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Notebooks
Tennessee Williams’s Notebooks, here published for the first time, presents by turns a passionate, whimsical, movingly lyrical, self-reflective, and completely uninhibited record of the life of this monumental American genius from 1936 to 1981, the year of his death. In these pages Williams (1911-1981) wrote out his most private thoughts as well as sketches of plays, poems, and accounts of his social, professional, and sexual encounters. The notebooks are the repository of Williams’s fears, obsessions, passions, and contradictions, and they form possibly the most spontaneous self-portrait by any writer in American history.
Meticulously edited and annotated by Margaret Thornton, the notebooks follow Williams’ growth as a writer from his undergraduate days to the publication and production of his most famous plays, from his drug addiction and drunkenness to the heights of his literary accomplishments. At one point, Williams writes, “I feel dull and disinterested in the literary line. Dr. Heller bores me with all his erudite discussion of literature. Writing is just writing! Why all the fuss about it?” This remarkable record of the life of Tennessee Williams is about writing—how his writing came up like a pure, underground stream through the often unhappy chaos of his life to become a memorable and permanent contribution to world literature.
Meticulously edited and annotated by Margaret Thornton, the notebooks follow Williams’ growth as a writer from his undergraduate days to the publication and production of his most famous plays, from his drug addiction and drunkenness to the heights of his literary accomplishments. At one point, Williams writes, “I feel dull and disinterested in the literary line. Dr. Heller bores me with all his erudite discussion of literature. Writing is just writing! Why all the fuss about it?” This remarkable record of the life of Tennessee Williams is about writing—how his writing came up like a pure, underground stream through the often unhappy chaos of his life to become a memorable and permanent contribution to world literature.
828 pages, Hardcover
First published January 30, 2007
11 people are currently reading
405 people want to read
About the author
Tennessee Williams
752 books3,668 followersThomas 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
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
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Displaying 1 - 15 of 15 reviews
Want to read
April 15, 2012I might have shrieked "PREEEEEEEEECIOUS" when I saw this the other night in a used bookstore for $20 (pristine unread copy). Juuust possibly.
January 18, 2020
I have always had a generally benevolent impression of iconic American playwright Tennesee Williams, but I like being nosy af, so I picked up this annotated copy of his diary (I mean, his cahiers...nah folks just because he's a dude doesn't make it not a diary, it's a diary). But I find it very probable that Williams would've been totally fine with a bunch of strangers reading his diary; he would go back to date things and make later comments himself so the reader will understand his changed (or unchanged) circumstances, and his own favourite book genre was collected letters and journals.
The journals start almost daily when Williams was around 24; they end with very rare, sometimes annual updates at the age of 70. Williams was obviously very sensitive and likable, but also very lonely and clearly struggled with mental illness that became clinical in his later years. He had a very fraught relationship with his family (his father was abusive, his mother oppressive, his older sister mentally ill to the point that she was lobotomized); he came out as gay at 29, and the descriptions of the gay art scene in the 30s and 40s was wild, like I truly had no idea there was such an extensive, (barely) underground situation going on. Sadly, his journal mostly becomes a chronicle of his health problems and increasing addiction to drugs and alcohol once he hit his mid-forties. Williams had a very hard time trusting people and it made for reading about his close relationships (especially with long-term partner Frank Merlo) sad and frustrating, but also honest and relatable.
I think Tennessee Williams' thoughts about his life, with many footnotes by Margaret Thornton explaining context, made for a crazy engaging book. Eventually, you may need to take breaks from the constant descriptions of his ailments because (like his famous works) it can get depressing. It is sad, but it's also comforting thinking about how human and vulnerable Tennessee Williams remained even after he received all these awards and accolades. In life, there is a lot of chaos. Although Williams was afraid of this chaos, he knew how to make it beautiful throughout.
