Who was Tennessee Williams in the last year of his life?
New memoir reveals playwright’s personal side
CHICAGO – He grew up idolizing the man who wrote “The Glass Menagerie” and “A Streetcar Named Desire” and hoped, but he never imagined, fate would bring him face-to-face with Tennessee Williams in Key West.
In the Frightened Heart of Me: Tennessee Williams’s Last Year offers a personal and intimate glimpse into the life of the literary giant during the turbulent, final year of his life through the eyes of Williams’s traveling companion and final love interest, Tony Narducci.
“As a young man I worshiped everything Williams wrote, and I was determined to meet him one day,” Narducci said.
Narducci looked up to Williams’s talent but wished the author would mentor him through his own dilemma of deciding between a life in the arts or a career in business. Instead, Narducci says he found a man with a hole dug so deeply inside of him he could never climb out.
“The greatest playwright of the 20th Century had a genius for writing about what was and what was not love, but in his personal life, he struggled to give or receive it,” Narducci said. “With great genius often comes great tragedy.”
For more information, visit www.frightenedheart.com.
In the Frightened Heart of Me: Tennessee Williams’s Last Year
By Tony Narducci
ISBN: 978-1-4759-6594-0
Available in softcover, hardcover, e-book
Available on Amazon, Barnes & Noble and iUniverse
About the author
A native of Chicago, Tony Narducci is a retired business consultant who taught high school English literature for three years. He holds degrees from Northern Illinois University and Columbia College.
