The Kindness of a Stranger
Jun. 17th, 2009 11:28 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
furrbearJohn Waters on Tennessee Williams - Books - Review - New York Times
"Tennessee Williams saved my life. As a 12-year-old boy in suburban Baltimore, I would look up his name in the card catalog at the library and it would read “see Librarian.” I wanted these “see Librarian” books — and I wanted them now — but in the late 1950s (and sadly even today), there was no way a warped adolescent like myself could get his hands on one. But I soon figured out that the “see Librarian” books were on a special shelf behind the counter. So when the kindly librarian was helping the “normal” kids with their book reports, I sneaked behind the checkout desk and stole the first book I ever wanted to possess on my own. “One Arm” read the forbidden cover on a short-story collection by Tennessee Williams that I later found out had once been available only in an expensive limited edition, sold under the counter in “special” bookshops before New Directions released the hardback version. And now it was mine."Read the full article at the link above.
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Yes, Tennessee Williams was my childhood friend. I yearned for a bad influence and boy, was Tennessee one in the best sense of the word: joyous, alarming, sexually confusing and dangerously funny."
