Tennessee Williams is a good storyteller, as theater audiences have long known…. Unlike most playwrights who try their hands at different forms, Williams is a remarkably strong prose writer—his fiction perhaps even more consistent in quality that his drama. (p. 647)

[Williams' first collection, One Arm and Other Stories,] provides an interesting and characteristic sampling. "The Poet," "Chronicle of a Demise," and "The Yellow Bird" are clearly the experiments of a young writer. "The Yellow Bird" has some fine comic moments, but the prose is too jerky and the ending too garbled to sustain the broad humor. The other stories in the book, however, are skillfully written: in particular, "One Arm," "Desire and the Black Masseur," and "The Night of the Iguana." (pp. 647-48)

While "One Arm" succeeds as compelling narrative, it also is an early catalogue of Williams' concerns: an openly homosexual theme, the fascination with mutilation...