Death of Tennessee Williams appears in the diary not as a developed account but as a moment of bafflement: the reported bottlecap choking is reduced to a question whose cause remains unexplained.

The Diary Entry

On Thursday, March 3, 1983, the entry asks, “How could Tennessee Williams choke on a bottlecap, do you think? How could that happen?” The repeated question records disbelief rather than offering further circumstances; the diary gives no account of where or how the choking occurred.

A Death Left Unexplained

The brief passage makes the manner of Williams’s death its only concrete detail. Its repetition leaves the reader with the same unanswered question as the diarist, without supplying a fuller narrative or aftermath.