One Arm and Other Stories

by Tennessee Williams

Here are the eleven remarkable stories of Tennessee Williams's first volume of short fiction, originally published in 1948 and reissued as a paperbook in response to an increasingly insistent public demand. It was this book which established Williams as a short story writer of the same stature and interest he had shown as a dramatist. Each story has qualities that make it memorable. In “One Arm” we live through his last hours and memories with a 'rough trade" ex-prizefighter who is awaiting execution for murder. "The Field of Blue Children" explores some of the strange ways of the human heart in love, "Portrait of a Girl in Glass" is a luminous and nostalgic recollection of characters who figure in "The Glass Menagerie," while "Desire and the Black Masseur" is an excursion into the logic of the macabre. "The Yellow Bird," well known through the author's recorded reading of it, which tells of a minister's daughter who found a particularly violent but satisfactory way of expiating a load of inherited puritan guilt, may well become part of American mythology.

Genres: Short Stories, Fiction, Classics, LGBT, Plays, The United States Of America, Queer

222 pages, Paperback

First published January 1, 1948

About the author

Thomas Lanier Williams III, better known by the nickname Tennessee Williams, was a major American playwright of the twentieth century who received many of the top theatrical awards for his work. He moved to New Orleans in 1939 and changed his name to "Tennessee," the state of his father's birth.

Raised in St. Louis, Missouri, after years of obscurity, at age 33 he became famous with the success of The Glass Menagerie (1944) in New York City. This play closely reflected his own unhappy family background. It was the first of a string of successes, including A Streetcar Named Desire (1947), Cat on a Hot Tin Roof (1955), Sweet Bird of Youth (1959), and The Night of the Iguana (1961). With his later work, he attempted a new style that did not appeal to audiences. His drama A Streetcar Named Desire is often numbered on short lists of the finest American plays of the 20th century, alongside Eugene O'Neill's Long Day's Journey into Night and Arthur Miller's Death of a Salesman.

Much of Williams' most acclaimed work has been adapted for the cinema. He also wrote short stories, poetry, essays and a volume of memoirs. In 1979, four years before his death, Williams was inducted into the American Theater Hall of Fame.

From Wikipedia

Reviews

[Robin · Rating 5 out of 5]

As I read this collection, I realized how little today's literature provides allegory, metaphor, and symbolism, and merely caters to the whimsy of an entertaining read. These tales took me back to a time when an author did not need to spell out his/her meaning and the reader needed to call upon his/her intellect and/or experience to grasp the beauty -ugly as it may be- of the written world.

[Jennifer · Rating 2 out of 5]

Should your life feel lacking languid prose, an undercurrent of homoeroticism, or predatory/neurotic women - in other words, lacking the Tennessee Williams touch - then look no further. One Arm, a compilation originally published in 1948 of eleven of Williams' short stories, can certainly scratch that dysfunctional Southern itch.

For those who've read Williams' plays, the material here will look more than a little familiar. Two of the eleven stories - "Portrait of a Girl in Glass" and "The Night of the Iguana" - were later reworked for the stage, "Iguana" into one of the same name, and "Girl"...well, if the glass thing doesn't give it away, I'm certainly not going to. Another, "The Yellow Bird," bears a strong resemblance to Summer and Smoke (or, as the revised version that I preferred, On the Eccentricities of a Nightengale). The rest echo Williams' standard themes of sickness, decay, desire, and loss, to greater or lesser effect. The standout to my mind was "The Field of Blue Children," though with the current popularity of E.L. James perhaps the publisher should be hawking this collection on the strength of "Desire and the Black Masseur."

Perhaps oddly for a playwright, the stories here collected feature very little dialogue, and the exposition the author relies on instead sounds more than a little like stage direction. I've always favored the high-wire tension of William's dialogue, so it's not surprising these tales left me just a little cold. To be fair, Williams is a better writer than almost anyone out there, even with one hand tied behind his back...which it most certainly is here.

[Maureen · Rating 5 out of 5]

Tennessee Williams is probably my favorite writer. He's just so messed up. And you can count on him to make everyone uncomfortable. He wrote about dysfunctional families before it was polite or proper. And got it right.

