Bibliograph

Carson McCullers, a life, Mary V. Dearborn

Type

Label

Carson McCullers, a life, Mary V. Dearborn

Language

eng

Bibliography note

Includes bibliographical references and index

resource.biographical

individual biography

Illustrations

illustrations

Index

index present

Literary Form

non fiction

Main title

Carson McCullers

Nature of contents

bibliography

Oclc number

1380993302

Responsibility statement

Mary V. Dearborn

Sub title

a life

Summary

V. S. Pritchett called her "a genius." Gore Vidal described her as a "beloved novelist of singular brilliance... Of all the Southern writers, she is the most apt to endure..." And Tennessee Williams said, "The only real writer the South ever turned out, was Carson." She was born Lula Carson Smith in Columbus, Georgia. Her dream was to become a concert pianist, though she'd been writing since she was sixteen and the influence of music was evident throughout her work. As a child, she said she'd been "born a man." At twenty, she married Reeves McCullers, a fellow southerner, ex-soldier, and aspiring writer ("He was the best-looking man I had ever seen"). They had a fraught, tumultuous marriage lasting twelve years and ending with his suicide in 1953. Reeves was devoted to her and to her writing, and he envied her talent; she yearned for attention, mostly from women who admired her but rebuffed her sexually. Her first novel--The Heart Is a Lonely Hunter--was published in 1940, when she was twenty-three, and overnight, Carson McCullers became the most widely talked about writer of the time. While McCullers's literary stature continues to endure, her private life has remained enigmatic and largely unexamined. Now, with unprecedented access to the cache of materials that has surfaced in the past decade, Mary Dearborn gives us the first full picture of this brilliant, complex artist who was decades ahead of her time, a writer who understood--and captured--the heart and longing of the outcast. --, Provided by publisher

Table Of Contents

Wunderkind -- That rainbow youth of mine -- Charming the skin off a snake -- A young knight -- Flowering jazz passion -- A bit of holy terror -- I feel that book with something like my whole body -- Practically paradise -- Our love for each other is like a sort of natural law -- Like a broken doll -- The jigger got bigger and bigger -- I am an invalid -- Harder than marble -- Grappa rather than gin -- A colossal power of destruction -- Endings are knives -- I see the little lamp -- I trust you -- "That green and glowing Spring" -- Insatiability for living -- The sad, happy life of Carson McCullers

Classification