The Arts Along the River
The Literary Scene
Two Pulitzer Prize Winners Along the Mississippi
The Upper vs. The Lower Mississippi
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| TYPESCRIPT
for "A Streetcar Named Desire" by Tennessee Williams TRANSFER TICKETS for the actual streetcar named "Desire" in New Orleans SCREENPLAY for "The Glass Menagerie" by Tennessee Williams ~ Columbia University, Rare Book and Manuscript Library, New York NY |
William Faulkner, 1897-1962
"Until
he's buried he belongs to the family.
After that, he belongs to the world."
- The Faulkner family, at the death of William Faulkner
This two-time Pulitzer Prize winner and recipient of the Nobel Prize for Literature was a man who never graduated from high school. William Faulkner lived in a small town in Mississippi with a large family and an even larger stack of unpaid bills. To make ends meet, he wrote numerous short stories and Hollywood screenplays while his novels gained only sporadic interest until later in his life.
Most of Faulkner's novels are set in the fictional county of Yoknapatawpha, based on his native region in Mississippi. Here he challenged old southern traditions and explored racial issues in such novels as As I Lay Dying, Light in August, and Absalom, Absalom! It is this last novel that literary critics consider one of the greatest American novels ever written. Faulkner died of heart failure at the age of 64.
Tennessee
Williams, 1911-1983
"Everything
in his life is in his plays, and
everything in his plays is in his life."
- Elia Kazan, Hollywood Director
Another two-time Pulitzer Prize winner grew up along the backwaters of the Mississippi River within a family full of tension, despair, and violence. As a playwright, Williams transposed his own dysfunctional relationships into the family conflicts depicted in "The Glass Menagerie," "Cat on a Hot Tin Roof," and "A Streetcar Named Desire." He immortalized New Orleans while exposing many of the hidden problems found behind closed doors.
When "Streetcar" opened on Broadway in 1947, the play shocked its audience - accustomed to the light entertainment popular throughout World War II - with the raw emotions of a post-war world. Pivotal characters Stanley Kowalski and Blanche DuBois were caught within the sticky web of a faded South, facing poverty, changing values, alcoholism, wife abuse, rape, and prostitution. Perhaps because of his own family troubles, bouts with drinking and gambling plagued Tennessee throughout his life, and possibly contributed to his death in 1983.
Did
you know … ?
Thomas Lanier Williams studied theater at the University of Iowa from
1937 to 1938, and supposedly earned his nickname from his college roommate
who jokingly referred to him as a Tennessee pioneer.
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This
section "The Arts Along the River"
has the following related pages:
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The
Literary Scene |
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Continue through exhibit
Early Exploration and Development
River Days
Riverfront Property
Man vs. Man
Man vs. Nature
The Arts Along the River
Legends and Spirits
