Customer Reviews

May Sarton: Biography

5 star:		(4)
4 star:		(4)
3 star:		(0)
2 star:		(3)
1 star:		(3)

 

 

Margot Peters did a good job in reporting the details of Sarton's life and connecting them to Sarton's works. But instead of giving the facts and letting readers evaluate them, she continually judges Sarton and crams her disapproval down the reader's throat. I was especially annoyed by her decree that Sarton was a "minor writer." Sarton was clearly hard to live with. Romantic involvement with her was a pathway to pain. But she had important things to say, and she said them well. Had she been a man, the suffering she caused her friends and lovers would be taken for granted as the artist's privilege, and forgiven for the sake of the work. I didn't know her, but I know her work, and for its contribution to my life, I'd forgive her anything.

I think the reviewers of this book who pat themselves on the back for not being taken in by the "persona" of May Sarton should go back to her journals again -- especially "Journal of a Solitude." It seems to me that Sarton was very much aware of the unpleasant aspects of her own nature, the twists and turns of mood, the antisocial tendencies, the destructive effect of anger. Should she be condemned because she allowed the persona of "sister, mother, lover, mentor, friend" to take on a life of its own, to the point that millions of fans can still see her no other way? The persona itself has the power to heal -- even if the real woman was faced, as we all are, with sorting out the mess of her life. The fact that Sarton knew this biography would be published showing her "warts and all" was telling -- certainly not the final act of a hypocrite.
This is not an easy biography, and fans of Sarton may be put off for awhile after reading it, but I found that after time I was able to go back to her books with more understanding, and more appreciation, for the writer and person of May Sarton. Highly recommended!

I gave this a '4' (rather than a 5) because, like so many contemporary biographies, Margot Peters shows us many sides of May that those who have had their lives saved by her work would rather ignore. Do I want to know that my icon was sexually, emotionally and financially abusive her friends . . . probably overly arrogant . . . often bitter . . . Probably not. Do I need to know this fully to appreciate her work and fully to assess her import in my life? YES . . . "Without darkness nothing comes to birth as without light nothing flowers." Without fully embracing the shadow -- my own and those of my mentors -- I can never come to wholeness. After reading Peters' book I have found much more depth and vision in my re-encounter with Sarton's poetry and novels . . . the journals, on the other hand, can never for me be the same again. Caveat emptor.

For fans who have been drawn to the healing balm of May Sarton's novels, poetry and journals, this biography may be hard to take. Many readers of Sarton, myself included, had fallen deeply for the world May had constructed for the reader. One feels turmoil bubbling under the surface of workds like "Journal of a Solitute" but it never surfaces. Through her writing, Sarton had created her own "private mythology" while "keeping the hell out of her work" (to quote her friend and critic, Louise Bogan). Margot Peters captures the hell for her in this meticulously researched biography. It is a compelling read that, if closely analyzed, does not betray May Sarton and her works;it illuminates the woman, making her life story what Sarton's writing should have been - raw and intense.

Margot Peters' biography of May Sarton is a mess of facile psycho-babble and Harlequin romance narration. She reduces the details of this very complex life to pat conclusions ("May compulsively punished those who dared love her.") and achingly bad narrative ("Secretly, like a primrose opening in her heart, there was the thought that if she got abroad, Grace must join her."). Read this book to get a basic sense of the chronology of May Sarton's life, if you must, but do not let Peters' neat conclusions stand as the last word on the subject. Sarton's life and work, troubled as they both were, deserve more careful attention. She did herself a disservice (when she was quite old and ill) by choosing Peters as her "official" biographer.

For fans who have been drawn to the healing balm of May Sarton's novels, poetry and journals, this biography may be hard to take. Many readers of Sarton, myself included, had fallen deeply for the world May had constructed for the reader. One feels turmoil bubbling under the surface of workds like "Journal of a Solitute" but it never surfaces. Through her writing, Sarton had created her own "private mythology" while "keeping the hell out of her work" (to quote her friend and critic, Louise Bogan). Margot Peters captures the hell for her in this meticulously researched biography. It is a compelling read that, if closely analyzed, does not betray May Sarton and her works;it illuminates the woman, making her life story what Sarton's writing should have been - raw and intense.

I've read all of May Sarton's journals, many of her novels, and a few of her books of poetry over the years, so I had these as a backdrop before delving into Margot Peter's biography. I had also been forewarned that as a biographer, Peters was purported to be less than kind. Even so, I was unprepared for what another reviewer rightly called the "sniping" and "potshots" she took at Sarton throughout the entirety of the book. There's no doubt that May Sarton had a complicated and sometimes ugly past, but Peters seems to go out of her way to characterize her subject negatively in nearly all accounts--the reason for which is not clear, unles she was hoping for a rather sensational best-seller. It is clear that she did quite a bit of research for this work, which is all the more disappointing in the end result. Overall, the writing itself is good but the biography is seriously marred by a style that is both intrusive and unecessarily harsh. Perhaps in the future there will be enough interest for a more thoroughly disinterested and academic work.

May Sarton's last journal "At Eighty-Two" was a rare view into the poignant grappling with the old age of a self-styled female curmudgeon, and in it she made cryptic references to the woman she had unwittingly agreed to allow as her biographer.

So I read this book. I was not a Sarton fan, but a fan of journals and biographies. Peters' indifferent treatment of major characters and events, with loose ends and peculiar focus made me constantly wonder what possessed her to choose a subject she was so bored by and disdainful of. I was jarred by the casual sniping and potshots. Her theme throughout, although only haphazardly adhered to, was "she's not so hot, see, look at this..." Reading the book was like trying to have a cogent conversation with someone in an altered state. Unless you are similarly impaired, the lurches in logic, the disconnects, and the occasional random intensities make the experience unrewarding.

In the prologue Ms. Peters warns coquettishly that the book is "strong medicine" not to be "taken internally" (whatever that means) by Sarton's fans. The warning is all in caps, no less, seemingly to emphasize just how amazing an expose she thinks she has written. Had she read any of Sarton's journals carefully, she would realize that the feet of clay, the raging and tears, the temperament that estranged people, were all much more clearly evoked by Sarton herself. Peters seems to have an ax to grind, the source of which she doesn't reveal, although she should, considering that she was the one who proposed the project, and considering that she does insert herself into the narrative. In one example, she says that she visited May in the spring of 1995 and noted that she had added a chair lift to her stairway (stifled yawn implied). In contrast, many months earlier an 82-year-old Sarton wrote an interesting commentary on the installation and use of that very device and what it meant to her.

Peters' attempt to deflect criticism of her book as coming from blind fans of Sarton is transparent, and the book itself is so clumsily written it is embarrassing to read, like watching a drunk person stumble around a room.

Sarton's works speak for themselves. If the art that she produced touches and transforms people's lives, why should we or do we revel in the sundry details of her life that were ill-spent? While I agree that a biography had to be done, perhaps this one enjoys destroying her subject a bit too much. Further, perhaps the art that she created, which is a contrast to her tumultuous life, is ultimately what will survive. I'd like to see more recognition of that in the biography, and less attention to the morbid details.

I have to say, having read this book years ago, one effect has stayed with me: my shock at the author's gratuitous criticism of Sarton's closest associate and protege at the end of her life "acting" so grief-stricken at the funeral.
No kidding. No class.
It seemed to me to be a clue that the bitter tone of the book may have had its root in jealousy.