For the "old crocodile," as Williams called himself late in life, the past was always present, and so it is with his continual shifting and intermingling of times, places, and memories as he weaves this story. When Memoirs was first published in 1975, it created quite a bit of turbulence in the mediathough long self-identified as a gay man, Williams' candor about his love life, sexual encounters, and drug use was found shocking in and of itself, and such revelations by America's greatest living playwright were called "a raw display of private life" by The New York Times Book Review . As it turns out, thirty years later, Williams' look back at his life is not quite so scandalous as it once seemed; he recalls his childhood in Mississippi and St. Louis, his prolonged struggle as a "starving artist," the "overnight" success of The Glass Menagerie in 1945, the death of his long-time companion Frank Merlo in 1962, and his confinement to a psychiatric ward in 1969 and subsequent recovery from alcohol and drug addiction, all with the same directness, compassion, and insight that epitomize his plays.

And, of course, Memoirs is filled with Williams' amazing friends from the worlds of stage, screen, and literature as heoften hilariously, sometimes fondly, sometimes notremembers them: Laurette Taylor, Gore Vidal, Truman Capote, Elia Kazan, Marlon Brando, Vivian Leigh, Carson McCullers, Anna Magnani, Greta Garbo, Elizabeth Taylor, and Tallulah Bankhead to name a few. And now film director John Waters, well acquainted with shocking the American public, has written an introduction that gives some perspective on the various reactions to Tennessee's Memoirs , while also paying tribute to a fellow artist who inspired many with his integrity and endurance.

田納西·威廉斯（Tennessee Williams，1911—1983），本名托馬斯·拉尼爾·威廉斯三世（Thomas Lanier Williams III），被認為是二十世紀美國*傑齣的劇作傢之一。他齣生於美國中部密西西比州哥倫布市，先後就讀於密蘇裏大學、華盛頓大學聖路易斯分校與愛荷華大學。他一生筆耕不輟，著作頗豐，憑藉《欲望號街車》（1947）與《熱鐵皮屋頂上的貓》（1955）兩獲普利策奬，1979年被列入美國戲劇名人堂（American Theater Hall of Fame）。

譯者簡介

馮倩珠，英語文學碩士，從事英語翻譯與教學工作多年，譯有?我要快樂，不必正常??見信如晤??愛情是一盤自製卡帶?等，曾獲韓素音青年翻譯奬。