01/08/2018
This collection of correspondence between Tennessee Williams and his primary publisher, New Directions founder James Laughlin, provides a remarkable window onto a literary friendship. While the letters, written between December 1942 and October 1982, contain their share of publishing shoptalk, what emerges most strongly is a genuinely close bond. For example, responding to Williams’s claim of physical and nervous exhaustion after completing his play The Rose Tattoo, Laughlin advises: “Don’t think of yourself as a literary figure, and try to see what others see in you. Just go on living your life by your own standards, which are the right ones for you, and write what comes.” The letters document, incidentally, Williams’s wanderlust—Key West and Rome are among his frequent mailing addresses—and relationships with Truman Capote, Elia Kazan, and Carson McCullers, among other famous names mentioned in the letters. But the book’s greatest value lies in capturing the lifelong conversation these two men shared, one that clearly nurtured Williams and helped him continue in the face of professional setbacks. As Williams wrote to Laughlin in 1978, in a letter which sums up the collection, “Very briefly and truly, I want to say this. You’re the greatest friend that I have had in my life, and the most trusted.” (Mar.)
"Reading these letters revealed a Tennessee Williams I had never known before. Certainly not in his fabulous, fantastical plays, his tortured memoirs or the Southern Gothic biographies. Instead of being a character in one of his own plays, this Tennessee is a practical and dedicated man of the theatre, an uncompromising artist and a loving and loyal friend. I have never felt closer to a fellow playwright. Tennessee, we hardly knew you!"
"A sparkling collection of forty years of letters between Tennessee Williams and the remarkable poet/publisher James Laughlin, whom Tennessee called his ‘literary conscience’ and his greatest and most trusted friend. Because Tennessee and Laughlin were both wildly peripatetic, their paths rarely crossed, ensuring that their bond would live in their correspondence. The Luck of Friendship shows us a rare side of Tennessee in his interactions with that rarest of individuals, James Laughlin."
"A feast for Williams fans—while the events are familiar, what's new is the voice. In The Luck of Friendship we get the sane Williams, so often missing from books about his drug-addled career. Idealism and seriousness permeate this book, along with the familiar humor, shrewdness, and paranoia. (The letter in which the playwright ponders whom to leave money in his will is alone worth the price of the book.) Strewn with lines poetic, dishy, shrewd, and sometimes laugh-out-loud funny, the pleasure of this collection comes not just from its portrayal of a unique friendship but the fact that Williams could not write a graceless or unmemorable sentence."
"This remarkable correspondence charts the delicate course of two literary colleagues who become fast friends; two poets who held one another aloft during the triumphant and devastating vagaries of their careers; and two men who expressed themselves in prose with the ease most of us employ in merely breathing. It's an intimate peek into a deeply moving, even profound relationship."
"James Laughlin was the first to publish Tennessee Williams and the only major collaborator with whom Williams did not fall out. The Luck of Friendship is testimony to their unique, intimate collaboration down the decades. Together, they put before the American public a singular body of work, one which sustained both the foremost American playwright and one of the foremost American independent publishing houses. The Luck of Friendship offers a vivacious insight into both men, an important addition to Williams scholarship."
★ 02/15/2018
Playwright Tennessee Williams and New Directions publisher James Laughlin met at a cocktail party in 1942. They bonded, almost immediately, over a shared respect for the poetry of Hart Crane. Williams wrote Laughlin. Laughlin wrote back. Thus commenced one of the great literary friendships of the 20th century, reflected in this first collection of letters, edited by former New Directions publisher and Laughlin's literary coexecutor Fox, and New Directions consulting editor Keith. Often separated by geography, Williams and Laughlin remained close until Williams's death in 1983. Both were supportive of each other and passionate about literature. Early in the relationship (1945), Williams claimed "You are my literary conscience." Laughlin helped the immensely talented but emotionally frail Williams, publishing his works and bolstering his confidence when he needed support. Williams is presented in his most attractive guise here: a kind man, who, though frequently distracted by demons, was basically decent and thoughtful. Around the portrait of this friendship circles the perpetual talk of the writer's craft, which, for both men, was a serious, never-ending business. VERDICT Both men are giants and these letters are gems. The audience for this exemplary collection should be legion.—David Keymer, Cleveland
★ 2017-12-24
A collection of revealing and moving letters, spanning nearly 40 years, between the celebrated playwright and his publisher and friend at New Directions.Laughlin, a poet in his own right, emerges in these pages as an exemplar of a friend. Invariably supportive, encouraging, and compassionate, the publisher was steadfast in his belief in Williams' work—not just plays, but also poems and short stories—and his deep affection for the man. The early letters here, the majority of which are from Williams when he was young and barely known, ripple with hope and ambition. Even as early as 1942, Laughlin was writing that a script was "extremely interesting and very beautiful in places." This sort of language continued until Williams' death in 1983. As his career began to skyrocket (with The Glass Menagerie and A Streetcar Named Desire), he showed his own loyalty to Laughlin and ND by having his work published entirely with them. Later, however, we read that ND did not really have an interest in Williams' projected memoir. His letters—even the brief ones—often contain luminescent sentences and a refreshing wryness: "The evils of promiscuity are exaggerated," he wrote in 1945. "Of course, the primary and ultimate object is to remain alive," he said in 1971. Occasionally, Williams offers snarky comments—e.g., about Gore Vidal—and some harsh ones for various critics, including Paul Goodman and Robert Brustein. Throughout, both Williams and Laughlin emerge as avid readers and admirers of the work of other writers, including Paul Bowles and others. The text is gracefully edited and thoughtfully and unobtrusively annotated by Fox, former president and publisher of ND, Williams' last editor, and Laughlin's co-literary executor; and Keith, an acting teacher and consulting editor at ND. The editors inform us about the people in Williams' life and the specifics of the Williams productions that the letters discuss: cast members, director, critical and popular responses, etc.The rivers of mutual affection, admiration, and artistry form a powerful confluence in these deeply affecting exchanges.
