Tenn at One Hundred: The Reputation of Tennessee Williams

	Tenn at One Hundred The Reputation of Tennessee Williams
	by David Kaplan
	Published on the occasion of his 100th birthday, this book contains eighteen essays that collectively explore Tennessee Williams and his legacy.
	Only Available in Trade Paperback

Tenn at One Hundred, edited by David Kaplan, is a comprehensive look at the reputation of America’s greatest playwright. Published on the occasion of Tennessee Williams’ centennial, Tenn at One Hundred contains eighteen essays—by authors including John Lahr, William Jay Smith, Sam Staggs, Amiri Baraka, John Patrick Shanley, Kenneth Holditch and Allean Hale—that explore the man and his legacy: the plays, films, reviews, talent, tenacity, good fortune, bad timing, friends, addictions, critics, producers, publishers, directors, actors, and biographers that helped to shape Tennessee Williams’ critical reputation and iconic status over the past seventy years.

Best known for the groundbreaking plays, A Streetcar Named Desire, Cat on a Hot Tin Roof, and The Glass Menagerie, Tennessee Williams began his writing career in the 1930s as a struggling and unknown poet. At the time of his death in 1983, Tennessee Williams was the most produced playwright in the country and one of the most ridiculed American writers. What were the events and decisions that created these conflicting extremes of reputation? How did Tennessee Williams come to be known as one the most shocking writers of the post-war era while he was also lauded as America’s “poet of human heart”? Tenn at One Hundred is the first book to attempt to answer these questions and to begin re-assessing Tennessee Williams’ reputation.

paperback, 340 pages, $29.95
ISBN 978-1-60182-424-0