Summer and Smoke

"Summer and Smoke" is a two-part, thirteen-scene play by Tennessee Williams, originally titled Chart of Anatomy when Williams began work on it in 1945. In 1964, Williams revised the play as "The Eccentricities of a Nightingale." "Summer and Smoke" is set in Glorious Hill, Mississippi from the "turn of the century through 1916," and centers on a high-strung, unmarried minister's daughter, Alma Winemiller, and the spiritual/sexual romance that nearly blossoms between her and the wild, undisciplined young doctor who grew up next door, John Buchanan, Jr. She, ineffably refined, identifies with the gothic cathedral, "reaching up to something beyond attainment"; her name, as Williams makes clear during the play, means "soul" in Spanish; whereas Buchanan, doctor and sensualist, defies her with the soulless anatomy chart. By play's end, however, Buchanan and Alma have traded places philosophically. Einstein Books' edition of "Summer And Smoke" contains supplementary â "I Rise In Flame, Cried The Phoenix", a one-act play by Tennessee Williams which presents a fictionalized version of the death of English writer D. H. Lawrence on the French Riveria; Lawrence was one of Williams' chief literary influences. â An excerpt from "The Glass Menagerie", by Tennessee Williams. â A few selected quotes of Tennessee Williams.