The Orton diaries
Subtitle: including the correspondence of Edna Welthorpe and others
By: edited by John Lahr.
Contributors: Lahr, John, 1941-
Edition: 1st Da Capo Press ed.
Publisher: Da Capo Press
Published: 1996
Place of publication: New York
Language: eng
Number of pages: 304
Subjects: Orton, Joe -- Diaries; Dramatists, English -- 20th century -- Diaries
Description: "To be young, good-looking, healthy, famous, comparatively rich, and happy is surely going against nature." When Joe Orton (1933-1967) wrote those words in his diary in May 1967, he was being hailed as the greatest comic playwright since Oscar Wilde for his darkly hilarious Entertaining Mr. Sloane and the farce hit Loot, and was completing What the Butler Saw; but less than three months later, his longtime companion, Kenneth Halliwell, smashed Orton's skull in with a hammer before killing himself.

The Orton Diaries, written during his last eight months, chronicle in a remarkably candid style his outrageously unfettered life: his literary success, capped by an Evening Standard Award and overtures from the Beatles; his sexual escapades - at his mother's funeral, with a dwarf in Brighton, and, extensively, in Tangiers; and the breakdown of his sixteen-year "marriage" to Halliwell, the relationship that transformed and destroyed him.

Edited with a superb introduction by John Lahr, The Orton Diaries is his crowning achievement.
Notes: Includes index.
Originally published: London : Methuen, 1986.