Myopia
Writing in late August 1974, Boots admits to his partiality and bias when writing his notes on Carson’s life: “My own motives in making available these notes are open to question. Human motives are never wholly unselfish. But I hope I am not guilty of cover-up. We’ve had enough of that lately.” I don’t know what cover-up in particular her refers to—Mary’s suppression of her relationship with Carson? Rita’s suppression of information about herself? Everyone’s collective family suppression of Carson’s alcoholism and its effects on her already ill body? I rifle through all the possibilities I can think of until it dawns on me: he’s talking about Watergate.
September 29, 1967
Carson died, after forty-seven days in a coma. Judson Memorial Church in Greenwich Village, where Carson wanted her funeral held, was not available for her service. One of Gertrude Stein’s plays was being performed there that day. The church was a venue for experimental theater and dance, hosting performers like Trisha Brown and Yvonne Rainer throughout the 1960s. The minister Carson chose, Reverend Howard Moody, was a well-known civil rights advocate. He offered a graveside service, attended by Mary, Rita, Boots, Marielle Bancou, Janet Flanner, Truman Capote, Wystan Hugh Auden, Gypsy Rose Lee, and Ethel Waters.
September 29, 2016
I received my invitation to Yaddo after several months on the waiting list.
Love and Winter
Carson and Mary communicated in poems: Rilke, Eliot, Dickinson. In February 1958, a year after their first meeting, Carson sent Mary an Emily Dickinson poem, typed with her own spellings and punctuation, apparently from memory:
After great pain a formal feeling comes
The nerves sit ceremonious as tombs
The stiff heart questions, was it he that bore?
And yesterday or centuries before?
The feet mechanical go round in a wooden way
Of ought or nought or air, regardless grown
As qwartz, contentment, like a stone.
This is the hour of lead, remembered if outlived.
As freezing persons recollect the snow
First chill, then stupor, then the letting go
To Mary, she writes that she had spent many years in the “eerie chill” and the “stupor,” and that it was a lifelong battle for her to finally let go.
The Dead
Maybe Mary was right: she didn’t owe anyone Carson’s, or her own, story. The biographers and lawyers coming after her, telling her that she needed to “share” Carson with the world, wanting so much from her: they were nothing but vultures, greedy for a connection to something that was never theirs. Maggie Nelson writes, “Jane is, after all, quite dead. We’re talking about what the living need, or what the living imagine the dead need, or what the living imagine the dead would have wanted were they not dead. But the dead are the dead. Presumably they have finished with wanting.” I don’t know what Carson wanted or what Mary wanted. I don’t know what the director wanted when he told me they weren’t romantically involved. I think I know what I wanted, though, from Carson: recognition. A rendering of my own becoming. A love story I could believe.
Dream
On the one hand, the transcripts and session letters come from early in Carson and Mary’s relationship. They document a specific period of several months, premised on therapy and a patient speaking to her doctor. On the other hand, they are remarkable and unique: a record of Carson’s falling in love, her processing and coming to terms with that love and, along the way, with her whole life of loves, especially for women, and her failed marriages. We watch her emerge from the lonely cave she had conscribed herself to, and walk painfully, honestly, into Mary’s arms and presumably heart. I am presuming this. I believe in it. Not to believe in it, I think, is to reject all other documents of love as false, imperfect. If this isn’t love I don’t know what is. Or care.
Note to Self
“Mail back Carson’s keys.”
Euphemisms
To her husband, whom she married twice, Carson called her woman lovers “imaginary friends.” Her biographers called them traveling companions, good friends, roommates, close friends, dear friends, obsessions, crushes, special friends. I’m over it. I, for one, am weary of the refusal to acknowledge what is plainly obvious, plainly wonderful. Call it love.
Acknowledgments
Thank you, Bill Clegg, this book’s earliest champion, Emma Komlos-Hrobsky, its fiercest supporter, and Masie Cochran, for seeing it through to the finish line. Thank you, Meg Storey, Rachel Warren, Jakob Vala, Elizabeth DeMeo, Molly Templeton, Yashwina Canter, Nanci McCloskey, Rob Spillman, Elissa Schappell, and every soul at Tin House and the Tin House Writers Workshop, especially my friends Thomas Ross and Lance Cleland. Thank you, Win McCormack, for taking a risk. For guidance through turbid legal waters, thank you Ellis Levine, tireless researchers Liz and Peter Komlos-Hrobsky, and Chris Kaiser, my lifelong legal counsel.
