help in finding a prospective suitor for Laura, a "gentleman caller". The caller happens to be an old high school acquaintance of both Tom and Laura, who had a secret crush on him. During an eventful dinner, Laura becomes enamored of her "gentleman caller" again; but the straightforward, conventional young man proves to be already engaged. Amid recriminations from his mother, Tom leaves the home at last, leaving Amanda to comfort her unhappy daughter. "Blow out your candles, Laura -- and so good-bye" the torn but resolute narrator concludes as he leaves to learn about the world.

The play is both lyrical and tightly controlled and constructed. It is about people unhappy, lonely, and lost, each in their different way including the "gentleman caller". The three Wingfield's each contend with their dreams and their difficulties in facing reality. Tom escapes at great cost to himself and to the family. In reading the play when young, I, together with most readers, would tend to think forward and out -- about young Tom trying to break free. In reading the play when much older, I thought of being out and of what has happened with the freedom that has been won in youth. "The Glass Menagerie" remains personal and poignant.

John Lahr's biography taught me a great deal about Williams and about this play. The Broadway debut starred an aging actress, Laurette Taylor, who gave a legendary performance as Amanda. Lahr describes the casting, the rehearsals, the critical notices and more. But Lahr gets to the heart of Williams' play when he succinctly describes its "dramatic goal" "to redeem life, through beauty, from the humiliation of grief."

The play was fresh to me as I read it. It also was a memory play in reminding me of my first experience with the play and of the intervening years leading to my most recent reading.

Robin Friedman