This book is a series of recollections by a writer who has known Pulitzer Prize-winning dramatist Tennessee Williams since the very beginning of his career. The author describes Williams' Southern childhood, and his years in New York and New Orleans when the author knew him as a struggling artist fighting fear, poverty, failure. The reader sees the playwright in a blaze of success; a generous, querulous, self-driving, hypochondriac. Readers also meet his notable friends--Audrey Wood, Laurette Taylor, Tallulah Bankhead, Elia Kazan--and witness the backstage dramas, sometimes hilarious, sometimes heartbreaking, which were rumored in the daily gossip columns. Here too is the final, true story of the tragic Diana Barrymore and her much publicized "affair" with the famous playwright.