The journals start almost daily when Williams was around 24; they end with very rare, sometimes annual updates at the age of 70. Williams was obviously very sensitive and likable, but also very lonely and clearly struggled with mental illness that became clinical in his later years. He had a very fraught relationship with his family (his father was abusive, his mother oppressive, his older sister mentally ill to the point that she was lobotomized); he came out as gay at 29, and the descriptions of the gay art scene in the 30s and 40s was wild, like I truly had no idea there was such an extensive, (barely) underground situation going on. Sadly, his journal mostly becomes a chronicle of his health problems and increasing addiction to drugs and alcohol once he hit his mid-forties. Williams had a very hard time trusting people and it made for reading about his close relationships (especially with long-term partner Frank Merlo) sad and frustrating, but also honest and relatable.
I think Tennessee Williams' thoughts about his life, with many footnotes by Margaret Thornton explaining context, made for a crazy engaging book. Eventually, you may need to take breaks from the constant descriptions of his ailments because (like his famous works) it can get depressing. It is sad, but it's also comforting thinking about how human and vulnerable Tennessee Williams remained even after he received all these awards and accolades. In life, there is a lot of chaos. Although Williams was afraid of this chaos, he knew how to make it beautiful throughout.
Want to read
December 2, 2023I bought this behemoth of a book, not knowing its size, based on a single quote that hit me squarely in the heart and made me cry. So here we go, I guess!
September 13, 2025
An insightful read into the life of Williams through his own journals and notebooks. Extremely comprehensive footnotes provide excellent supporting detail but, my word, what a depressed figure Williams makes. Always ill (definite hypochondria a lot of the time), over reliance on medication, struggles with relationships and the sadness of his many years spent trying to retain a profile after his 1940s/1950s peak. A lonely life in so many ways and a very sad end - although one senses that he was waiting for death for a long long time.
December 5, 2015
I’ve been drawn to writers’ notebooks, journals, and letters for a long time, having read documents of John Cheever, Eudora Welty, Flannery O’Connor, and others. William’s notebooks are multifaceted. It is clear that he is writing for himself; many entries have the same dreary tone that an ordinary person might use to write in a journal: physical complaints, gossip [“Gielgud too difficult to work with, somehow antipathetic” (485)], critiques of other people’s work [“Helen Hayes has flashes of great virtuosity but her performance lacks the heart and grace and poetry of Laurette’s and sometimes it becomes downright banal” (485)]. But you can categorize many threads found throughout Williams’s notebooks.
Daily complaints: his health (he must spell the word “Diarrhoea” scores if not hundreds of times), and while he did have a number of documented health problems, most of them were self-inflicted by way of extreme alcohol, tobacco, and drug use, which he freely admits to, enumerating the number of seconals, he would take in a day, along with how many scotches.
Sex: if not narrative accounts of his numerous sexual pursuits with individual men, Williams gives at least a mention of said person and how long the affair did or did not last. He would remain lovers with a man named Frank Merlo, until the latter’s death, even though they were often separated and conducted a rather “open marriage,” long before the 1970s term was ever coined.
Events about which he had no compunction: stealing books from the University of Iowa and New Orleans libraries; being jailed along with a male companion as suspicious characters and not having his draft card with him.
His ideas on cruising: “Evening is the normal adult’s time for home—the family. For us it is the time to search for something to satisfy that empty space that home fills in the normal adult’s life” (281).
His opinions on writing: “A sombre play has to be very spare and angular. When you fill it out it seems blotchy, pestilential. You must keep the lines sharp and clean—tragedy is austere. You get the effect with fewer lines than you are inclined to use” (305).
On loneliness: “This evening a stranger picked me up. A common and seedy-looking young Jew with a thick accent. I was absurdly happy. For the first time since my arrival [in Florida] here I had a companion” (325).
Personal philosophy: “One lives a vast number of days but life seems short because the days repeat themselves so. Take that period from my 21 – 24 yr. when I was in the shoe business, a clerk typist in St. Louis at $65 a month. It all seems like one day in my life. It was all one day over and over” (349).
Success: Williams is clear in a number of places about how the purity of his writing life is upended by success (Glass Menagerie in 1944):
Books Williams read that I believe I must now put on my list: Yukio Mishima’s Confessions of a Mask. The Denton Welsh Journals, edited by Jocelyn Brooke. Denton Welch’s Maiden Voyage, In Youth Is Pleasure, A Voice Through a Cloud, Brave and Cruel, and A Last Sheaf. Jean Cocteau’s Le Livre Blanc. Donald Windham’s The Dog Star, The Hero Continues, Two People, The Warm Country, and Emblems of Conduct.
