National Book Critics Circle Award Winner: Biography Category National Book Award Finalist 2015 Winner of the Sheridan Morley Prize for Theatre Biography American Academy of Arts and Letters’ Harold D. Vursell Memorial Award A Chicago Tribune 'Best Books of 2014' USA Today : 10 Books We Loved Reading Washington Post , 10 Best Books of 2014 The definitive biography of America's greatest playwright from the celebrated drama critic of The New Yorker. John Lahr has produced a theater biography like no other. Tennessee Williams: Mad Pilgrimage of the Flesh gives intimate access to the mind of one of the most brilliant dramatists of his century, whose plays reshaped the American theater and the nation's sense of itself. This astute, deeply researched biography sheds a light on Tennessee Williams's warring family, his guilt, his creative triumphs and failures, his sexuality and numerous affairs, his misreported death, even the shenanigans surrounding his estate. With vivid cameos of the formative influences in Williams's life―his fierce, belittling father Cornelius; his puritanical, domineering mother Edwina; his demented sister Rose, who was lobotomized at the age of thirty-three; his beloved grandfather, the Reverend Walter Dakin― Tennessee Williams: Mad Pilgrimage of the Flesh is as much a biography of the man who created A Streetcar Named Desire , The Glass Menagerie , and Cat on a Hot Tin Roof as it is a trenchant exploration of Williams’s plays and the tortured process of bringing them to stage and screen. The portrait of Williams himself is unforgettable: a virgin until he was twenty-six, he had serial homosexual affairs thereafter as well as long-time, bruising relationships with Pancho Gonzalez and Frank Merlo. With compassion and verve, Lahr explores how Williams's relationships informed his work and how the resulting success brought turmoil to his personal life. Lahr captures not just Williams’s tempestuous public persona but also his backstage life, where his agent Audrey Wood and the director Elia Kazan play major roles, and Marlon Brando, Anna Magnani, Bette Davis, Maureen Stapleton, Diana Barrymore, and Tallulah Bankhead have scintillating walk-on parts. This is a biography of the highest order: a book about the major American playwright of his time written by the major American drama critic of his time. 80 photographs "Scrupulously researched and elegantly written…makes you feel the day-to-day life of Tennessee, onstage and off, like no other I’ve read…required reading for anyone in the theater." ― Nathan Lane, New York Times Book Review "Offers plenty of backstage anecdotes and high private drama…. But Mr. Lahr, ever the critic, keeps the plays themselves front and center…. The book has already won enthusiastic advance notice…along with blurbs from a kick line of A-list ‘theatricals’ including Helen Mirren, John Guare and Tony Kushner." ― Jennifer Schuessler, New York Times "Scintillating on the backstage and bedroom dramas and almost intrusively perceptive on the autobiographical nature of Williams’ art." ― Charles McNulty, Los Angeles Times "Intricately detailed… gripping." ― Janet Maslin, New York Times "A masterpiece." ― Hilton Als, New Yorker "A crucial contribution to the arguments that should always rage around a man who was one of the greatest American playwrights of his tempestuous century." ― Chris Jones, Chicago Tribune "Raises the curtain on Tennessee Williams." ― Elissa Schappell, Vanity Fair "There is only one word for this biography: superb." ― Kirkus Reviews, Starred Review "Brilliant… [Lahr’s] achievement is not likely to be surpassed." ― Publishers Weekly "Splendid beyond words. It would be hard to imagine a more satisfying biography." ― Bill Bryson "This is a masterpiece about a genius. Only John Lahr, with his perceptions about the theater, about writers, about poetry, and about people could have written this book. What a marvelous read." ― Helen Mirren "Unsurpassable…An eloquent, spellbinding narrative that emerges as an instant classic." ― Ron Chernow, Pulitzer Prize–winning author of Washington: A Life "It is a MAGNIFICENT work. Mesmerizing, illuminating, and heartbreaking." ― André Gregory "Brilliant and seamless. A labor of the profoundest love, and it comes from the heart and mind of one of our greatest theater writers." ― André Bishop, artistic director of Lincoln Center Repertory Theater "A splendid book, one of the finest critical biographies extant." ― Robert Brustein "The singular achievement of John Lahr’s magisterial book, Tennessee Williams: Mad Pilgrimage of the Flesh is that it’s one betwitching writer’s journey into the lives―public and private―of another." ― Jeremy Gerard, Deadline Hollywood "Magnificent…one of the best written and most extraordinary biographies I’ve ever read, in any field." ― Mike Fischer, Milwaukee Journal Sentinel "At once sensitive and mag