Another Life_ A Memoir of Other People - Michael Korda [221]
I was of two minds about the title myself. That part of my brain that is devoted to publishing loved the idea. “Fairy Tales by Tennessee Williams” might well have been the first really successful collection of literary short stories in the history of book publishing, and the title would have all but guaranteed a storm of publicity and controversy, to which Tennessee looked forward with glee. The part of my brain that is not devoted to publishing thought that it was risky and in doubtful taste. Every time the subject came up at marketing meetings opinion was equally divided. However, Dick Snyder loved the title and told me to ignore the doubters. “It’ll sell books,” he said firmly, which was just what Tennessee thought, though in his case he was also anxious to shock those of his admirers who, in his opinion, took him too seriously. Like many another genius, Tennessee craved the support and protection of those close to him who felt it to be their business to look after him, but chafed at their concern at the same time. He liked to set them against each other—indeed the main reason why Tennessee had chosen Billy Barnes as his agent was that Barnes, with his sense of fun, his Southern accent, and spirited campiness (on those occasions when he chose to be campy, for he could be perfectly businesslike when he wanted to be) didn’t seem serious enough to Tennessee’s camarilla, who were, for the most part, plus royalistes que le roi. When I expressed my doubts about the title to Tennessee, he told me, “Loosen up and have some fun, baby,” with a certain warning snap of venom in his voice, rare between us, and that was that.
“Don’t worry about it,” Billy Barnes said to me later. “He’s just having his fun. He’ll change his mind before the book hits the stores, you’ll see.”
A greater worry was the stories themselves, many of which were incomplete, impossible to understand, or simply bizarre. Some sense of them can be gained from their titles, which included “The Killer Chicken and the Closet Queen,” “Mother Yaws,” and “Tent Worms.” A note from my assistant John Herman, no mean judge of literary fiction, read, “For whatever it’s worth these seem to me brilliantly written, humorous, but utterly outlandish and very hard to follow.” That was putting it kindly.
One of the stories, “The Donsinger Women and Their Handyman Jack,” seemed to have been composed by Tennessee in many different places and states of mind. Some of it was typed on yellowing writing paper, some of it on lined paper torn from a notebook, some of it on the back of writing paper from the United Nations Plaza Hotel. Changes were scrawled in various colors, some recent and bold, others ancient and scarcely legible. The Donsinger women are a large family of sisters occupying a crumbling mansion in what had once been a respectable neighborhood in some Texas town. Predatory, possibly cannibalistic, and unapologetically nymphomaniacal, the sisters are nightmare creations. They subsist by rummaging through the garbage cans of restaurants by night, and they spend their days in rocking chairs on the veranda of the house, making lewd conversation. One of them finds a young man named Jack in the street. Jack has been kicked off the family ranch by his father. She hides him in the unused henhouse, hoping he will serve as her handyman and stud, but it turns out that even though he is spectacularly well endowed, that is not on his agenda. He is a poet and has eyes only for beautiful young Oriental men delivering Chinese