SOURCE: Reck, Tom S. “The Short Stories of Tennessee Williams: Nucleus for His Drama.” Tennessee Studies in Literature 16 (1971): 141-54.

In the following essay, Reck identifies three ways Williams utilized his short fiction in his plays.

Especially for the Williams' loyalist, the playwright's current difficulties (The Milktrain Doesn't Stop Here Anymore, The Seven Descents of Myrtle, Slapstick Tragedy, and In a Bar of a Tokyo Hotel) ask for re-reading of his earlier successful works; i.e., you go back to them again in order to validate your original enthusiasm. And from here it is only a natural step, if you are familiar with Williams' fiction, to examine the particular short stories which Williams rewrote as plays—not only because it is interesting to trace the transformations, but also because it is useful in understanding what has been going wrong in the past ten years for Mr. Williams.

Williams' fiction...