My Autobiography of Carson McCullers: A Memoir

This is a beautifully written book, cleverly twining the two writers' experiences of illness, writing, and the way their love of women is erased or negated by how society defines love and regards sexual relationships between women.For me, though, there was a gaping hole at the center: the letters that the author relies on so heavily as evidence of McCullers' passionate feelings for her former therapist were subject to restriction and could not be quoted but for one or two short passages. This means we rely on the author filtering her impressions of the letters for us and have to depend on her resulting judgment.However, toward the end of the book I began to feel that in a way this lack was somehow appropriate: it structurally embodies the willful erasure of McCullers' passions by decades of biographers and critics, and how the author has to approach it circumlocutiously: is it there or not? Is it real or not? How can such love be "proven" to have existed?Ultimately I was so touched by the book that I, who have never really been interested in McCullers, went back and read The Member of the Wedding, which I last read forty years ago. I was astonished at how magnificent a book it is, how accomplished, how compelling. Now I'm going through more of McCullers' books -- which I think is the best outcome of a biography-through-memoir.

Set aside the unique approach and structure of this lovely work. This young woman can write. An author like this comes along rarely, at least in my lifetime. Shapland's combination of sentence structure, choice of words, and peppered with just the right amount of humor make this a truly, great read. I highly recommend. Don't miss this loving book.

I was very eager to find a good biography of Carson McCullers. Unfortunately I didn't pay adequate attention to the title: MY AUTObiography of Carson McCullers. I only read a few chapters before I became weary of the author's comparison of her own life to McCullers'. It just wasn't what I was looking for. Just want to give a heads up!

I cannot say enough nice things about this wonderful book, so I'll be brief. This beautiful confrontation of erasure is startlingly moving, and a stirring pleasure to read. I cannot wait to pass it along to friends, and to reread it in the future.

This will easily be one of my favorite books, not only for 2020 but always. There were so many moments I laughed or sighed in recognition and identification. What a masterpiece!

I read this book

Would have liked more about McCullers and less about the author

Jenn Shapland wasn’t particularly a fan of the writing of Carson McCullers, the American writer whose first novel was The Heart is a Lonely Hunter, but when she came across some of McCullers’ love letters, a particular journey began.Discovered while Shapland was an intern in the archives at the Harry Ransom Center in Austin, Texas, the letters were an exchange between McCullers and Annemarie Clarac-Schwarzenbach, a Swiss writer who spent time in New York in the 1930s and 1940s.The finding of such letters is significant to members of the queer community. We like to learn about others who are part of our “family.” As Shapland puts it: “It’s not all that important to me to define what it is to be a lesbian—constant shifting, the ever-new—but I can’t help but want to know who else is at the table with me, who I can call kin.”The book is a stimulating approach to memoir, as Shapland explores the previously untold life of Carson McCullers while stepping into her own. As she says: “I kept coming out through my project.” The chapters are short, sometimes humorous, and contain facts, questions and reflections on queer life.Shapland had a lot of material to sort through in her extensive research, including cataloging McCullers’ personal effects; living at her home, now a museum in Columbus, Georgia; and spending time at Yaddo, the writers’ colony in Saratoga Springs, New York where McCullers spent time in the 1940s and in 1954.“You have to read like a queer person, like someone who knows what it’s like to be closeted, and who knows how to look for reflections of your own experience in even the most unlikely places,” Shapland says of her innovative approach to this innovative work of non-fiction.Shapland also went through transcripts of McCullers' therapy sessions with Dr. Mary Mercer, with whom McCullers had a relationship beyond the professional one. She found other relationships with women which have not previously been described in biographies about McCullers. As Shapland says, the biographies discount the love of and friendships with various women in favor of her “tortured” relationship with Reeve McCullers, the man Carson “married and unmarried twice in her life.”Shapland describes herself as a “chronically ill person” who is often bedridden. McCullers too had a variety of afflictions: strokes; temporary blindness; and (as Shapland says) the "trauma of being queer without the language or space to express it.”The book begins with a question asked of McCullers by her husband Reeves. Was she a lesbian? She was uncertain of the term, “but she never denied her love for women,” Shapland writes. It ends with the various euphemisms Carson McCullers and her biographers used to describe her woman lovers. And with Shapland's assertion: “I, for one, am weary of the refusal to acknowledge what is plainly obvious, plainly wonderful. Call it love.”This book was reviewed for Story Circle Book Reviews by Mary Ann Moore.

Not an usual biography... as the title says, an "autobiography"! The author speaks about her own life through Carson's personal life. It's unusual, beautifully written, very sensitive. And well documented: we learn a lot about Carson's love life, especially with Annemarie Schwarzenbach and Mary Mercer (her psychiatrist). Bold, deep and wild!