Product Description
The story of Blanche DuBois and her last grasp at happiness, and of Stanley Kowalski, the one who destroyed her chance.
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 no good choice ( sdscotts )
The choice of copies of _The Streetcar Named Desire_
(required reading for high school academic English
this summer) seemed to narrow down to ones with
lurid covers or this plain one. Unfortunately, the text
is almost like a typewritten script--small print and
a little hard to read.
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 Superb Drama
This classic play by Tennessee Williams (1911-1983) is relentless and compelling. Few readers are un-affected by these pages, even more so than with The Glass Menagerie. The story concerns a Blanche, a troubled former southern belle who moves in with her married sister Stella in New Orleans. Blanch lives off pretensions and delusions, and we quickly sense she's headed for a fall. Her sister Stella doesn't see Blanche clearly, and worries that Blanche's presence will cause trouble with her abusive-but-loving husband. That husband is Stanley, a loud brute who's dominating persona both attracts and repulses us. Stanley is also a realist, and he easily sees through Blanche's pretensions. Readers sense the two are headed for a collision, with little doubt as to who is likely to win. Perhaps Mitch, Stanley's kind-hearted friend who likes the still-pretty Blanche can save the day, but has he the strength?
This relentless drama carries quickly to the bitter conclusion from the strength of its characters. Some find this play depressing, but most find it fascinating. The superb 1951 film starring Vivien Leigh and Marlon Brando is equally (some say more) compelling.
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Squalor, Poetry, and Remarkable Insight: An American Classic ( gft )
Born in Columbus, Mississippi, Tennessee Williams (1911-1983) endured a difficult childhood and adolescence before suddenly exploding to national and then international fame with the 1944 play THE GLASS MENAGERIE. He would go on to create a dozen or so more that were equally famous--but he is perhaps best recalled for the 1947 drama A STREETCAR NAMED DESIRE, which he drew from a number of personal sources and the time he spent in the New Orleans' French Quarter, in which the play is set.
Like many of Williams' plays, the story is remarkably sordid. Blanche DuBois is aging "Southern Belle" who arrives to visit her sister Stella and is shocked to find Stella married to a bruitish Stanley and living in squalid conditions. Her social pretensions anger Stanley, who chips away with them without remorse or pity until Blanche's facade begins to crack and an ugly series of truths about her past emerge: a scandalous suicide, an equally scandalous series of affairs. Blanche is unable to confront either past or present realities and so spins into psychosis while most of those around her remain largely indifferent to her plight.
But if the material is sordid, Williams juxtaposes it with tremendous delicacy, even poetry. Blanche acquires the tragedy of a frightened, hunted animal who has sought safety only to find herself inside the very trap she had sought to escape, increasingly fearful, increasingly alone, and ultimately pitable in her inability to fend off her tormentors. It is a vivid portrait, and many regard the role of Blanche as one of the tests of a great actress.
The original 1947 New York play starred Jessica Tandy as Blanche, Marlon Brando as Stanley, Kim Hunter as Stella, and Karl Malden as Blanche's would-be suitor Mitch. A slightly later English production starring Vivien Leigh, however, ran into significantly greater censorship issues in London--and when Leigh replaced Tandy to film STREETCAR with Brando, Hunter, and Malden the material ran afoul of movie censors, who forced numerous changes and cuts. Consequently, if your idea of STREETCAR arises from the celebrated film, you may be somewhat surprised: the play goes quite a bit further than the film ever dared.
Williams is frequently accused of being sordid for the sake of sordiness, and there is some truth to this accusation; as the years passed he was less and less able to balance the sexually charged nature of his stories with the same degree of insight he brought to his earlier works. But this not true of A STREETCAR NAMED DESIRE, a remarkably complex piece with meticulously expressed ideas, images, and thematic choices. There is a reason it remains celebrated fifty years after it first appeared on the stage: it is indeed a masterwork, utterly unlike anything that had gone before and distinctly superior to everything which borrowed from it after it proved success. A great work by a great artist.
GFT, Amazon Reviewer
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The Glorious Bird's iconic melodrama ( duibuqi )
This is probably the most famous piece of literature from the US that I hadn'd read yet, until now. Nor watched as a play or movie. And still I seemed to know everything about it.
Having just read Gore Vidal's memoirs, where he calls TW the 'glorious bird', I was motivated to finally get acquainted with the streetcar. What fun. It is Gone with the Wind updated for the 20th century. It is the downsizing of rural gentry. It shows downward social mobility in a narrative framework of Southern Gothic. It is powerfully vulgar and perceptive. It is so politically not correct. ('Polacks are like Irish, only less highbrow.')
But with all the mad fun, let's be clear about this: despite the popular use of the term 'tragic' for the descent of Ms. Blanche into madness, this is not really a tragedy in the full sense of the word. Being a piece of stage writing makes it one only in the sense of not being a comedy. What it is, it is a really great melodrama.
A word about the genius casting for the movie: Marlon Brando dominated it more than the text justifies. Gore Vidal says in his memoirs that Kazan actually destroyed the play by pushing the Blanche character into 2nd row. He says that TW did not mind, since it made him famous.
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 A Streetcar Named ... Classic
"I have always depended on the kindness of strangers."
Blanche's final decree before being taken away to the insane asylum is an ironic remark which Tennessee Williams uses to harshly criticize the promiscuous lifestyle of Miss DuBois in his classic "A Streetcar Named Desire." Moreover, it is a testimony to how Blanche sets herself up for disaster.
Blanche DuBois is the southern belle whom the play revolves around, and she is certainly a character to be remembered for the ages. She escapes her deeply immoral past by fleeing to her sister Stella's homely apartment in New Orleans, only to discover that it is a complete cultural departure. A high-maintenance chauvinist upon arrival, Blanche is critical of everything in Stella's life, from her husband to her living arrangements. Blanche is dishonest about her past, lies about her alcoholism and covers up affairs with students--the complete opposite of moral perfection. Her constant affairs with unknown men back in Laurel caused Blanche to be kicked out of a two-bit hotel, and her affair with a teenage boy lost Blanche her job, illustrating Blanche as a wanton woman.
So where is this "kindness of strangers" that Blanche so respects? The irony lies in that Blanche has not always been treated well by strangers, and that her relationships with these sorts of people often fare poorly, and so the fact that she relies on them for the welfare of her life is paradoxical. Williams condemns Blanche of her loose lifestyle, sleeping around with various men whom she does not know, and ultimately sentences her to the insane asylum, demonstrating that those with lifestyles like that of Blanche will merit the same fate. The southern belle image which Blanche allegedly epitomizes soon fades, and Williams takes this fact and emphasizes it to the audience. All of this adds up to a cornucopia of shameful aspects which Blanche attempts to hide from by deluding herself in fantastical images. Blanche has always differentiated herself as being more idealistic than realistic, and so her retreat into her fantasies is no surprise--she needs to escape the harshness of the real world. She herself is fading, and so her mentality follows.
It is an important lesson which Williams teaches us about distinctions between reality and unlikely fantasies. Despite the fact that the real world may bring obstacles and roadblocks, as shown through the relationship between Stanley and Stella (which I won't delve into as my focus is on Blanche), living in reality is always a better idea than drowning yourself in fantasies. Blanche carries with her a whole plethora of stigmas and taboos that Williams deems necessary for her loose character, so that he may, in turn, teach lessons of morality to the audience. Blanche is a complex character that we can all learn from, and Williams makes that clear through the intricate development of Blanche. "Streetcar" is certainly one of the most interesting plays that I have ever read, and it is definitely a necessary component to the shelf of American classics.
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