This Tennessee Williams means to be the definitive Williams book, and to combine biography with criticism in an effortless synthesis. To a large extent, it succeeds…

"Scrupulously researched and elegantly written…makes you feel the day-to-day life of Tennessee, onstage and off, like no other I’ve read…required reading for anyone in the theater."— Nathan Lane New York Times Book Review

"Offers plenty of backstage anecdotes and high private drama…. But Mr. Lahr, ever the critic, keeps the plays themselves front and center…. The book has already won enthusiastic advance notice…along with blurbs from a kick line of A-list ‘theatricals’ including Helen Mirren, John Guare and Tony Kushner."— Jennifer Schuessler New York Times

"Scintillating on the backstage and bedroom dramas and almost intrusively perceptive on the autobiographical nature of Williams’ art."— Charles McNulty Los Angeles Times

"Intricately detailed… gripping."— Janet Maslin New York Times

"A masterpiece."— Hilton Als New Yorker

"A crucial contribution to the arguments that should always rage around a man who was one of the greatest American playwrights of his tempestuous century."— Chris Jones Chicago Tribune

"Raises the curtain on Tennessee Williams."— Elissa Schappell Vanity Fair

"There is only one word for this biography: superb."— Kirkus Reviews, Starred Review

"Brilliant… [Lahr’s] achievement is not likely to be surpassed."— Publishers Weekly

"Splendid beyond words. It would be hard to imagine a more satisfying biography."— Bill Bryson

"This is a masterpiece about a genius. Only John Lahr, with his perceptions about the theater, about writers, about poetry, and about people could have written this book. What a marvelous read."— Helen Mirren

"Unsurpassable…An eloquent, spellbinding narrative that emerges as an instant classic."— Ron Chernow, Pulitzer Prize–winning author of Washington: A Life

"It is a MAGNIFICENT work. Mesmerizing, illuminating, and heartbreaking."— André Gregory

"Brilliant and seamless. A labor of the profoundest love, and it comes from the heart and mind of one of our greatest theater writers."— André Bishop, artistic director of Lincoln Center Repertory Theater

"A splendid book, one of the finest critical biographies extant."— Robert Brustein

"The singular achievement of John Lahr’s magisterial book, Tennessee Williams: Mad Pilgrimage of the Flesh is that it’s one betwitching writer’s journey into the lives—public and private—of another."— Jeremy Gerard Deadline Hollywood

"Magnificent…one of the best written and most extraordinary biographies I’ve ever read, in any field."— Mike Fischer Milwaukee Journal Sentinel

"At once sensitive and magisterial, and it fulfills the ultimate test for a literary biography by convincing you that the works cannot be understood without it. Once you have read it, it becomes part of their meaning."— John Carey Sunday Times (UK)

"It is a masterpiece on several levels: of synthesis and analysis (an amazing life apprehended afresh, with great learning lightly borne and a strong streak of showbiz savvy; a page-turner that is almost embarrassingly devourable)."— Paul Taylor The Independent

"Essential reading for anyone who cares about the theater."— Wendy Smith Daily Beast

"Dazzling… an epic achievement."— Ann Levin Associated Press

"Fascinating… Lahr gives us a sense of the ebb and flow of Williams’s life, exercising a critic’s keen eye on the plays, a novelist’s gift for characterization, and a historian’s awareness of the way a changing American society colored his work… As much a biography of the plays as of the playwright—a book that lets the life illuminate the work and the work illuminate the life."— Charles Matthews Washington Post

"Excellent… A forceful claim for the playwright’s immortality."— Laura Collins-Hughes Boston Globe

"Lahr’s expansive, polished and keenly observed volume is a major work of American theater criticism and biography."— Gerald Bartell San Francisco Chronicle

"Elegantly written as well as psychologically acute… Lahr balances quotation and interpretation, sympathy and criticism, in this searing and unforgettable portrait of the artist who gave voice to the repressed, the reviled and the restless."— Brenda Wineapple Wall Street Journal

"[P]rodigiously researched… acute and elegant… Lahr is most superb on the relationship between Williams and the director Eliz Kazan, perhaps his greatest collaborator."— New York Times Holiday Gift Guide

"Witting, moving, ferociously intelligent… essential reading for any theater fan."— Jocelyn McClurg USA Today

★ 2014-06-15
The tormented life of a celebrated American playwright.WhenThe Glass Menageriedebuted on Broadway in 1945, the opening-night audience erupted in thunderous applause. After 24 curtain calls, shouts of “Author, Author!” brought a “startled, bewildered, terrified, and excited” Tennessee Williams (1911-1983) to the stage. At 34, after a decade of failed productions, he had achieved the success for which he had been desperately striving. Arthur Miller called the play “a revolution” in theater; Carson McCullers saw in it the beginning of “a renaissance.” But praise could never quash the demons that haunted Williams throughout his life. In this majestic biography, former longtimeNew Yorkerdrama critic Lahr (Honky-Tonk Parade: New Yorker Profiles of Show People,2005, etc.) delineates the fears, paranoia and wrenching self-doubt that Williams transformed into his art. “I have lived intimately with the outcast and derelict and the desperate,” Williams said. “I have tried to make a record of their lives because my own has fitted me to do so.” In stories, poems and such plays asA Streetcar Named DesireandCat on a Hot Tin Roof,Williams drew upon his stultifying childhood; his anguish over his sister’s mental illness; and his promiscuity and failed love affairs. Addicted to alcohol and a pharmacopeia of narcotics, Williams at one point sought help from a psychoanalyst; however, when the treatment forbade him to write, he fled. His self-worth, Lahr concludes, “was bound up entirely in his work” and consequently in how directors, actors and especially critics responded to what he produced. Feeling “bullied and intimidated” by others’ expectations, he projected onto them (director Elia Kazan, most notably, or his long-suffering agent Audrey Wood) “his own moral failure and turned it into a kind of legend of betrayal.” Lahr knows his subject intimately and portrays him with cleareyed compassion. Drawing on vast archival sources and unpublished manuscripts, as well as interviews, memoirs and theater history, he fashions a sweeping, riveting narrative.There is only one word for this biography: superb.

2014 National Book Award, Short-listed
2014 National Book Critics Circle Award, Winner
2015 Plutarch Award, Long-listed