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A Streetcar Named Desire
by Tennessee Williams
read by Michael Schaub
Seven and a Half Observations on A Streetcar Named Desire
1. I had a dream recently while I was under the influence of Trinalin,
a magical little allergy pill that can put you to sleep faster than C-SPAN's
Booknotes. In this dream, I was in New Orleans, my ancestral home,
walking through the French Quarter, when I came upon a brightly colored
sign that read something to the effect of NO YELLING "STELLA"
WITHIN CITY LIMITS. It was this dream that led me, for obvious reasons,
to read A Streetcar Named Desire for the 100 Books Project. (Note:
I do not actually know whether it is illegal to yell "Stella"
in New Orleans, but the Crescent City is notoriously libertarian when
it comes to matters of sin. For example, the drinking age there is 12.)
2. My uncle is a New Orleans-based visual artist and was once asked to
judge a "Stella"-yelling contest there. I believe this was part
of the annual Tennesse Williams festival, which probably attracts the
exact same kind of crowd you're thinking of right now. The winner of the
contest, if I recall correctly, was a large biker-type guy who screamed
"Stella!" and broke a (full) beer bottle over his head. I have
never been able to fully excise this image from my brain.
3. There is at least one African-American "character" in Streetcar,
but she has no dialogue in disappears in the first scene. And that's fine,
because this is the postwar American south, and then as now, like likes
like. It's hard not to laugh, though, when Williams describes New Orleans
as a cosmopolitan city where people of differing ethnic heritages get
along just fine. That's not the case in 2002, and it sure as hell wasn't
the case in the 1940s. On the other hand, it could just be a healthy dose
of authorial sarcasm -- characters in Tennessee Williams plays usually
do not say what they mean.
4. One of the most interesting characters in Streetcar is long
dead before the play begins -- Blanche DuBois' husband. Married as teenagers,
Blanche is traumatized when she finds out her sensitive poet husband is
having an affair with a man. The husband kills himself, thus making him
the only character in the play who doesn't talk or behave like a complete
idiot.
5. Streetcar is a famous play, of course, but it's also one of
the most famous movies in American history. More people probably identify
Streetcar with Marlon Brando and Vivien Leigh than they do with
Tennessee Williams. The movie is so famous, in fact, that it's almost
impossible to read the play without imagining Stanley Kowalski as Brando,
which gets to be pretty distracting.
6. I_ve seen the movie once. But I've seen the Simpsons episode
in which the local theater puts on a musical production called Streetcar!
many, many times. Marge plays Blanche, and Ned Flanders takes on the role
of Stanley. You have to see it if only for the hilarious closing number,
"You Can Always Depend on the Kindness of Strangers."
7. The concept behind 100 Books has something to do with recording the
experience of reading a particular novel, short story collection, or play.
I'm not really sure; I think I was drunk when Jessa first explained it
to me. I read Streetcar in one night. I remember it being cold.
I remember my roommate's cat sleeping in my lap as I thumbed through it.
But...
7.5. This play left no impression on me; it gave me no revelations and
inspired no epiphanies. Maybe it was because of my overfamiliarity with
Williams' place in American pop culture, and the Pavlovian reaction I
tend to have when confronted with a hugely popular, iconic play like this
one. It used to be that whenever Streetcar was mentioned, I would
involuntarily say something like "Stella for star, Stella for star!"
Or, when I was feeling even less creative, just "Stella! STELLA!"
Now that I've actually read the play, I probably won't do that anymore.
Not in New Orleans, anyway. I have no desire to examine the Orleans Parish
Jail that intimately.
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