I'm on to the next. Carson McCullers wrote her first novel, The Heart Is A Lonely Hunter, at the age of 22. By that age she had also had rheumatic fever and several crippling strokes. She had been sent to New York to study the piano at Julliard. After losing (I wonder how this happened?) the money for her tuition, she decided to become a writer.
By the age of fifty, she was in a wheelchair, then a coma after a final stroke. Then she died.
She rolled with people like Capote, Marilyn Monroe, John Huston, Tennessee Williams, WH Auden, Benjamin Britten. Two of her novels were made into movies. She married, divorced, and was married again to a bisexual man named Reeves McCullers, who eventually tried get her to commit suicide with him in Paris. She didn't. He did. He overdosed on sleeping pills. She wrote a play about it called, The Square Root of Wonderful.
Having read about her life, I think she must have been very intense, and agonized, and frail. She wrote the books she wrote. After a stroke at the age of 30, her entire left side was paralyzed.
Here is her Wikipedia entry, and here is a web site called the Carson McCullers Project.
I'm planning to read The Heart is a Lonely Hunter and also Ballad of the Sad Cafe (and whatever other stories are in that volume).
By the age of fifty, she was in a wheelchair, then a coma after a final stroke. Then she died.
She rolled with people like Capote, Marilyn Monroe, John Huston, Tennessee Williams, WH Auden, Benjamin Britten. Two of her novels were made into movies. She married, divorced, and was married again to a bisexual man named Reeves McCullers, who eventually tried get her to commit suicide with him in Paris. She didn't. He did. He overdosed on sleeping pills. She wrote a play about it called, The Square Root of Wonderful.
Having read about her life, I think she must have been very intense, and agonized, and frail. She wrote the books she wrote. After a stroke at the age of 30, her entire left side was paralyzed.
Here is her Wikipedia entry, and here is a web site called the Carson McCullers Project.
I'm planning to read The Heart is a Lonely Hunter and also Ballad of the Sad Cafe (and whatever other stories are in that volume).
Labels: Carson McCullers, writers
George Sand is the most famous female writer in the whole world. OR the most famous female writer in France in the 19th century. Whatever. She was born aristocracy in Paris, went to live with her grandmother, went to a convent, married a rich dude and had his babies, and then GOT A DIVORCE and moved back to Paris, to support herself and her children by writing 80 popular novels. After her big spectacular divorce, she started wearing men's clothing and having overt trysts with famous people like Chopin and whatnot. You can see one rendition of that stylish lifestyle in the movie "Impromptu." Starring Hugh Grant as a sort of mild Chopin. And Julian Sands as... Lizcstsztz.
Everyone in 19th century France loved these books, but no one today likes them much. It's pretty hard to find one -- I found my copy of The Haunted Pool in a used bookstore. The publisher is Shameless Hussy Press.
Here's a picture of rural France, just like you might imagine George Sand looking at, when she wrote the book, The Haunted Pool. See the mist? Totally haunting. Someday, I am finally going to write about that book. It wasn't bad. It wasn't great either. It wasn't what I expected.
Everyone in 19th century France loved these books, but no one today likes them much. It's pretty hard to find one -- I found my copy of The Haunted Pool in a used bookstore. The publisher is Shameless Hussy Press.
Here's a picture of rural France, just like you might imagine George Sand looking at, when she wrote the book, The Haunted Pool. See the mist? Totally haunting. Someday, I am finally going to write about that book. It wasn't bad. It wasn't great either. It wasn't what I expected.
Labels: George Sand, writers