There are countless interesting or titillating photographs of Williams (and some of his paramours) when he was young [see my blog post].
Thornton, the editor, sites New York Herald Tribune critic Walter Kerr, concerning Williams’s Camino Real, when he addresses the playwright: “You’re heading toward the cerebral; don’t do it. What makes you an artist of the first rank is your intuitive gift for penetrating reality, without junking reality in the process; an intuitive artist starts with the recognizable surface of things and burrows in. Don’t swap this for the conscious, rational processes of the analyst, the symbolist, the abstract thinker” (565). It remains the creative writing teacher’s biggest caveat: always begin with the concrete, and the metaphor will rise out of it naturally.
So much of Williams’s life seems to be self destructive. Not until 1957, at the age of forty-six does he consider beginning psychoanalysis. “The moment has certainly come for psychiatric help, but will I take it?” (701).
To anyone who wishes to understand Tennessee Williams and his work, you must realize your work is probably not complete until you read this tome, including the 1,090 footnotes (most of which I did plow through because they are substantive and interesting in their own right).
Daily complaints: his health (he must spell the word “Diarrhoea” scores if not hundreds of times), and while he did have a number of documented health problems, most of them were self-inflicted by way of extreme alcohol, tobacco, and drug use, which he freely admits to, enumerating the number of seconals, he would take in a day, along with how many scotches.
Sex: if not narrative accounts of his numerous sexual pursuits with individual men, Williams gives at least a mention of said person and how long the affair did or did not last. He would remain lovers with a man named Frank Merlo, until the latter’s death, even though they were often separated and conducted a rather “open marriage,” long before the 1970s term was ever coined.
Events about which he had no compunction: stealing books from the University of Iowa and New Orleans libraries; being jailed along with a male companion as suspicious characters and not having his draft card with him.
His ideas on cruising: “Evening is the normal adult’s time for home—the family. For us it is the time to search for something to satisfy that empty space that home fills in the normal adult’s life” (281).
His opinions on writing: “A sombre play has to be very spare and angular. When you fill it out it seems blotchy, pestilential. You must keep the lines sharp and clean—tragedy is austere. You get the effect with fewer lines than you are inclined to use” (305).
On loneliness: “This evening a stranger picked me up. A common and seedy-looking young Jew with a thick accent. I was absurdly happy. For the first time since my arrival [in Florida] here I had a companion” (325).
Personal philosophy: “One lives a vast number of days but life seems short because the days repeat themselves so. Take that period from my 21 – 24 yr. when I was in the shoe business, a clerk typist in St. Louis at $65 a month. It all seems like one day in my life. It was all one day over and over” (349).
Success: Williams is clear in a number of places about how the purity of his writing life is upended by success (Glass Menagerie in 1944):
“The trouble is that I am being bullied and intimidated by my own success and the fame that surrounds it and what people expect of me and their demands on me. They are forcing me out of my natural position as an artist so that I am in peril of ceasing to be an artist at all. When that happens I will be nothing because I cannot be a professional writer” (493).
“I have been twisted by a world of false values—And the talent died in me from over-exposure, a sort of sun stroke under the baleful sun of ‘success’—naturally I will go on trying to live as well as I can and the probability is that tomorrow, or the day after tomorrow, I will begin to edge back into the state of illusion. And hope” (515).
“The tragedy [death of Tom Heggen] points up once more the crying need for a different sort of theatre in America, one that will be a cushion to both fame and fortune which will provide the young artist with a continual, constructive contact with his profession and a continual chance to function in it. Otherwise these losses will be repeated then, and there is no field of creative work in which they can be less afforded” (503).
“I want to shut a door on all that dreary buy and sell side of writing and work purely again for myself alone. I am sick of being peddled. Perhaps if I could have escaped being peddled I might have become a major artist. It’s no one’s fault. It’s just a dirty circumstance, and now’s maybe too late to correct it” (635).
