SOURCE: Martin, Robert K. “Gustav von Aschenbach Goes to the Movies: Thomas Mann in the Joy Rio Stories of Tennessee Williams.” International Fiction Review 24, nos. 1-2 (1997): 57-64.

In the following essay, Martin perceives “Hard Candy” and “The Mysteries of the Joy Rio” as revisions of Thomas Mann's Death in Venice and Tonio Kröger.

Tennessee Williams's short story “The Mysteries of the Joy Rio,” written in 1941 at the very beginning of his career before he was known at all as a playwright, appears to have held a particular fascination for the writer, for he returned to the material twelve years later, writing a second story, “Hard Candy” (1953), set in the same cinema and with a similar theme. Surprisingly, he did not consider “Hard Candy” simply as a revision of the earlier story, but as an independent work. The following year, in 1954, Williams published a collection of short stories...