The Roman Spring of Mrs Stone. - book reviews

During his 72 years, Tennessee Williams followed his compulsions, migrating across a landscape of many forms. He is best known, of course, for his full-length plays, which defined success on Broadway for over 15 years. But he was also a master of the one-act play, a painter with a better sense of color than line, an author of grotesque and fascinating short stories, a sometimes librettist, an infamous autobiographer, and a terrible poet. Given this multitudinous corpus, it is easy to overlook Tennessee Williams the novelist.

He wrote but two short novels, The Roman Spring of Mrs. Stone (1950) and Moise and the World of Reason (1975). Called incoherent and lacking in sustained tone or theme, his second novel has all but faded from view. Moise and the World of Reason has been ignored by Williams's biographers or called a major disaster - so much so that even Williams fails to mention it in his Memoirs.

The Roman Spring of Mrs. Stone has fared better. Though not universally acclaimed by critics, it did capture the allegiance of Williams's literary friends. Donald Windham claimed it was Williams's "first fictionalized self-portrait after his success - and it displays a hair-raising degree of self-knowledge." Gore Vidal called it "splendidly written, precise, short, complete and fine." Vittorio De Sica wanted to film the novel and even agreed with Williams that it might be the vehicle to entice Greta Garbo out of her self-imposed exile. This was not to be, but a certain immortality was assured by casting Vivien Leigh and Warren Beatty for the Jose Quintero film.

At the remove of almost 45 years, the novel may find its most accepting audience. To baby-boomers, the tale of Karen Stone, widowed, fiftyish, and ending an acting career built upon beauty and energy is not without resonance. Having flown to Rome in the hope of staving off loss and - what we might call in these postmodern times - of reinventing herself, Karen Stone is not the Norma Desmond of Sunset Boulevard or even Alexandra Del Lago in Williams's Sweet Bird of Youth. This story is told not from the perspective of a compromised young man, but from the bird's-eye view of an older woman.

Though only 38 when he wrote Roman Spring, Williams was fast becoming the aging victim of his own success. Gore Vidal had taken to calling Williams "The Bird" because he was in perpetual flight, and his fiction contains a virtual aviary of bird images. Though her surname would suggest that the late Mr. Stone had given her a solid identity, Karen Stone is described alternately as a vulnerable or rapacious bird. Standing on a balcony overlooking the Piazza di Spagna, a "friend" sizes up Karen's career:

What's talent but the ability to get away with something? And you got away with some effective performances in some difficult parts. Of course it was a mistake for you to play Juliet at the age of Mrs. Alving. Ho-ho! That was an error! All that white satin and pearls were supposed to create an atmosphere of virginity but the illusion didn't work. When the violins played and the precious little Romeo came slithering under your balcony, I felt like shouting at him, Watch out, little bird, she'll snatch you up in her claws and tear you to pieces!

Karen outwardly rejects this assessment, but inwardly comes to accept its essential truth. The gigolo Paulo, who identifies himself with a dove, wants Karen's sexual and financial patronage; she desperately clings to a thin veil of propriety by refusing to recognize the true nature of their relationship. Meanwhile, the darker possibilities of such relationships are embodied in a beautiful but indigent young stranger, not unlike Paulo, who appears to Karen reflected in windows or hovering in shadows beneath her balcony. Karen Stone is in as much danger from the Romeos who court her as they ever were from her.

In A Streetcar Named Desire, Blanche says that desire is the opposite of death. But Karen Stone has 20 years on Blanche. Repeatedly, Karen hears the cautionary tale of a wealthy older woman murdered by her young lover for her jewels. Loneliness and time have combined in a dangerous drift toward desire - called decadence by her peers - that for Karen Stone, and a more jaded Tennessee Williams, belies such easy oppositions.

MONICA JOHNSTONE Loyola College in Maryland

COPYRIGHT 1994 Studies in Short Fiction
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