Future Reference: Read “Suddenly Last Summer” and “Summer & Smoke”
It’s either due to age or having too much “fun” in my youth - it may even be mild, barely discernible stokes while I sleep - but I’m increasingly becoming forgetful. I forget names and words and my recall is, at best, delayed. I think slower but maybe I’ve just become more ‘meditative,’ but who knows. Nonetheless, I’m concerned. Therefore, I have decided to write anything and everything in this whatever-it’s-called [LiVEJOURNAL?] - even if it’s a simple word or a sentence or a thought like:
I don’t know if it is wisdom, but it’s definitely a ‘truth’ when Maggie says to Brick in Tennessee Williams’ Cat on a Hot Tin Roof:
“You can be young without money, but you can’t be old without it. You’ve got to be old with money because to be old without it is just too awful, you’ve go to be one or the other, either young or with money, you can’t be old and without it.” (Act I, Cat on a Hot Tin Roof)
I appreciate the lyrical language of Williams and have read his three best plays: The Glass Menagerie, A Streetcar Named Desire and Cat on a Hot Tin Roof. Despite Cat’s critical success, I still maintain A Streetcar is Williams’ best play, with Blanche Dubois as his most (and my most) realized dramatized character (notwithstanding - did I use that word correctly? - any of Toni Morrison’s characters). Hitherto, I had no desire to read any other plays by Williams, but Harold Bloom suggests it is worth reading Suddenly Last Summer and Summer & Smoke, which he claims are underrated. Despite my love/hate understanding and appreciation of Bloom, as literary critic, I am placing the aforementioned plays on my reading list based on his recommendation and I have noted them here - in this LiVEJOURNAL - for future reference.
I don’t know if it is wisdom, but it’s definitely a ‘truth’ when Maggie says to Brick in Tennessee Williams’ Cat on a Hot Tin Roof:
“You can be young without money, but you can’t be old without it. You’ve got to be old with money because to be old without it is just too awful, you’ve go to be one or the other, either young or with money, you can’t be old and without it.” (Act I, Cat on a Hot Tin Roof)
I appreciate the lyrical language of Williams and have read his three best plays: The Glass Menagerie, A Streetcar Named Desire and Cat on a Hot Tin Roof. Despite Cat’s critical success, I still maintain A Streetcar is Williams’ best play, with Blanche Dubois as his most (and my most) realized dramatized character (notwithstanding - did I use that word correctly? - any of Toni Morrison’s characters). Hitherto, I had no desire to read any other plays by Williams, but Harold Bloom suggests it is worth reading Suddenly Last Summer and Summer & Smoke, which he claims are underrated. Despite my love/hate understanding and appreciation of Bloom, as literary critic, I am placing the aforementioned plays on my reading list based on his recommendation and I have noted them here - in this LiVEJOURNAL - for future reference.