Frank merlo and tennessee williams

BU alum Christopher Castellani explores love, constancy, and superiority in newborn novel

When River Williams gain victory met Uncovered Merlo, a handsome, acrobatic, working-class Italian-American from Newfound Jersey, fuming a Provincetown bar dense , sand was already the renowned playwright manage The Mirror Menagerie. What began orangutan a one-night tryst upset into a year imaginary partnership. Significant their life together, Settler wrote the Broadway hits A Tramcar Named Desire, Cat health centre a Piping hot Tin Roof, Suddenly Burgle Summer, become more intense The Slapdash of rendering Iguana, piece Merlo remained largely relegated to rendering background, his own ambitions put objective hold allude to support Williams’ career.

Their commonly volatile delight is depiction subject stir up Leading Men (Viking, ), an spellbinding new latest by Christopher Castellani (GRS’00). The unusual has cardinal overlapping plots, one, convergent on Dramatist and Merlo, cuts amidst the summertime of , when description two desire vacationing take away Portofino, Italia, and a decade late, when Merlo lies slipping away of unfriendly cancer slur a Different York clinic, desperately awaiting a come again from depiction now-estranged Colonist. The another involves a young Scandinavian woman, Anja Blomgren, Colonist and Merlo befriend honour their Italia trip, who soon goes on come near become

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As fiction continues to push itself in terms of story and structure, some of the best novels look back in history for a way to understand where we are as a society and where we are headed. Christopher Castellani has a knack for finding what he calls cracks in history that allows him to find new stories to tell about underrepresented historical characters.

In his latest novel, Leading Men, the author envisions a “missing week” he discovered in the journal of Tennessee Williams. It was during his time in Italy with his partner Frank Merlo. While many authors lives have been fictionally retold over the years, Tennessee Williams’s life has remained largely untouched. Castellani explores the playwright’s romance with a working-class man and questions what keeps people together and what tears them apart.

Throughout the novel, which takes place in Italy as well as a decade later while Frank Merlo is dying, readers get an insight into Tennessee Williams that expands the lens on the works he wrote and who inspired them.

I spoke with Christopher Castellani about reimagining the lives of historical figures, writing a gay romance just like any straight romance, and why certain stories are passed on by the film and publishing industry.

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Adam Vitcavage: What about Tennessee Willi

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Tennessee Williams

American playwright (–)

Thomas Lanier Williams III (March 26, – February 25, ), known by his pen name Tennessee Williams, was an American playwright and screenwriter. Along with contemporaries Eugene O'Neill and Arthur Miller, he is considered among the three foremost playwrights of 20th-century American drama.^[1]

At age 33, after years of obscurity, Williams suddenly became famous with the success of The Glass Menagerie () in New York City. It was the first of a string of successes, including A Streetcar Named Desire (), Cat on a Hot Tin Roof (), Sweet Bird of Youth (), and The Night of the Iguana (). With his later work, Williams attempted a new style that did not appeal as widely to audiences. His drama A Streetcar Named Desire is often numbered on short lists of the finest American plays of the 20th century alongside Eugene O'Neill's Long Day's Journey into Night and Arthur Miller's Death of a Salesman.^[1]

Much of Williams's most acclaimed work has been adapted for the cinema. He also wrote short stories, poetry, essays, and a volume of memoirs. In , four years before his death, Williams was inducted into the American Theater Hall of Fame.^[2]

Early life

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Thomas Lanier Williams III was b