[assaultwoof · Rating 5 out of 5]

Beautiful and devastating. It's difficult to get through in one sitting. After reading a few pages of the namesake story 'One Arm' and reading on the history of Williams' life, I was curious to hear what these stories had to say and how they would impact me as the person I am right now. Needless to say, that impact felt like getting body checked into the concrete.

Williams was very close to his sister, Rose, who was diagnosed with schizophrenia as a young woman. In 1943, as her behavior became increasingly disturbing, she was subjected to a lobotomy, requiring her to be institutionalized for the rest of her life. As soon as he was financially able, Williams moved Rose to a private institution where he often visited her. A percentage of the royalties from several of his most successful plays were applied towards her care.

All of the women in the stories within this anthology are heavily based on Rose and the endless list of women Williams' was inspired by throughout his life.
"Hang with women--in the supernatural sense, not the carnal, and you will find saints and acts deserving of them." Williams was quoted with saying in a 1982 interview with James Grissom.
But this is also to say that Williams also said that saints "did nothing for him".

One story that really impacted me was Chronicle of Demise. A story in which a woman is hailed as a saint by her followers and those close to her, so much to the point where these people collect every bit of trash and place it in a heart shaped container as symbols of her memory and offerings.
In the end, the women disintegrates after performing no miracles or anything of significance and disappears into the ether. Her heart-shaped box was tossed away and forgotten, everything in it that seemed so significant… it was nothing after all. The cult that had followed her simply disbanded and ceased to exist, but for only a handful of people; the record keeper who narrates the story and her seemingly estranged cousin, the tragedy of her loss was real.

Each of the stories from this anthology are quite short, but theres so much to be considered within them, and the more I learn about Williams' life, the more I understand them.

'Desire and the Black Masseur' makes me want to weep. A desire that comes from self-loathing leads to the desire for self-destruction and death.

I could go on and on, but just take this as a sign to read it yourself. Read it all in one sitting. Let tears well up in your eyes and think vulnerably about yourself.
I truly love this book.

[Licia · Rating 3 out of 5]

Portrait d'une jeune fille en verre tho 🥺

[Noah090500 · Rating 5 out of 5]

Gay gothic grotesque scary rah rah shit

[David Sterritt]

Tennessee Williams was brilliant from the get-go, and almost every page of his first story collection, “One Arm and Other Stories,” bears this out. The title story and the famous “Desire and the Black Masseur” are as poetically perverse as anything I’ve read, and the sketches for what later became major works – “Portrait of a Girl in Glass” is “The Glass Menagerie” in miniature, “The Night of the Iguana” is a fragment suggesting the essential mood of the drama that grew from it – show his career-long penchant for revisiting and reworking ideas lodged deeply in his mind and heart. I met Tennessee years ago and got to tell him how much I admired his work. So glad I did. Even his small-scale works are amazing and I hope he never, ever goes out of style.

[Joanna · Rating 4 out of 5]

wtręty psychoanalityczne trochę zbyt nachalne i niepotrzebne (ciekawe historie nie potrzebują komentarza rodem z podręcznika psychoterapii imho), ale to wciąż williams i tam, gdzie po prostu opisuje neurozy, nie nazywając ich tak wprost, jest najlepiej. W niektórych miejscach smutne jak cholera.

[Adam · Rating 4 out of 5]

Enjoyable gentle absurdity, seediness and noir. I remember liking the play version of Night of the Iguana better than the story version contained in this collection. I will read more of T.W., starting with his other short story collection, Hard Candy.

[Sarra.o · Rating 5 out of 5]

Usually, I give short story collections a 4 stars rating, but this one is different. The overall tone and mood of the entire collection is, in my opinion, very much put together and every story share, more or less, the same theme.

