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An extraordinary book; one that almost magically makes clear how Tennessee Williams wrote; how he came to his visions of Amanda Wingfield, his Blanche DuBois, Stella Kowalski, Alma Winemiller, Lady Torrance, and the other characters of his plays that transformed the American theater of the mid-twentieth century; a book that does, from the inside, the almost impossible—revealing the heart and soul of artistic inspiration and the unwitting collaboration between playwright and actress, playwright and director.

At a moment in the life of Tennessee Williams when he felt he had been relegated to a “lower artery of the theatrical heart,” when critics were proclaiming that his work had been overrated, he summoned to New Orleans a hopeful twenty-year-old writer, James Grissom, who had written an unsolicited letter to the great playwright asking for advice. After a long, intense conversation, Williams sent Grissom on a journey on the playwright’s behalf to find out if he, Tennessee Williams, or his work, had mattered to those who had so deeply mattered to him, those who had led him to what he called the blank page, “the pale judgment.”

Among the more than seventy giants of American theater and film Grissom sought out, chief among them the women who came to Williams out of the fog: Lillian Gish, tiny and alabaster white, with enormous, lovely, empty eyes (“When I first imagined a woman at the center of my fantasia, I . . . saw the pure and buoyant face of Lillian Gish. . . . [She] was the escort who brought me to Blanche”) . . . Maureen Stapleton, his Serafina of The Rose Tattoo, a shy, fat little girl from Troy, New York, who grew up with abandoned women and sad hopes and whose job it was to cheer everyone up, goad them into going to the movies, urge them to bake a cake and have a party.  (“Tennessee and I truly loved each other,” said Stapleton, “we were bound by our love of the theater and movies and movie stars and comedy. And we were bound to each other particularly by our mothers: the way they raised us; the things they could never say . . . The dreaming nature, most of all”) . . . Jessica Tandy (“The moment I read [Portrait of a Madonna],” said Tandy, “my life began. I was, for the first time . . . unafraid to be ruthless in order to get something I wanted”) . . . Kim Stanley . . . Bette Davis . . . Katharine Hepburn . . . Jo Van Fleet . . . Rosemary Harris . . . Eva Le Gallienne (“She was a stone against which I could rub my talent and feel that it became sharper”) . . . Julie Harris . . . Geraldine Page (“A titanic talent”) . . . And the men who mattered and helped with his creations, including Elia Kazan, José Quintero, Marlon Brando, John Gielgud . . . 

James Grissom’s Follies of God is a revelation, a book that moves and inspires and uncannily catches that illusive “dreaming nature.”

From the Hardcover edition.

Review

Praise for James Grissom’s
FOLLIES OF GOD

          “Grissom magically captures the vein and even voice of Tennessee in this beautifully written book about the actresses in his plays. Would that I had been one of them! There is no greater American playwright and Follies of God reveals why.”
          --Jane Alexander

“A portrait of Tennessee Williams, artist and man, that is richer, more enthralling and, yes, stranger, than any that has been committed to publication heretofore. James Grissom has, through an unholy combination of research, intrusion, and empathy, committed half his lifetime to assembling something akin to a living, breathing creation—a portrait of Tennessee Williams that inhabits the pages of his new book Follies of God in all his flawed, erratic, ingeniously creative glory . . . The true achievement of the book lurks within its sentences, muscles its way through its paragraphs. It is the writing itself that astonishes . . . elegant, poetic—even appropriately elegiac—and wry . . . This is an extraordinary work. Not only for those who love theater, but also for those who would seek an understanding of the mind of the artist.”
          --Vinton Rafe McCabe, New York Journal of Books

“James Grissom’s amazing and quite wonderful book, “Follies of God,” deals with the inspirations and heartaches of writing as experienced by Tennessee Williams, America’s finest and most poetic playwright. As a young man, Grissom went to Williams for help as a writer, and found himself being asked to help the master with his own writing. The book is a unique and stirring examination of the profound effect of numerous talented actresses on Williams’ memorable work. Remarkably revealing and extremely touching, Grissom’s book is among the most surprising and provocative journeys into the soul of a writer.”
--Peter Bogdanovich