Books Williams read that I believe I must now put on my list: Yukio Mishima’s Confessions of a Mask. The Denton Welsh Journals, edited by Jocelyn Brooke. Denton Welch’s Maiden Voyage, In Youth Is Pleasure, A Voice Through a Cloud, Brave and Cruel, and A Last Sheaf. Jean Cocteau’s Le Livre Blanc. Donald Windham’s The Dog Star, The Hero Continues, Two People, The Warm Country, and Emblems of Conduct.
There are countless interesting or titillating photographs of Williams (and some of his paramours) when he was young [see my blog post].
Thornton, the editor, sites New York Herald Tribune critic Walter Kerr, concerning Williams’s Camino Real, when he addresses the playwright: “You’re heading toward the cerebral; don’t do it. What makes you an artist of the first rank is your intuitive gift for penetrating reality, without junking reality in the process; an intuitive artist starts with the recognizable surface of things and burrows in. Don’t swap this for the conscious, rational processes of the analyst, the symbolist, the abstract thinker” (565). It remains the creative writing teacher’s biggest caveat: always begin with the concrete, and the metaphor will rise out of it naturally.
So much of Williams’s life seems to be self destructive. Not until 1957, at the age of forty-six does he consider beginning psychoanalysis. “The moment has certainly come for psychiatric help, but will I take it?” (701).
To anyone who wishes to understand Tennessee Williams and his work, you must realize your work is probably not complete until you read this tome, including the 1,090 footnotes (most of which I did plow through because they are substantive and interesting in their own right).
November 13, 2023
"I love the night when all the superfluous people are off the street".
The master speaks to us from beyond the grave. Tennessee Williams was America's greatest and most prolific playwright. Every decade since his death in 1983 has brought us new plays never produced and short stories never published. Here we have the posthumous NOTEBOOKS, a rare glimpse at the working mind of a genius. "Part of Tennesse's genius is to read almost nothing" his frenemy Gore Vidal once declared. Indeed, Williams, who cited Chekhov and Lawrence as influences, did not imbibe great literature for inspiration or current events. He used himself and his Southern Gothic family for source material: Batty mother, overbearing father, and mentally ill sister. Sometimes this led to painstaking great art (THE GLASS MENAGERIE, CAT ON A HOT TIN ROOF) and other times to incoherent mess (A HOUSE NOT MEANT TO STAND, his last-produced play). It's all here; the torment, the heartache, and the sexual passion that fed a wounded soul.
The master speaks to us from beyond the grave. Tennessee Williams was America's greatest and most prolific playwright. Every decade since his death in 1983 has brought us new plays never produced and short stories never published. Here we have the posthumous NOTEBOOKS, a rare glimpse at the working mind of a genius. "Part of Tennesse's genius is to read almost nothing" his frenemy Gore Vidal once declared. Indeed, Williams, who cited Chekhov and Lawrence as influences, did not imbibe great literature for inspiration or current events. He used himself and his Southern Gothic family for source material: Batty mother, overbearing father, and mentally ill sister. Sometimes this led to painstaking great art (THE GLASS MENAGERIE, CAT ON A HOT TIN ROOF) and other times to incoherent mess (A HOUSE NOT MEANT TO STAND, his last-produced play). It's all here; the torment, the heartache, and the sexual passion that fed a wounded soul.
March 18, 2010
I rented this book from the library last summer (right after my twins came home from the hospital) and needless to say I didn't get around to reading it. So this time around I was determined.
Notebooks is an amazing work to read for two reasons. One it's a collection of Williams personal journals and notebooks which span many years. Second the notebooks are further illuminated and clarified by the amazing editorial work done by Margaret Bradham Thorton. The footnotes are amazing and helpful to understanding the entries by Williams and I can only imagine the amount of time and effort that went into creating this document.
Williams life is one marked by great anxiety, depression, and hypochondria which he notes continually throughout the book. Eventually his notebooks also turn to his many sexual encounters and his increasing dependence on pills and alcohol to cope with the above ailments. It is interesting to note that WIlliams primarily wrote in his journal when he was down with little to no mention of many of his awards and successes his plays received. In this sense in many ways it's seeing into the mind of Williams and the thoughts and feelings that haunted him throughout his life. Although his love and fondest for his sister and grandparents is also a theme throughout.
