Tennessee Williams: Everyone Else Is an Audience

Hayman ( Proust: A Biography ) analyzes the work of Pulitzer Prize-winning dramatist Tennessee Williams (1911-1983) in a study that emphasizes the extent to which Williams based his plays on the events of his life. Born into a Mississippi family with an alcoholic father and a mentally ill sister, Williams, a homosexual, subsequently found his adult relationships difficult. He conducted numerous casual affairs and abused his long-term lovers emotionally. Hayman theorizes that the disturbed and violent characters in such plays as The Glass Menagerie , A Streetcar Named Desire and other works were based on the playwright's family and friends, as well as on Williams himself. After his initial theatrical successes in the 1940s and '50s, Williams became addicted to drugs and alcohol and led a self-destructive life. Although Hayman acknowledges Williams's greatness as a writer, his portrait of the man will strike some readers as basically unsympathetic and as focusing excessively on the playwright's worst qualities. Photos not seen by PW. (Mar.)