Tennessee Williams Descended
Orpheus Descending, volunteered Mr. Tennessee Williams the other day, “is the tale of a wild-spirited boy who wanders into a conventional community of the South and creates the commotion of a fox in a chicken coop.” I never thought to catch Mr. Williams committing an understatement. But it finally happened. Orpheus Descending (I now know after meeting that creature in the Martin Beck Theater) is a tale of robbery, adultery, abortion, murder, lynching, bloodhounds tearing a fugitive-from-a-chain-gang to pieces, a crazy Negro yodeling Indian war cries; a tale of bastardy, frustrated visionaries, prostitution, plain lunacy, advanced lunacy, paralysis, dementia praecox, ordinary corruption, advanced corruption, lying, deceit; in short, a tale of a conventional community of the South. Manifestly not from that region, I shall have to take a professional Southerner’s word. But what’s this about a wild-spirited boy?
Comments