Sure has!
" Carson McCullers: young, gifted, and odd.
by Lynne Greeley
Until her death in 1967 at age fifty, Carson McCullers was noted for
her youthful appearance. She was photographed after the publication of
her seminal work, The Heart Is a Lonely Hunter, at a book signing,
"looking like a drowsy-eyed child who had not been long out of bed,
boyish-looking, dressed in [her husband's] shirt and a dark
man-tailored corduroy jacket." (1) She was the young genius,
twenty-three years old, whose work in 1940 about a South fraught with
racial tension--containing a prophetic March on Washington--took the
New York literary scene by storm. More significant than her
appearance, however, was the perpetually young girl who seemed to
dominate her personality. Even late in life she wrote her unpublished
autobiography in crayon after she had produced eight major literary
works, two of which, The Heart Is a Lonely Hunter (a novel) and The
Member of the Wedding (a novel and a play), are American classics.
Critical response to McCullers has been extensive. Between 1940 and
1979, close to four hundred books, chapters in books, articles, and
reviews were published, most focusing on her characterizations. In the
1980s and 1990s, McCullers has continued to be a subject of interest
for dissertations and shorter writings with an increasing interest in
the interaction of her personal life and her literary representations.
Lisa Logan observes that one might trace in the critical response an
initial approval of McCullers followed by "increasing disagreement....
Critics have begun to question as insufficient and dismissive
arguments that rely strictly on [her] theories of love and loneliness
and to challenge the comforting myth of the 'child genius' with
readings that advance her gendered identity." (2) Virginia Spencer
Carr's biography of McCullers, The Lonely Hunter (1975), particularly
opened up questions of her sexual identity because of McCullers's
frank identification of herself as an invert as well as the recounting
of her extreme ambivalence toward her husband, Reeves McCullers.
Josyane Savigneau in a more recent biography in French, Carson
McCullers: Un Coeur de Jeune Fille (A Heart of a Young Girl, 1995),
explores the emotional bonding rather than the violence between Carson
and her husband, and re-examines the nature of a much touted
relationship between McCullers and Annemarie Clarac-Scharzenback,
concluding that McCullers's glib words regarding her sexuality covered
a deeper ambiguity in both her life and her work. Clearly, McCullers
sustained a long although tortured relationship with her husband, as
well as with other men such as Arnold Saint Subber, and she declared
openly, "I was born a man," (3) enjoying romantic infatuations, which
were rarely mutual, with a number of powerful and beautiful women. For
example, in a desperate plea for attention, she threw herself on the
floor outside Katherine Anne Porter's door at the Yaddo writer's
community; the poetess literally stepped over McCullers on her way to
dinner.(4) Male friends at Yaddo later recalled that McCullers was "so
much one of them that she saw women in the same terms as they did,
even bragging that she could seduce them."(5)
Considering her involvements with men, McCullers cannot easily be
named a lesbian; the term bisexual doesn't effectively apply to her
either because as an interpretive framework, the concept... "
Unfortunately the sight containing the rest of the article, including
proof that McCullers lived at 7 Middaugh Street, Brooklyn Heights, as
well as the possibility of at least one other known female author
residing there, requires a paid subscription. Here is the site:
http://www.questia.com/PM.qst?a=o&d=5000793273
However, you can google "Carson McCullers" (including quotation marks)
to get a truck load of info on Carson, the following being the top
result website dedicated to her:
http://www.carson-mccullers.com/ |
