Short Story Criticism | Williams, Tennessee - William H. Peden (essay date summer 1964)

William H. Peden (essay date summer 1964)

SOURCE: Peden, William H. “Mad Pilgrimage: The Short Stories of Tennessee Williams.” Studies in Short Fiction 1, no. 4 (summer 1964): 243-50.

[In the following essay, Peden elucidates the defining characteristics of Williams's short fiction.]

The short stories in Tennessee Williams (1914-), collected in One Arm (1948) and Hard Candy (1954),¹ have been largely overshadowed by the author's continuing success and notoriety as a playwright. In addition to possessing special interest as occasionally being the first or early versions of characters and situations eventually developed into full-length plays,² Williams' stories are important in their own right and are at their best a permanent addition to the “sick” fiction of the forties and fifties.

The world of Williams' stories possesses considerable variety of method, yet at the same time it is as...

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