Writing about family
I went to a panel discussion yesterday on writing about family as part of the Tennessee Williams Festival and must say I think I learned more about writing about family from Tom and Rose, the play we saw last night that was a mash up of Williams’ intertwined relations with his disturbed sister and his use of her as character after character in his work.
Williams called New Orleans the first city where the spirit could be free, and yet he was haunted by the mental fatigue of his family, that he loved but was tortured by, and it was this family that fueled his writing and animated his Blue Devils and created the Tennessee we all know so well.
At the end of this festival, of which I missed John Waters and Armistead Maupin having to pick from panels to attend, work to do, time with T squared as well as other obligations, I came away believing that it is the stuff that gnaws at us from the inside out that causes us to write things down, to create other worlds, and I know only too well the despair that caused Percy to write, the love and revulsion of family that caused Tennessee to write, the desire for truth that caused Berry to write, and of all the things that New Orleans does well, it is honoring literature this weekend, where dysfunction is manifest and family is closer and further apart than anywhere else.