[Conor Day · Rating 5 out of 5]

I've had this book on my shelf for around years I've always ignored it when I started I couldn't stop, the best small short story book I have read

[Timothy McVein · Rating 3 out of 5]

Sad and rapey near the end

[patrycja ◡̈ · Rating 3 out of 5]

yyyyyyyyyy... tennesse williams at his finest. jeśli ktoś lubi, to pewnie mu się spodoba. mnie ujmują metafory jak zwykle.

[Bruce · Rating 4 out of 5]

Brilliant collection of beautifully written stories, including one that became "The Glass Menagerie" and another that evolved into "The Night of the Iguana."

[sanjana · Rating 4 out of 5]

how i love tennessee wiliams <33333

[Nicole Goddeyne · Rating 5 out of 5]

Excellent collection of stories. Will reread this over and over again.

[Holyn Thigpen · Rating 1 out of 5]

idk man, the homoeroticism just didn’t hit this time

[martin luther king sr. · Rating 4 out of 5]

hell yeah. desire and the black masseur was wiiiild

[Leslie Graff · Rating 3 out of 5]

I thought I loved T. Williams but I'm not so sure after reading these stories. I've taught Glass Menagerie multiple times and have enjoyed many of his other plays. I guess these were just "creepier" reading than I was looking for. I could appreciate them but didn't really enjoy them. As an English prof, I tell my students all the time that they don't have to enjoy something to appreciate it or engage intellectually, but something about these stories didn't make me want to engage intellectually. I think it has to do with the language. They fluctuate between almost hyperbolic language and very simple sentence structures. Yes, this reflects the subject matter of sometimes "simple" people dealing with over wrought emotional experiences, but it just didn't grab me. I think sometimes we English teachers are to blame with how Williams is received as we teach G.M. and present it as this rather straight forward play with sometimes obvious symbolism, then we get to something like this and don't know what to do with it. Much critical work to do, but can't say this would be my cup of tea for pleasure reading or even literary reading I'd return to.

[Jennifer Collins · Rating 5 out of 5]

Williams may be known best for his drama, but his short stories are simply brilliant, and I fell in love with his writing here on a level which was far beyond that I've experienced with his drama. I picked up the collection on a whim, and quickly discovered that his characters in prose are all-together more alive and more engaging than those I've found in his drama. In these sweeping short stories, he pulls together worlds that are simple as they are vibrant, and worth falling into with nearly every page. In fact, the flattest of the stories -- for me, at least -- was the one which touched back to the characters from his Glass Menagerie. The others, one by one, pulled me in and engaged my thoughts with every move and emotion. His flare for simple and natural language, buffeted by believable an all-too-real characters made this a collection that I wished wouldn't end.

Absolutely recommended.

[Jim · Rating 3 out of 5]

A collection of short stories you'll remember. One of them was written either before or after "The Glass Menagerie, as it has all the same characters. The stories are well-written, as one would expect from Tennessee, and I liked them all. "Blue Children" was my favorite - at least this time through the book - for it dealt with the relationship of a two students at college who are thrown together unexpectedly at a dance and find as time passes that they have much in common. In some of the other stories, Tennessee, like Oates, tackles subjects many writers prefer to skirt.

[Thomas · Rating 3 out of 5]

Reading this story collection is like putting on a Joy Division record... misery loves company. Tennesse (real first name: Thomas!) had a demon or two and a vice or two that helped fuel his art no doubt. "One Arm" is amazing while some of the others... not so much. Worth checking out Williams' prose as a contrast to his rich (and depressing) plays.

[Bradley · Rating 4 out of 5]

I recently read Cat On A Hot Tin Roof and I've been on a bit of a Tennessee Williams mood. This is a really well done collection of short stories. I'd never realized how homoerotic some of his work really is.

[Ida · Rating 5 out of 5]

a rare chance to experience tennessee williams outside of the play. This book is so much gayer than you think it will be going in. fantastic.

[Wilson · Rating 5 out of 5]

Amputee prostitutes & unrequited love

[Kate · Rating 4 out of 5]

love the crazy

[Ryan]

A fun and twisted little collection of stories. I want to read more.

[Dickson · Rating 5 out of 5]

Fun collection of short stories, exploring classic themes in Tennessee Williams' work.