CBR16 Bingo: Pride – McCullers and many people in her life were queer, one of the main struggles of her life was trying to come to terms with and better understand that queer identity, which also infused her writing.
Carson McCullers is one of the most acclaimed authors of the Southern Gothic genre, but she was also a complicated woman with a messy personal life who constantly strove toward goals that, though she did not reach always reach them, created beautiful things along the way.
I knew Carson McCullers as a once-popular author who, while not exactly obscure now, was certainly not as well known as her contemporaries. Still, what I’ve read about her books sounds fascinating, and I have had them on overflowing TBR list for a while. This, alongside what I knew of her strange, turbulent life, was what made me want to read this lengthy biography of her.
Author Dearborn certainly digs deep in her assessment of McCullers, interweaving the complex strands of her professional and personal lives to create a nuanced portrait. On one hand she was a writing prodigy who captured the experience of being an outsider, a woman whose mind soared beyond the limitations of her many long illnesses and her dependance on alcohol. On the other hand, she was a needy, often selfish person who loved and suffered for loving a long string women who had no interest in her – and that’s not even touching her incredibly turbulent relationship with her husband.
After reading this book, I feel like I’ve gotten a close insight into McCullers, as well as how her personal life and the currents of the times clashed and inspired her work. However, I did think that Dearborn occasionally was selective in what she presented of McCullers, as well as how she interpreted her more ambiguous pronouncements and actions, without discussing alternative views on it – a major failing when so much of McCullers’s life was subject to subtextual reading.
Disclaimer: I received an ARC of this book from NetGalley. This is my honest and voluntary review.