Short Story Criticism | Williams, Tennessee - William Peden (review date 8 January 1955)

William Peden (review date 8 January 1955)

SOURCE: Peden, William. “Broken Apollos and Blasted Dreams.” Saturday Review 38, no. 2 (8 January 1955): 11-12.

[In the following review, Peden offers a mixed assessment of One Arm and Other Stories.]

Tennessee Williams's One Arm and Other Stories contains some stories which have greatness in them; of some of the others, however, John Randolph's irreverent comment about Henry Clay seems appropriate: how like a dead mackerel in the moonlight [are they], that shines and stinks, and stinks and shines.

Characteristic is “Desire and the Black Masseur,” the story of Anthony Burns, a little man with “an instinct for being included in things that swallowed him up” who is eventually devoured—literally, figuratively, and symbolically—by his Nemesis, a gigantic masseur. Here we are transported from the world of accustomed responses to one which is uniquely Mr. Williams's...

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