DeneGOLD- Free

THE INTERVIEW ARTIST
The New Yorker|June 12, 2023
James Grissom met Tennessee Williams—and suddenly knew everybody.
- HELEN SHAW
THE INTERVIEW ARTIST

Grissom says that the playwright gave him a life-changing mission.

Sometime in September, 1982, James Grissom, a twenty-year-old English student at Louisiana State University, receives a life-changing phone call from Tennessee Williams. It doesn’t come completely out of the blue: Grissom had sent a fan letter to the playwright, enclosing a picture and a few short stories, and asking for advice. But the response, Grissom would write decades later, surpasses his wildest hopes. When he picks up the receiver, a rough voice drawls down the line, “Perhaps you can be of some help to me.”

On the phone, the famously dissipated playwright tells Grissom that he is having a creative crisis. He has always begun his plays by imagining a woman walking across a stage, “announced by the arrival of a fog,” but he hasn’t seen this fog in years: the calcifying effects of time and “monumental accretions of toxins self-administered” have left him unable to write at his “previous level of power.”

Grissom drives from Baton Rouge to New Orleans, and, at the Court of Two Sisters Restaurant, Williams dictates to him a list of writers, directors, and (mostly) actresses. Grissom jots the names down on a menu. Williams wants Grissom to convey his thoughts to these muses—specific praise, a memory—and then find out what Williams has meant to them. “I would like for you to ask these people if I ever mattered,” the playwright says.

Bu hikaye The New Yorker dergisinin June 12, 2023 sayısından alınmıştır.

Start your 7-day Magzter GOLD free trial to access thousands of curated premium stories, and 9,000+ magazines and newspapers.

Bu hikaye The New Yorker dergisinin June 12, 2023 sayısından alınmıştır.

Start your 7-day Magzter GOLD free trial to access thousands of curated premium stories, and 9,000+ magazines and newspapers.

THE NEW YORKER DERGISINDEN DAHA FAZLA HIKAYETümünü görüntüle
THE FRENZY Joyce Carol Oates
The New Yorker

THE FRENZY Joyce Carol Oates

Early afternoon, driving south on the Garden State Parkway with the girl beside him.

time-read
10+ dak  |
March 24, 2025
UPDATED KENNEDY CENTER 2025 SCHEDULE
The New Yorker

UPDATED KENNEDY CENTER 2025 SCHEDULE

April 1—A. R. Gurney’s “Love Letters,” with Lauren Boebert and Kid Rock

time-read
2 dak  |
March 24, 2025
YOU MAD, BRO?
The New Yorker

YOU MAD, BRO?

Young men have gone MAGA. Can the left win them back?

time-read
10+ dak  |
March 24, 2025
ONWARD AND UPWARD WITH THE ARTS BETTING ON THE FUTURE
The New Yorker

ONWARD AND UPWARD WITH THE ARTS BETTING ON THE FUTURE

Lucy Dacus after boygenius.

time-read
10+ dak  |
March 24, 2025
STEAL, ADAPT, BORROW
The New Yorker

STEAL, ADAPT, BORROW

Jonathan Anderson transformed Loewe by radically reinterpreting classic garments. Is Dior next?

time-read
10+ dak  |
March 24, 2025
JUST BETWEEN US
The New Yorker

JUST BETWEEN US

The pleasures and pitfalls of gossip.

time-read
10+ dak  |
March 24, 2025
INHERIT THE PLAY
The New Yorker

INHERIT THE PLAY

The return of “A Streetcar Named Desire” and “Ghosts.”

time-read
5 dak  |
March 24, 2025
LEAVE WITH DESSERT
The New Yorker

LEAVE WITH DESSERT

Graydon Carter’s great magazine age.

time-read
10+ dak  |
March 24, 2025
INTERIORS
The New Yorker

INTERIORS

The tyranny of taste in Vincenzo Latronico’s “Perfection.”

time-read
7 dak  |
March 24, 2025
Naomi Fry on Jay McInerney's "Chloe's Scene"
The New Yorker

Naomi Fry on Jay McInerney's "Chloe's Scene"

As a teen-ager, long before I lived in New York, I felt the city urging me toward it. N.Y.C., with its art and money, its drugs and fashion, its misery and elation—how tough, how grimy, how scary, how glamorous! For me, one of its most potent siren calls was “Chloe’s Scene,” a piece written for this magazine, in 1994, by the novelist Jay McInerney, about the then nineteen-year-old sometime actress, sometime model, and all-around It Girl Chloë Sevigny.

time-read
3 dak  |
March 24, 2025

Hizmetlerimizi sunmak ve geliştirmek için çerezler kullanıyoruz. Sitemizi kullanarak çerezlere izin vermiş olursun. Learn more