Illumination and Night Glare: The Unfinished Autobiography of Carson McCullers (Wisconsin Studies in Autobiography) [Hardcover]

Carson Mccullers (Author), Carlos L. Dews (Contributor)

Book Description

Series: Wisconsin Studies in Autobiography | Publication Date: July 6, 1999

"Carson's heart was often lonely and it was a tireless hunter for those to whom she could offer it, but it was a heart that was graced with light that eclipsed its shadows."-Tennessee Williams

"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

More than thirty years after it was written, the autobiography of Carson McCullers, Illumination and Night Glare, will be published for the first time. 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."

Editorial Reviews

From Publishers Weekly

On the heels of Ernest Hemingway's True at First Light and Ralph Ellison's Juneteenth, McCullers's disappointing unfinished autobiography should spark further debate over the ethics of publishing incomplete and flawed posthumous works by heralded authors. While McCullers (1917-1967) was one of the South's most lyrical and insightful novelists, this mishmash of a memoir is certainly one of her least successful ventures. Dews, a University of West Florida English professor, admits that the discursive, "free-associative style of the narrative" may be hard to follow, but he argues that a "chain of associations" provides its guiding organizational principle. Links in this "chain" include McCullers's relationship with her husband, Reeves McCullers, who killed himself in 1953; her maternal grandmother and friends, famous and otherwise; and her views on art. Still, the book remains a perplexing pastiche, and the author herself emerges as self-absorbed and dull. McCullers's discussions of other writers seem little more than exercises in name-dropping and benign gossip (surely, for example, more can be said of Isak Dinesen than that she had a late-life penchant for oysters and champagne). As for her own writing, McCullers too often expresses surprise over how "illumination," or "creative inspiration," would break upon her unexpectedly. But a long outline of McCullers's first novel, The Heart Is a Lonely Hunter, reveals the intensive planning and discipline that her art required. (Sept.) FYI: In The Flowering Dream: The Historical Saga of Carson McCullers, Nancy B. Rich surveys McCullers's major works and contends that they form "a saga of man's struggle for freedom in the western world." (Chapel Hill Press [100 Eastwood Lake Rd., Chapel Hill, N.C. 27514], $25 136p ISBN 1-880849-14-3; Aug..
-, $25 136p ISBN 1-880849-14-3; Aug.)
Copyright 1999 Reed Business Information, Inc.

From Library Journal

In the 50th and final year of her life (1967), McCullers began composing her autobiography, structured around her creative inspirations ("illumination") and the horrors and tragedies in her life ("night glare"). This publication, based on two typescripts housed at the University of Texas, is the draft she dictated to a group of friends, family members, and secretaries from her bed in Nyack, NY, before suffering a final stroke. As intended by McCullers, the appendixes include the outline of her first novel, The Mute, written in 1938 and published as The Heart Is a Lonely Hunter (1940), and the first publication of World War II correspondence between McCullers and her husband, Reeves. In this significant contribution to literary scholarship, editor Dews (English, Univ. of West Florida) provides an interesting biographical introduction with comments on the omissions and "exaggerations" in the autobiography and a chronology covering McCullers's life. Readers will find themselves as easily immersed in this work as in McCullers's fiction and will feel sad and rudely shaken when it ends abruptly.AJeris Cassel, Rutgers Univ. Libs., New Brunswick, NJ
Copyright 1999 Reed Business Information, Inc.

See all Editorial Reviews

Product Details

• Hardcover: 256 pages
• Publisher: University of Wisconsin Press; 1 edition (July 6, 1999)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0299164403
• ISBN-13: 978-0299164409
• Product Dimensions: 9.4 x 6.3 x 0.8 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1.1 pounds
• Average Customer Review: 3.7 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (3 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #1,645,290 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

More About the Author

Carson McCullers (1917-1967) was the author of numerous works of fiction and nonfiction, including The Heart is a Lonely Hunter, The Member of the Wedding, Reflections in a Golden Eye, and Clock Without Hands. Born in Columbus, Georgia, on February 19, 1917, she became a promising pianist and enrolled in the Juilliard School of Music in New York when she was seventeen, but lacking money for tuition, she never attended classes. Instead she studied writing at Columbia University, which ultimately led to The Heart Is a Lonely Hunter, the novel that made her an overnight literary sensation. On September 29, 1967, at age fifty, she died in Nyack, New York, where she is buried.

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

32 of 33 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars A treasure for McCullers' fans and literary enthusiasts, August 25, 1999

By A Customer

This review is from: Illumination and Night Glare: The Unfinished Autobiography of Carson McCullers (Wisconsin Studies in Autobiography) (Hardcover)

The first part of this book is McCullers' "unfinished" autobiography. For me, reading this was like having a one-on-one conversation with a writer that I have read and admired since high school. The second part, wartime correspondence between McCullers and her then ex-husband Reeves, provided a great deal of insight into the personalities of both. I found these letters to be very moving. Also included in the book are previously published notes on THE HEART IS A LONELY HUNTER along with a detailed chronology of McCullers' life and works. ILLUMINATION AND NIGHT GLARE is a treasure for literary enthusiasts--especially fans of McCullers.

4 of 5 people found the following review helpful:

1.0 out of 5 stars This should never have been published, December 4, 2008

By 

cynicalgirl (Richmond, VA, USA) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Illumination And Night Glare: The Unfinished Autobiography Of Carson Mccullers (Wisconsin Studies in Autobiography) (Paperback)

Not long before her death, Carson McCullers dictated some disjointed, random recollections to a secretary in an effort to create an autobiography. Very little was accomplished; what she did come up with has been presented in this book as her "unfinished autobiography." Actually it doesn't come close to being an autobiography, "unfinished" or otherwise. It doesn't even seem like the beginnings of one. It really is that unsubstantial.

This book was obviously published in hopes that fans of Carson McCuller's novels and stories will rush out and and buy it. If they do, they're in for a big disappointment; there is nothing very interesting here and McCullers tended to play fast and loose with facts pertaining to events in her life, her relationships with other people and her tortured marriage to Reeves McCullers. She also liked to gloss over the numerous flaws in her own personality; her alcoholism, her overinflated ego, her immaturity, her tendency to suck the life out of people with her unceasing demands for attention and adulation.

The book is padded with dull letters McCullers and her husband sent each other and the outline of a book called "The Mute", which eventually became "The Heart Is A Lonely Hunter." It would seem the publishers were willing to fill this slim volume out with anything in order to make this seem like something appropriating a memoir of sorts.

Don't be fooled. This isn't even an "unfinished" autobiography. This should not have even been published. That's how little this odd little book of meandering thoughts is worth.

1 of 1 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Behind the scenes, July 3, 2008

By 

Cami Parsons "Lady of Shadows" (California) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: Illumination and Night Glare: The Unfinished Autobiography of Carson McCullers (Wisconsin Studies in Autobiography) (Hardcover)

I don't know why you'd read this unless you're a McCullers fanatic or you need a reference for a paper, but either way, you are going to be pleasantly surprised. This book takes you behind the scenes of McCullers' life, her thought processes, and her life. And in case you don't know already, she's a very interesting subject. Bisexual and mysterious, she not only experienced pleasure and pain-love and hurt-but also got into a love triangle with her husband. They both loved the same man and wanted him to themselves! You get to read letters that had previously been secret and private and get to hear her motivation and conception of The Heart Is a Lonely Hunter from McCullers' own mouth. It's entertaining and informative and when you finish this book you'll have a sense of understanding and intrigue-like you've uncovered a mysterious secret.