“Enchants the mind and ravages the heart.”
          --Cathleen Medwick, More

“Artful . . . A rare biographical find. Editor's recommendation.”
--Barnes & Noble

“Jim Grissom had amazing access to Tennessee Williams, - and to the great actresses who starred in his plays. His revelations about these remarkable talents coping with the passage of time, are moving and often shocking in their truths. A dazzling piece of writing.”
--Lee Grant

“Memorable . . . [FOLLIES OF GOD] provides new and valuable insights into the playwright's psyche and life.”
--Library Journal

“Always thoughtful, sometimes stunning, I see FOLLIES OF GOD as a kaleidoscope for viewing Tennessee Williams, and his time and place in American theater.  A little turn, a new surprise, another view forms itself.  There's nothing like it.”
--Lois Smith

“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.”
--Kirkus

“[A] unique personal blend of road trip and literary history . . . philosophical, pragmatic, funny, and devastating . . . Grissom has succeeded in creating a kaleidoscope meditation on the people that entered Williams’ imagination—“the fog”—to become his signature characters.”
--Publishers Weekly

“James Grissoms electrifying and wonderfully readable book about him is the real thing. He has caught the voice, the man, the artist, exactly as I remember him: generous to a fault, astonishingly kind, always a force of nature, a writer to whom poetry came naturally, on paper and in conversation, a great artist perhaps in grief over the loss of his genius . . . yet determined courageously to carry on, working, creating, always illuminated serenely from within even when tormented by his own demons.
“Few people have captured so well Tennessee’s strange mixture of fear and admiration for women, his profound understanding (rare among men) of what drives them, their dominating presence in all his work,  and his miraculous ability to work the magic of their strengths and weaknesses into some of the most powerful roles in the American theater. Lillian Gish, Maureen Stapleton, Jessica Tandy, Geraldine Page, Julie Harris, Katherine Hepburn (not to speak of his own mother and sister), these are among the women whose love, friendship and acting genius brought to life his characters and touched his soul, and Grissom has at last brought to the printed page some of the magic that radiated from Tennessee, even in his saddest moments, and explained so much more than we ever knew about the fierce, charming, and curiously evasive personality of Americas greatest playwright.”
--Michael Korda: author of CLOUDS OF GLORY and CHARMED LIVES

“James Grissom's book is peerless . . . in both what it says about the creative sources of America's greatest playwright and in the way that it says it . . . It is, in every sense, one of a kind . . . The results of Grissom's inquiries with some of the most renowned figures of the twentieth century are astonishing . . . from Lillian Gish, Katharine Hepburn, Maureen Stapleton, Geraldine Page, Kim Stanley, and others, he elicits what are surely the most incisive interviews they ever gave . . . Their observations about Williams, acting, and life [are] chock-full of treasurable insights. And Williams' own extended quotations here are likewise the deepest, the most searing, the most revealing statements he ever offered: a magisterial summing up of a tormented soul  for whom salvation was to be found only through language, his lifelong love affair with arranging words on a blank page. [As Grissom] pursues its singular and always surprising course, it reveals Williams to us fully as artist and human being -- a flawed, fearful, self-destructive, achingly vulnerable, gallant, forever questing pilgrim: a genius and a visionary who tragically could never seem to take the measure of his own unparalleled gifts. This is an unexpected masterpiece.”
--Foster Hirsch, author of OTTO PREMINGER and THE DARK SIDE OF THE SCREEN              

About the Author

JAMES GRISSOM studied at Louisiana State University and the University of Pennsylvania. He has written for HBO, Showtime, CBS, and NBC. He lives in New York.

Jamesgrissom.blogspot.com