Vieux Carré
Vieux Carré by Tennessee Williams, published by New Directions Publishing in 2000, is a 115-page drama that explores the intricate memories and experiences of its characters within a dilapidated rooming house in New Orleans. The narrative centers around various inhabitants, including the desperate landlady Mrs. Wire, a young woman named Jane seeking pleasure, and a dying painter named Nightingale, who imparts lessons on love to a young writer. This edition presents a nuanced view of the artist’s education, focusing on themes of loneliness, despair, and the complexities of human connection.
Readers will find that the play delves into the lives of its characters, revealing their struggles and desires against the backdrop of the Vieux Carré. The work emphasizes the notion that writers are keen observers of life, often paying a steep price for their insights. This edition includes a new introduction by Robert Bray, which offers an authoritative account of the play’s background and genesis, building on two decades of scholarship surrounding Williams’s work. The language of this edition is English, making it accessible to a broad audience interested in American drama and literary criticism.
Official synopsis Publisher
The drama takes it form from the shifting scenes of memory, and Williams’s surrogate self invites us to focus, in turn, on the various inhabitants or his dilapidated rooming house in the Vieux Carré: the comically desperate landlady, Mrs. Wire; Jane, a properly brought-up young woman from New York making at last grab at pleasure with Tye, the vulgar but appealing strip-joint barker; two decayed gentlewomen politely starving in the garret; and the dying painter Nightingale, who tries to teach the young writer something about love–both of the body and of the heart. This is a play about the education of the artist, and education in loneliness and despair, in giving and not giving, but most of all in seeing, hearing, feeling, and learning that “writers are shameless spies,” who pay dearly for their knowledge and who cannot forget. Building on two decades of Williams scholarship since Vieux Carré was originally published, Robert Bray, editor of The Tennessee Williams Annual Review, has provided a new introduction for this edition, giving the most authoritative account yet of its background and genesis.
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