Tennessee

I like your play. The one about the…haha…the housewife? I liked it. Sort of sad, I like that. But you should keep in mind, my tastes are not the public’s—at times. I mean, they seem to like what I have to say, but that’s because I’m rather soapy, you know. I’m not very minimalist, because well, I don’t know very minimal people. I haven’t had a…minimal…life. Everything was always all sort of grand. Grand joy, grand tragedy, over-the-top ups and downs. I must say, even at its most unpleasant, it’s been a goddammed hell of a ride. I have made what many may call…missteps. I was foolish enough to believe that a life of riches and fame would afford me some leniency in my personal life. The opposite, in fact, was true. I’ve been living under a magnifying glass for some time now. It’s funny. People read my plays about boys with mother complexes, and southern belles, and sexually tormented football athletes, and then when they meet me they’re shocked to find I’m not some ordinary househusband plunking out scripts out on a typewriter right before dinner with the wife and kids. I mean, honestly, could a man…an ordinary man…write Blanche Dubois? Haha…Could Arthur Miller have written Amanda Wingfield? Oh, be reasonable, I always want to say. Be reasonable. Now, you…you write ordinary people. And you also seem…rather ordinary. So you see, you fulfill expectations…at first. But I can read the desperation in you the same way I can read it in your plays. I hope I’m not offending you by saying that, William. I’m sure it’s nothing an average person could detect, but I read your plays and I can feel your heart throbbing in every line. The pulse of a man who isn’t sure he has one. Who thinks he’s going through life like a ghost. People say my character are all hopeless, but I never believed that was true. I believed they were filled with perseverance, because that’s what I’ve known in my life. To be dealt bad hands and then play them expertly. But your plays really are about hopeless people. At the end of my plays there’s madness and abandonment, but somehow—for me anyway—there’s the sense that life goes on. There is a movement towards something. But at the end of your plays, we go back to the status quo, and the idea that…nothing’s really ever going to change. That’s why they make me so sad. They made me want to seek you out, William. Because I read your last play and it was like finding a suicide note. I said, this man’s clock is ticking…down. (Changing tactics.) Do you know, I always have been a whore for talent. I always have seen a creative spark and been drawn to it. Can never say no to a man with a pen and a passion for something. It’s just in my nature. I’d pass by muscle and sinew at every step to get to someone with a thing he needs to say and who…fights to say it. That’s where my interest lies. And now it seems I’ve found someone, and he’s not very long for this world. I do realize, having been around people who’ve…taken their life…into their own hands…that there really isn’t much you can say once somebody’s made up their mind. And I’m not a very expect liar when I’ve had a few drinks in me. So I can’t tell you things will get better, because I’ve seen the other side of that coin, and though it does get easier…it doesn’t really get better. And to be truthful with you, William, if that black cloud ever moved on from hanging over your head, I’m not sure your art could survive it. You are a chronicler of devastation after all, and you do it so damn well. When I wrote Glass Menagerie…oh, it took so much of me. It felt like clawing out my organs and then running a marathon. I didn’t know if I could recover from it. And with its success, I wonder sometimes if I’d write it again, knowing what I know. Or if I’d give myself one less success, and one more stronghold on sanity. I sought you out to tell you that the former is not worth the latter, but I can see you’ve already made your decision. So, Mr. Inge, all I can propose is that we leave here…separately…a few minutes apart. You may meet me back at my hotel, and we two souls can converge in an understanding of melancholy. And perhaps, I can show you the latest thing I’ve been working on. I’d love your honest opinion of it—from one struggling playwright…to another.