San Antonio College Library

The Instrument is primarily focused on the character of Robert Yancey (Yank) Lucas, a playwright who has just written his first play. He manages to get Broadway to put on his play and in addition, his play catches the attention of Zena Gollum, Broadway's leading actress. Lucas and Zena have a torrid love affair, despite Zena being married. However, even this is not able to make him happy as Lucas struggles to be himself as his play becomes a huge...

"Collected interviews with the Pulitzer Prize winning playwright and screenwriter best known for his BB Trilogy, which included Brighton Beach Memoirs, Biloxi Blues, and Broadway Bound"--

Glamorous, talented, audacious--Lillian Hellman knew everyone, did everything, had been everywhere. By the age of 29 she had written the first of four hit Broadway plays, and soon she was considered a member of America's first rank of dramatists, a position she maintained for more than twenty-five years. Apart from her literary accomplishments, she lived a rich life filled with notable friendships, controversial political activity, travel, and love...

In the final half of Arthur Miller's captivating story, covering his life from 1962 to his death in 2005, Christopher Bigsby maps out the journey of Miller's life and work. Shedding new light on Miller's complexities, and revealing unknown facts about his public and private life, Bigsby shares new insights and perspectives crucial to an understanding of one of the world's greatest playwrights.

"This Literary Life draws extensively from the playwright's correspondences, notebooks, and archival papers to offer an original angle to the discussion of Williams's life and work, and the times and circumstances that helped produce it."--Publisher's website.

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' candor 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, thirty years later, Williams' look back at his life...

Critical-analytical study.