Memoir / American Literature
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Illumination
and Night Glare "An extraordinary document. Dictated in an idiomatic, associative style, it exposes the doubleness of [Carson] McCullers's life. . . . A rich mine of information for anyone interested in McCullers, and American literary life in the 1950s, these memoirs are also a testament to the courage and sheer love of life of their author."—Richard Gray, Times Literary Supplement Carlos L.
Dews
is associate professor and chair of the Department of English
and Foreign Languages at the University of West Florida. He is
the founding president of the Carson McCullers Society and editor
of the Library of America's Carson McCullers: Complete Novels. Carson McCullers
finally tells her own story "Until now, no one had won the approval of McCullers's literary executors to allow publication of Illumination and Night Glare. Carlos Dews, a daunting and meticulous scholar, has done just that, and the results are astounding; moreover, he was allowed to publish the 'war letters' of McCullers and Reeves, her ill-fated husband, a feat that throws important new light on their ambivalent relationship during the years between their anguished divorce and remarriage. Surely, this important book will lead readers and scholars alike back to McCullers's remarkable fiction."—Virginia Spencer Carr, author of The Lonely Hunter: A Biography of Carson McCullers McCullers, one of the most gifted writers of her generation—the author of The Member of the Wedding, Reflections in a Golden Eye, and The Ballad of the Sad Cafe—died of a stroke at the age of fifty before finishing this, her last manuscript. Editor Carlos L. Dews has faithfully brought her story back to life, complete with never-before-published letters between McCullers and her husband Reeves, and an outline of her most famous novel, The Heart Is a Lonely Hunter. Looking back over her life from a precocious childhood in Georgia to her painful decline from a series of crippling strokes, McCullers offers poignant and unabashed remembrances of her early writing success, her family attachments, a troubled marriage to a failed writer, friendships with literary and film luminaries (Gypsy Rose Lee, Richard Wright, Isak Dinesen, John Huston, Marilyn Monroe), and her intense relationships with the important women in her life. When she was interviewed by Rex Reed in the Plaza Hotel on her final birthday, McCullers revealed her reason for writing an autobiography: "I think it is important for future generations of students to know why I did certain things, but it is also important for myself. I became an established literary figure overnight, and I was much too young to understand what happened to me or the responsibility it entailed. I was a bit of a holy terror. That, combined with all my illnesses, nearly destroyed me. Perhaps if I trace and preserve for other generations the effect this success had on me it will affect future artists to accept it better." |
July
1999 To
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