Taking Tennessee to Hart

In 1983, when the esteemed American playwright Tennessee Williams was close to death, he added a codicil to his will directing that his body be wrapped in a clean white sack and buried at sea at the same spot- in the Atlantic Ocean off the Jupiter Light north of West Palm Beach-where one of his idols, the poet Hart Crane, had jumped to his death from a ship returning to New York from Mexico. Unfortunately, Tennessee's wishes weren't granted and he was interred in the family plot in St. Louis. In this fanciful caper, a friend of Tennessee's, retired theater professor Walt Wordsworth, decides to right this wrong. With two young acolytes-soap opera actress Ann Laurel and former flower child and rock musician Billy Lamb-they concoct a plot to exhume Tennessee Williams' body and deliver him to the watery grave he'd desired. They soon discover that taking Tennessee to Hart is easier said than done. With a ＄10,000 reward offered for the return of the body, these amateur grave robbers become the subject of a nationwide manhunt by both law enforcement and bounty hunters. Sparks fly, lives are threatened, and a romance flourishes, yet their resolve never wavers as they carry their revered and very dead playwright to his preferred resting place. Taking Tennessee to Hart by Joe Stockdale is a delightful, graceful novel with literary overtones, and lessons in humanity to be learned. Tennessee Williams would certainly approve.

Joe Stockdale has had a long and distinguished career in theater, with a special emphasis on the works of Tennessee Williams. Dean emeritus of the Theatre & Film division, School of the Arts at SUNY, Purchase, N.Y. where he helped launch the careers of dozens of successful actors and actresses, he’d earlier been professor of theater at Purdue University, and artistic director of the LORT Purdue Professional Theatre. He’s written extensively for such theater publications as Dramatists, Equity, TheaterWeek, and Playbill, and is the author of The Man in the Spangled Pants and co-author of The Architecture of Drama. Taking Tennessee to Hart, his first novel, was originally written as a play. He lives in Kalamazoo, Michigan, with his wife, Robin.