Follies of God

November 24, 2014
“Be my witness.” This was Tennessee Williams’s unexpected response to Grissom, who had written to the playwright looking for advice as a college-aged aspiring writer from Baton Rouge in 1982. As recorded in this uniquely personal blend of road trip and literary history, Grissom proceeded to spend several days in New Orleans with the great writer, recording the older man’s reminiscences in notebooks. Desperate to know that he still mattered, Williams made Grissom swear to seek out and talk to the women who had most shaped his work and life. In 1988, years after Williams’s death, Grissom began to seek out these names and make good on his promise. The cast is a memorable one: earthy Maureen Stapleton; delicate but determined Jessica Tandy; the two Kims, Hunter and Stanley; and even the inimitable Katherine Hepburn. In a series of conversations by turns philosophical, pragmatic, funny, and devastating, all discuss their lives, craft, and the art of surviving. The narrative can be meandering, and the language gauzy (perhaps not surprisingly, considering its subject), but Grissom has succeeded in creating a kaleidoscopic meditation on the people that entered Williams’s imagination—“the fog”—to become his signature characters. 48 color photos.

Starred review from December 15, 2014
One of America's greatest playwrights as seen by himself and his many muses.When Grissom wrote Tennessee Williams (1911-1983) in the early 1980s seeking advice on a literary career, he could hardly have expected the response he received. Williams not only invited Grissom for an extended visit to Baton Rouge, but he quickly made him his walking companion and amanuensis, urging Grissom to take notes as Williams talked at length about his life, plays and quasi-religious notions of art. He also had a plan: to have Grissom visit all the actresses who had mattered to Williams and ask if he mattered to them. For the playwright, it was a roundabout way of getting his groove back; he had become a decrepit, alcoholic joke to his critics, and women had always been his salvation. Also, time was running out-and would stop completely for Williams not long after Grissom left his company. Reluctantly, Grissom pressed forward over the years ahead, seeking out the great ladies of the American theater for lengthy, intimate and revealing interviews, matching their thoughts on Williams with Williams' thoughts on them. "They say God is in the details," Williams told Grissom, "and these particular women are those details." Whether they were steadfast pals (Maureen Stapleton), committed individualists (Marian Seldes and Lois Smith), or became troubled (Barbara Baxley), tormented (Kim Stanley) and bitter (Jo Van Fleet) actresses with blighted careers, they defined their roles for Williams, revealing aspects of the roles he hadn't considered. Geraldine Page is just one example: "She made me a better writer and she made my plays better plays." There have been plenty of books written about Williams over the past three decades, but few weave so many voices into an original and compelling portrait. Grissom honors the life and achievement of his doomed correspondent.

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February 1, 2015

In 1982, novice writer Grissom wrote an unsolicited letter to Tennessee Williams (1911-83) asking for advice on a literary career. Williams was at a bad time in his life then: he felt that his muse had abandoned him. He invited Grissom to lunch in New Orleans. For the next five days, Grissom was Williams's Boswell, jotting down the Great Man's musings as though all pure gold, though often they were just self-indulgence. Williams laid out a request: he asked Grissom to interview the women Williams called collectively "the follies of God"--the women who'd helped him see through the "fog" out of which his greatest characters had emerged. Here is a memoir of a great playwright seen through the reflecting glasses of actresses and directors who worked with him. The prose is too often gushy, hyperbolic. Some interviews are compelling, others are vapid. But the best make memorable reading--Eva Le Gallienne on Williams's waste of talents, a look into the strange mind of Lillian Gish, Katharine Hepburn's take on Williams, Williams's rivalry with fellow playwright William Inge. There's dross in this book but there are gems, too. VERDICT This memoir won't replace John Lahr's Tennessee Williams: Mad Pilgrimage of the Flesh (2014), but it provides new and valuable insights into the playwright's psyche and life.--David Keymer, Modesto, CA

Copyright 2015 Library Journal, LLC Used with permission.

Starred review from February 1, 2015
This astonishing book will touch and captivate readers of many stripes. Responding to a brief note Grissom, then a 20-year-old student, wrote to playwright Tennessee Williams in 1982, Williams, who urged Grissom to call him Tenn, set the young man the task of interviewing certain actresses Tenn loved to determine whether they loved him, loved his work, and what they thought. Grissom ate, drank, and walked with Tenn, taking notes. And then, suddenly, Tennessee Williams died. But Grissom took on the task placed before him and, basically out of the blue, Grissom showed up, often with a gift from Tenn but always with anecdotes and questions from a Tenn long dead, at the actresses' doors. Hence, the book features period photos of the actresses Tenn admiredLillian Gish, Jessica Tandy, Geraldine Page, among others. Grissom spoke with more than 70 women and men to fashion this overwhelmingly rich, touching, and potent exploration of what it means to be an artist, a success and a failure, and a human being. All of us are seeking . . . where we belong, where we fit, where we're loved. Filled with stories and life, anger and redemption, questionshard onesand many answers, this is a masterfulbiography.(Reprinted with permission of Booklist, copyright 2015, American Library Association.)