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Good Art Speaks for Itself
Or why creators need to become irrelevant to their own art.
When revered playwright Tennessee Williams first released his autobiography, humbly titled “Memoirs”, criticism was fast-flowing. Down the decades, as new generations have gone on to discover Tennessee’s work and subsequently his memoir, one complaint continues to rise above the rest.
He doesn’t talk about the plays!
Fair enough, in 250 pages, the only references to any Williams plays are mostly tangential, relating to the various stage or screen adaptations and human interactions that ensued. Very briefly does the great man sit down to discuss the whys — the inspiration, the mood, nothing.
Why does Big Daddy act the way he does?
Are there any redeeming qualities to Stanley Kowalski?
Such questions are best answered by literary pundits and students laboring over their theses, and Tennessee Williams seemed to know it. Though even to him, the marked silence over the plays is a problem.
Multiple times, particularly towards the end of the book, Williams attempts an apologia for the absence of “play talk” in his autobiography.
“Why do I resist writing about my plays? The truth is that my plays have been the most important…
