When Memoirs was first published in 1975, it created quite a bit of turbulence in the media--though long self-identified as a gay man, Williams' candour about his love life, sexual encounters, and drug use was found shocking in and of itself, and such revelations by America's greatest living playwright were called " a raw display of private life" by The New York Times Book Review . As it turns out, more than thirty years later, Williams' look back at his life is not quite so scandalous as it once seemed; he recalls his childhood in Mississippi and St. Louis, his prolonged struggle as a " starving artist," the " overnight" success of The Glass Menagerie in 1945, the death of his long-time companion Frank Merlo in 1962, and his confinement to a psychiatric ward in 1969 and subsequent recovery from alcohol and drug addiction, all with the same directness, compassion, and insight that epitomize his plays.
