Tuesday, July 31, 2007

My grammatical heritage fails me: I have no idea how to properly notate a quote from a play posted on another website. A quote of a quote, if you will. So I will say instead that Emily posted the quote below this morning, and if you aren't keeping up with Emily's story, you're missing out.

I once saw a group of little girls on a Mississippi sidewalk, all dolled up in their mothers’ and sisters’ cast-off finery, old raggedy ball gowns and plumed hats and high-heeled slippers, enacting a meeting of ladies in a parlor with a perfect mimicry of polite Southern gush and simper. But one child was not satisfied with the attention paid her enraptured performance by the others, they were too involved in their own performances to suit her, so she stretched out her skinny arms and threw back her skinny neck and shrieked to the deaf heavens and her equally oblivious playmates, “Look at me, look at me, look at me!”

And then her mother’s high-heeled slippers threw her off balance and she fell to the sidewalk in a great howling tangle of soiled white satin and torn pink net, and still nobody looked at her.

I wonder if she is not, now, a Southern writer.


– Tennessee Williams, preface to first edition of Cat on a Hot Tin Roof

3 comments:

The Bean said...

Apparently I'm behind on all the drama with the doctor's office but you are always in my prayers for whatever reason. All my friends are. :)

Heather said...

Wouldn't surprise me. I remember when my sister was a baby and my mom would be video-taping her doing cute baby things. I would dress myself up or teach myself a new dance or trick. I would parade and jump around the room shouting, "Look at me, Mama." or "Tape me too!"

Anonymous said...

Over 15 years ago, I first picked up a copy of *Cat*. After reading the play, I read the preface, and that quote stuck with me. It has haunted me for years because it spoke volumes about who I am. I am not Southern, but otherwise it is me. *Cat* is still one of my favorite plays, and I reread the preface every time just for the pleasure of coming across that startling quote.

I am so glad it spoke to you, too.

Thanks for the link!