This is not a fast read by any means but I recommend it highly if one has the patience to read through the journals and the footnotes. I checked this copy out from the library but it's a book I would like to own (as I have many post it notes throughout marking quotes, poems, and experiences that I want to refer back to). An amazing work.
Notebooks is an amazing work to read for two reasons. One it's a collection of Williams personal journals and notebooks which span many years. Second the notebooks are further illuminated and clarified by the amazing editorial work done by Margaret Bradham Thorton. The footnotes are amazing and helpful to understanding the entries by Williams and I can only imagine the amount of time and effort that went into creating this document.
Williams life is one marked by great anxiety, depression, and hypochondria which he notes continually throughout the book. Eventually his notebooks also turn to his many sexual encounters and his increasing dependence on pills and alcohol to cope with the above ailments. It is interesting to note that WIlliams primarily wrote in his journal when he was down with little to no mention of many of his awards and successes his plays received. In this sense in many ways it's seeing into the mind of Williams and the thoughts and feelings that haunted him throughout his life. Although his love and fondest for his sister and grandparents is also a theme throughout.
This is not a fast read by any means but I recommend it highly if one has the patience to read through the journals and the footnotes. I checked this copy out from the library but it's a book I would like to own (as I have many post it notes throughout marking quotes, poems, and experiences that I want to refer back to). An amazing work.
October 17, 2012
This magnificent tome is a treasure trove for Williams scholars and fans. Independent scholar Thornton not only tracked down Williams's early short stories and poems but often presents photo reproductions of the original manuscripts. A talented sleuth, Thornton cross-checks journal entries with letters Williams wrote to friends, offers mini-biographies of people mentioned in the journals and has found photos of most of the cast of characters at the time they were in touch with Williams. Her detective work is fully one half of this massive book. (Williams's journal entries, from 1936 to 1958 and 1979 to 1981 run on the right-hand pages opposite Thornton's annotations.) As the playwright, according to Thornton, "modulated his tone and style to suit the recipient" of his voluminous correspondence, his journal reveals his authentic voice. These entries primarily showcase the budding artist who was plagued with insecurities, increasing drug dependency and an equally destructive addiction to celebrity, but his loyalty to his work remained so strong that he was still able to write The Glass Menagerie, A Streetcar Named Desire, Summer and Smoke, The Rose Tattoo and Cat on a Hot Tin Roof all between 1945 and 1955—the period that reflects the bulk of these notebooks. Williams's dramatic life may be familiar to many, but thanks to Thornton's superb scholarship, his interior conflicts, motivations and drive are at last revealed.
December 17, 2014
Margaret Bradham Thornton has done a masterful job here. The inner journey as well as the everyday life and times of am American genius are explored, described, illuminated, extrapolated, and held up to every scrutiny. I have never really read anything quite like this volume---i a scrapbook of a writer's life as he saw it when he lived it. Whst Bradham Thornton has done is illustrate with notes, pictures, and images of other kinds---postcards, playbills, clippings--every jotting Williams put down. As readers we compose the flow of his days from this marvelous documentary assemblage. We be come his biographers ourselves. In totality, a marvelous, and multi-media, experience, so much more alive than the usual biography. There is much to learn about an artist's life in this book, there is much to celebrate in the beautiful detective work Thornton has done for us, as well.
January 3, 2008
Absolutely thrilling. A voyeuristic plunge into the inner world of the twentieth century's most brilliant dramatist. As expected, everyone I hold in high regard and cite as a major influence was a self-loathing pervert. This guy is no exception. Highly recommended.
Currently reading
February 13, 2008not sure when i will finish and equally unsure if i want to
July 13, 2008
dramaturgy for Night of the Iguana
Read
January 22, 2009Since I'll never get to stay up till three in the morning listening to this man talk, I'm going to do the next best thing: Read this.
November 13, 2012
Opening this book is like peeling the scalp off an American genius and examining their brain for 800+ glorious pages.
January 2, 2008
I am so so excited about delving into this!
Displaying 1 - 15 of 15 reviews