Tennessee Williams' centenary celebration this month includes a boxed-set edition of his plays
With Tennessee Williams’ 100th birthday approaching March 26 and the man himself no longer with us so we can coax him to “blow out your candles, Tennessee” (he died 28 years ago last week, age almost 72), the Library of America will honor him with a boxed set instead.
It has been selling two volumes, “Plays 1937-1955” and “Plays 1957-1980” since Williams' 90th birthday anniversary but now will box them into “The Collected Plays of Tennessee Williams,” on sale March 14 and totaling 2,053 pages. The list price is $80 — the same as for the two volumes purchased separately. It’s not a complete dramatic works package, but the 33 plays include, as a Times reviewer put it upon the initial publication, “all the plays that matter, the works of a master of his craft, with all the author's introductions, notes and pertinent essays.”
Culture Monster would only caution purchasers to be careful; drop this set on your foot, and you'll be howling like Marlon Brando in “A Streetcar Named Desire,” except probably something other than "Stellllaaaahhhh!"
Out of more than 80 authors in the Library of America series (not counting anthologies), the only other playwrights are Eugene O’Neill, with three volumes totaling 3,203 pages, the Broadway plays of George S. Kaufman and his various collaborators (911 pages), Arthur Miller through 1961 (774 pages) and Thornton Wilder through 1943 (888 pages).
Are there other American playwrights who ought to be honored with a volume in this series?
Related
Local theaters celebrate Tennessee Williams' 100th birthday with a trio of plays
Theater review: 'Vieux Carre' at REDCAT
Critic's Notebook: Wooster Group revives Tennessee Williams' 'Vieux Carre'
Theater review: 'The Glass Menagerie' at the Mark Taper Forum
— Mike Boehm
Photo: Tennessee Williams. Credit: A&E.
LOA should publish works by the following playwrights and collections:
Rodgers and Hammerstein
Spalding Gray (from Swimming to Cambodia to Life Interrupted)
William Saroyan (some plays along with stories and a few novels or one volume devoted to novels, the other devoted to stories and plays)
Susan Glaspell (her best plays, along with a novel, some stories, and excerpts from her non-fiction)
William Inge (maybe include his novels?)
Archibald MacLeish (with his poems?) He won three Pulitzers!
Lorraine Hansberry (including all her other writings)
Romulus Linney
August Wilson (along with his non-fiction)
Elmer Rice (along with a few novels and non-fiction)
Carson McCullers (not a major playwright, but her one play along with stories, poems, posthumous works)
Early African-American Plays (including plays by Langston Hughes, Eulalie Spence, W.E.B DuBois)
James Purdy (along with his short stories, drawings)
Clifford Odets
Wendy Wasserstein
Plays about AIDS (various playwrights, a special collection)
Maxwell Anderson (a selection of his plays, along with his screenplays, poems, and essays)
Paddy Chayefsky (a sampling, with screenplays)
Paul Zindel (along with some novels)
Vladmir Nabakov (not a major playwright, but his plays could be published with his criticism or with his stories and poetry)???
Edgar Lee Masters (not a major playwright, but his plays could be published along with his poetry and essays)
Posted by: Asher | March 01, 2011 at 05:57 PM