Forum / Carson McCullers - A perspective on the woman

James Lloyd Davis
Aug 26, 04:14pm

A great fan of her writing, I've always wondered about the underlying intensity and curious themes in her fiction. This article provides a clue.

http://www.newcriterion.com/articles.cfm/emotionalvampire-allen-2750

Carol Reid
Aug 26, 05:00pm

I want to read more of her life and definitely read her novels again. Sounds like she was one of those rare artists who is as interesting and troublesome as her work.

mxi wodd
Aug 26, 09:19pm

I'd heard she was a hot-mess...

I've got her collected works.

Each piece seems, to me, to fail,
ever-so-slightly-self-indulgently
self-absorably at a crucial point.

mxi wodd
Aug 26, 09:37pm

(not FAIL-fail, but fall short of what a more *stringent* mindset would have produced...)

Matthew Robinson
Aug 27, 12:59am

I've been meaning to read The Heart is a Lonely Hunter for a really long time.

mxi wodd
Aug 27, 01:19am

Do.

(it won't REALLY take a really long time...)

James Lloyd Davis
Aug 27, 02:44am

But would a more "stringent" mindset have even produced the work? I doubt it. The more stringent mindsets among her contemporaries were better suited to producing the collected works of James Michener or Lucky Strike commercials.

I don't agree with the article in its comparison between her and Faulkner. I never thought Faulkner was all that great, but maybe it comes down to story as opposed to content. All debatable, matters of taste.

Matt R. The Heart is a Lonely Hunter is worth a read. IMO

Carson McCullers had a wonderful gift for titles, no?

Ann Bogle
Aug 27, 04:44am

I read The Heart is a Lonely Hunter in high school and can remember it for its compassion. Perhaps it was not possible for McCullers to live with such compassion for people. Perhaps she lived through the guise or filter of writing fiction. I feel compassion toward any writer who could create such compassion on the page.

Sylvia Plath critics are having a death match with her this year, the 50th anniversary since she died. Her critics detest her -- women poets themselves -- and biographers fictionalize her life. These writers continue to disregard Plath's poetry and fault the strictness of her estate in permitting access to it.

There is such jealousy afoot. Critics, poets, writers today cannot hope to build their reputations as classical writers or poets whose names will outlive them or be canonized, and they use razors in their critiques of these writers and poets as monster women.

Hellmann is another writer the world loves to hate. Attacks on her character continue, and there seems to be no laudatory biography. Her work is brilliant, silk, cream, elegant, simple, flowing, gentle and not given to attack, given to subtle discoveries and the element of time.

mxi wodd
Aug 27, 06:03pm

"But would a more "stringent" mindset have even produced the work? I doubt it."

You're correct in that.

(but at times I wish she had had a Maxwell Perkins...)

James Lloyd Davis
Aug 27, 06:20pm

Mr. Perkins didn't do Thomas Wolfe a lot of good.

And here's thing that puzzles me. When I was young, I couldn't get enough of Thomas Wolfe, but when I recently tried to re-read Look Homeward Angel, I could not finish it. Perceptions and taste change over time. Maybe the sixties caused a major shift in the focus of literary work, but I notice in re-reading classics, I have a hard time with the rambling structure, the construction of prose in older works. As though I've been altered by a steady diet of condensed thought, compacted, packaged, punch drunk metaphors.

Thomas Wolfe would never get a reading, much less publish today. But if you can stand it, his prose, though endless, is quite beautiful.

James Lloyd Davis
Aug 27, 06:26pm

Ann, Lillian Hellman was her own worst enemy in the public places, but there is no doubt about the elegance of her work.

Truth is, most writers... and most of the very best writers are a strange crowd, not well suited to publicity and need to be socialized. Unfortunately, socialization will change them, stunt their growth as artists.

mxi wodd
Aug 27, 07:37pm

"When I was young, I couldn't get enough of Thomas Wolfe, but when I recently tried to re-read Look Homeward Angel, I could not finish it."

Same here.
It was a sad day...

James Lloyd Davis
Aug 28, 12:55am

I'm sure it will pass.

Ann Bogle
Aug 28, 01:59am

There is an inner and outer dimension to writers' lives more thorough and deep than in others' lives. The critics of these women poets and writers are harsh on personal grounds toward the dead. The critics do not attempt to view the work created by the departed writers. I think it's rivalry -- of the living who have voices now -- with the dead whose voices are in their works. The critics muffle the writers' work and defame their lives though they were not witnesses to those lives. The critics pretend to normal social skills. They pretend that defaming the dead is normal. If I were a family member of one of those defamed, I would feel tragically caught in a world without death.

James Lloyd Davis
Aug 28, 03:48pm

Perhaps the greatest foil to an unfair slur is opposing and equal honorific acclaim. Often, in pointing out the damage done by the defamer, you only draw more attention to the slur.

To hell with critics, I say.

In truth, the article only points out to me a fact that I've pretty much accepted, that the very best writers are often a strange, peculiar lot in the real world, where their work may be admired, but their nature and personality is often shunned.

I've never attempted to define 'normal' and very much doubt that such a quality exists outside of arbitrary, often laughable demographics.

I think I've heard more ill spoken against both male and female writers than most artists, perhaps because everyone and his bachelor uncle in Tewksbury thinks himself a writer. It makes them all critics. Primarily because they want to compare their own work with others... and the more you find wanting in others, the greater you find yourself in the mix of it.

Human nature. Which is less cruel than most species, but only by comparison with the less camouflaged moral integrity of wild carnivores and lesser beasties on the earth.

(Hard to talk with your tongue in your cheek, so I'll yield the floor.)

mxi wodd
Sep 04, 05:19am

"But would a more "stringent" mindset have even produced the work? I doubt it."

Flannery O'Connor had a stringent mind--

that was also infused with a FLAMING faith.

So: TOTALLY WILD

but purpose driven.

Best of both worlds, imo.

mxi wodd
Sep 04, 05:31am

I *like* CM

I *worship* FOC.

strannikov
Sep 04, 06:55am

Careful: cousin Flannery wouldn't go for idolatry. You would NOT want her to send Tarwater your way, especially with any river, stream, pond, or lake lying about.

mxi wodd
Sep 04, 01:57pm

Oops!

I better say seven quick Hail Flannerys and...

Argh! Did it again!

;-)

mxi wodd
Sep 06, 03:10am

(but CM was also

TOTALLY WILD

and

purpose-driven...

just
differently-based.

A "more-stringent" CM would NOT have produced her works

though she was probably as stringent as she could be.)

James Lloyd Davis
Sep 06, 01:42pm

Flannery O'Connor and Carson McCullers are in competition only by fact of their geographic classificational similitude. Otherwise, they are as different as Idahos and yams.

Odd how these classifications remain, in spite of the fact that so few people classify themselves by regional characteristics any longer.

In a way, that's sad, because the backdrop of nature and seasons is giving way to some sort of commercial homogeneity with landmarks defined by commercial logos and the inward attention of people who communicate more electronically with their fingers on keyboards than by word, eye, and gesture.

James Lloyd Davis
Sep 06, 01:48pm

"I do not think I shall ever see...
a poem as lovely as Nambarrie Tea."

James Lloyd Davis
Sep 06, 01:50pm

"Avery looked like he'd gone to his grave...
until his encounter with Burma Shave."
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