Caterpillar Dogs

These seven lagniappes were penned by Thomas Lanier Williams of Missouri before he became internationally known as playwright Tennessee Williams. His voice in these nascent stories is unmistakable as he captures private moments in the lives of urban and rural Americans surviving the Great Depression. The reliable idiosyncrasies and quiet dignity of Williams's eccentrics are already present in these characters. Consider the diminutive octogenarian of "The Caterpillar Dogs" who may just meet her match in a pair of laughing Pekinese that refuse to surrender to her demands; the retired, small-town evangelist in "Every Friday Nite is Kiddies Nite," who wears bright-colored pajamas and receives a message from God to move to St. Louis and finally, finally go to the movies; or the distraught factory worker whose stifled artistic spirit, and just a soupcon of the macabre, propel the drama of "Stair to the Roof"-a precursor to Williams's early full-length play Stairs to the Roof. Love's diversions and misdirection, even autoerotic longing, are found here as well. In "Season of Grapes," the intoxicating fragrance of ripening autumn in the Ozarks acquaints one young man with his unexpressed passions, which become a waking fever dream. The revelation of female sexuality blooms for a college boy in "Ironweed," yet he remains blind to the poverty and humiliation left in his wake. Is there such a thing as innocence? Apparently there was in the 1930s and Williams reckons it in these stories.