A life of William Inge: the strains of triumph

Abstract

This book is a biography of Willian Inge, the American playwright who committed suicide in 1973. By 1962 he had written an unprecedented string of Broadway hits Picnic, Bus Stop, The Dark at the Top of the Stairs and Come Baack, Little Sheba. All four plays had become successful films featuring top Hollywood stars. Inge had received a Pulitzer Prize for Picnic and an Academy Award for his screenplay, Splendour in the Grass. Even his long-time friend and mentor, Tennesse Williams, was envious of his success. Privately, Inge was miserable. His long struggle with alcoholism and profound shame over his homosexuality plagued him before, during and after his decade of great success. As criticism of his work intensified, Inge responded with increasingly frantic attempts to please by modernizing his writing. He abandoned the small town characters and settings he knew in favour of more lurid, urban subject matter. In the end, his characters lost their authentic voices, and neither critics nor audiences found his later work believable. In this first book-length literary biography of Inge, Ralph Voss aims to peel back the veneer of public success and lay bare the private pain and isolation of the man who was called America's first authentic midwestern playwright. He draws upon interviews, memoirs, and unpublished manuscripts, letters, and papers to show how Inge's unhappy life fueled the struggles his plays depicted.