具体描述
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.”
作者简介
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
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**评价四：** 这本书最让我印象深刻的是其对“氛围”的营造，它几乎可以被视为一部视觉小说。作者的笔触极其感性，仿佛所有的感官都被调动起来：你能听到窗外永不停歇的雨声，闻到发霉书本上的灰尘气味，感受到丝绸摩擦皮肤的冰凉触感。这种沉浸式的写作，让角色的痛苦和挣扎变得异常真实和具有传染性。我尤其对书中关于“身份认同”的探讨着迷。几位核心角色都在努力扮演着社会强加给他们的角色，而他们私下里那些细微的反叛和自我欺骗，是全书最引人入胜的部分。作者用一种近乎冷酷的客观视角来审视这些人物的悲剧，没有任何说教的意图，只是冷静地展示“事情就是这样发生的”。这种距离感反而让情感冲击力更强，因为它让你自己去填补那些情感的空白。总而言之，这是一部需要用“心”而非仅仅用“眼”去阅读的作品，它不提供简单的答案，只抛出更深刻的问题。
评分**评价二：** 说实话，初读这本书时，我感觉自己像是在迷宫里行走，几乎要放弃了。它的节奏把握得极其缓慢，尤其是在中段部分，仿佛作者故意放慢了时间流速，沉浸在对某些哲学命题的无休止追问之中。这种“慢”并非缺点，而是作者刻意为之的艺术手法，它强迫你放下现代社会对效率的追求，去体会那种缓慢酝酿的情感和思想的重量。然而，一旦你适应了这种步调，你会发现，这种对细节的偏执最终汇集成了一股强大的情感洪流。我特别喜欢作者对环境的描写，那种潮湿、压抑，又带着一丝腐朽浪漫的氛围，简直是绝佳的背景音。书中对一些边缘人物的刻画尤为成功，他们既不是完全的英雄，也不是彻底的恶棍，他们的行为逻辑充满了令人不舒服的真实感。这本书不是那种能让你在周末一口气读完的爆米花读物，它更像是一杯需要细品、温度适宜的陈年威士忌，后劲十足，让人在合上书本之后，仍久久不能平静地思考书中那些关于宿命论的论断。
评分**评价一：** 这部作品的叙事技巧简直令人拍案叫绝，作者在构建世界观时展现出了惊人的想象力。开篇寥寥数语，便将读者拽入一个光怪陆离、充满古典魅力的时代背景之中，细节的打磨达到了令人发指的地步。比如，对于那些古老建筑的描述，那种石头上苔藓的颜色、空气中弥漫的香料味，都仿佛触手可及。我尤其欣赏主人公在面对道德困境时的内心挣扎，作者没有简单地将人物脸谱化，而是用极其细腻的笔触刻画了人性的复杂与幽暗。那些关于权力、信仰与背叛的探讨，隐藏在日常生活的琐碎场景之下，需要读者反复咀嚼才能体会其深意。读这本书的过程，更像是一场智力上的探险，你总以为自己把握了故事的走向，下一秒作者就会用一个精妙的反转将你打回原点。人物间的对话充满了张力，每一句看似平常的言语下，都可能藏着冰山一角的真相，需要全神贯注地去捕捉那些细微的情感波动和潜台词。这种叙事的高级感，让我想起那些需要用放大镜去研究的经典文学作品，每一次重读都会有新的发现。
评分**评价五：** 从文学性的角度来看，这本书的语言密度极高，几乎每个句子都承载了双重甚至三重含义。我不得不承认，我花了很多时间在回读和查阅一些背景知识上，因为作者的用词非常讲究，充满了古典的韵味和精准的象征意义。它绝非一部轻松愉快的读物，它更像是一场对阅读者智识的考验。书中探讨的主题涉及历史的循环、艺术的本质以及个体在宏大叙事面前的无力感，这些宏大的概念都被巧妙地嫁接在了几个家庭的兴衰之上。我特别欣赏作者对“沉默”的处理，书中有大量的留白，许多关键的转折和情感的高潮，都是通过人物选择不说话来实现的。这种对非言语交流的精妙捕捉，体现了作者对人际关系复杂性的深刻洞察。它不是一本让你感到温暖的作品，但它绝对是一部能让你感受到文学力量磅礴的作品，它要求你付出努力，而最终的回报是精神层面上的一次洗礼。
评分**评价三：** 我对这本书的结构感到震撼，它采用了非线性的叙事方式，时间线像是一张被打散又重新编织的挂毯，每一段落似乎都在跳跃，但最终却诡异地吻合在一起。这种叙事上的挑战性，使得读者必须积极参与到故事的构建过程中，而不是被动接受信息。我认为作者在处理“记忆”和“现实”的边界问题上，达到了一个非常高的水准。有些场景的描写真实得让人起疑，而有些看似最荒诞的片段，反倒可能是最接近核心真相的象征。书中穿插的那些看似无关的民间传说和引用的古代文本，起初让人感到困惑，但随着阅读的深入，我意识到它们是解开人物内心世界迷宫的钥匙。这本书的美学风格非常独特，我称之为“华丽的颓废”，文字中充满了对衰败之美的迷恋，但这种颓废又被一种近乎古典的庄重感所约束。它不迎合大众口味，甚至可以说有些晦涩，但对于那些愿意投入时间和精力去解码的读者来说，回报是巨大的，它提供了一种超越日常经验的阅读体验。
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