The Tennessee Williams Encyclopedia
Edited by Philip C. Kolin
Greenwood Press, 2004
In The Tennessee Williams Encyclopedia Philip C. Kolin, editor of the
volume and Popular Culture Review contributor, has created a work that is not
only of great scholarly value to the Williams researcher, but also of interest to
anyone, either professional or lay, seeking infonnation about Williams, his
influences and counterinfluences, and his milieu.
While the volume does not lay claim to being comprehensive—
Williams’ contributions and influence are far too vast for that—it provides 150
detailed entries "essential to understanding Williams’ life and work.” The
Encyclopedia is designed "to help readers understand the context and
performance of a Williams work and the contours of his life into which it fits”
through "four types of entries: on individuals, on places, on works, and on
concepts.”
For example, Annette J. Saddick’s entry on Yukio Mishima and his
complex relationship to Williams explains how the two influenced each other
both artistically and personally until Mishima’s suicide. In the Truman Capote
entry, Susan Swortwout describes a relationship gone wrong as the two move
from hijinks to jealousy and litigation. In the entry on St. Louis, Allean Hale
provides the rather surprising information that this "Southern” author placed
more than thirty of his works in that city, perhaps not too surprising when one
realizes that he spent more time in that city than anywhere else. Naturally, the
works themselves make up the largest category of entries, "including all the
genres in which Williams wrote—plays, full-length and one-acts, stories, poems,
essays, memoirs, journals, even paintings.”
Finally, the conceptual entries weave the strands of information
together to provide a comprehensive overview of Williams’ work.