Thank you, Nick Norwood, David Owings, the Columbus State University Archives, and the Carson McCullers Center for Writers and Musicians; Rick Watson and the staff at the Harry Ransom Center, especially the interns; Anne McKenna and the University of Wisconsin Press; Yaddo, Tal Nadan, and the Brooke Russell Astor Reading Room for Rare Books & Manuscripts at the New York Public Library; the Rubenstein Library at Duke University; the Swiss Literary Archives at the Swiss National Library; Vermont Studio Center; and Ucross Foundation.
Thank you, Rhiannon Marge Goad, for being a friend; thanks, Laura Wallace and Katie Loughmiller, for reading and rereading. Thank you to my family.
Thank you, Chelsea Weathers, for our life.
Sources
ARCHIVAL COLLECTIONS
Annemarie Schwarzenbach Estate. Swiss National Library Literary Archives. Bern, Switzerland.
Carson McCullers Collection 1924–1976. Harry Ransom Center. University of Texas, Austin, TX.
Carson McCullers Papers, 1941–1995. Rubenstein Library. Duke University, Durham, NC.
Davis Foster Wallace Papers. Harry Ransom Center. Austin, TX.
Dr. Mary E. Mercer/Carson McCullers Collection. Columbus State University Archives. Columbus, GA.
Jordan Massee—Carson McCullers Collection. Columbus State University Archives. Columbus, GA.
Mary E. Mercer Collection of Carson McCullers-Mary Tucker Correspondence, 1959–1976. Rubenstein Library, Duke University, Durham, NC.
Virginia Spencer Carr Papers, 1967–2009. Rubenstein Library, Duke University. Durham, NC.
Yaddo Records, 1870–1980. New York Public Library, New York, NY.
WORKS CONSULTED
Adkins, Judith. “‘These People Are Frightened to Death’ Congressional Investigations and the Lavender Scare.” Prologue 48.2, 2016.
Als, Hilton. “Unhappy Endings: The Collected Carson McCullers.” The New Yorker December 3, 2001.
Blumenkranz, Carla. “Deeply and Mysteriously Implicated: Communist Sympathies, FBI Informants, and Robert Lowell at Yaddo.” Poetry Foundation, 2006.
Carr, Virginia Spencer. The Lonely Hunter: A Biography of Carson McCullers. Athens, GA: University of Georgia Press, 2003.
Castle, Terry. The Apparitional Lesbian: Female Homosexuality and Modern Culture. New York: Columbia University Press, 1993.
Chauncey, George, Jessica Shatan, Archie Ferguson, and Vicki Gold Levi. Gay New York: Gender, Urban Culture, and the Making of the Gay Male World, 1890–1940. New York: Basic, 1994.
Cohen, Lisa. All We Know: Three Lives. New York: Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 2012.
Dillon, Millicent. A Little Original Sin: The Life and Work of Jane Bowles. New York: Holt, Rinehart and Winston, 1981.
________. Out in the World: Selected Letters of Jane Bowles 1935–1970. Santa Barbara, CA: Black Sparrow Press, 1985.
Duncan, Isadora. My Life. New York: Liveright, 2013.
Evans, Oliver Wendell. The Ballad of Carson McCullers: A Biography. New York: Coward-McCann, 1965.
________. Carson McCullers: Her Life and Work. Lo
ndon: Peter Owen, 1965.
Faderman, Lillian. Odd Girls and Twilight Lovers: A History of Lesbian Life in Twentieth-Century America. New York: Penguin, 1991.
Ferrante, Elena, and Ann Goldstein. Frantumaglia: A Writer’s Journey. New York: Europa Editions, 2016.
Flanner, Janet. Darlinghissima: Letters to a Friend. Edited by Natalia Danesi Murray. New York: Random House, 1985.
Flanner, Janet, and Irving Drutman. Paris Was Yesterday, 1925–1939. London: Virago, 2011.
Foschini, Lorenza. Proust’s Overcoat. New York: Ecco, 2010.
Frankel, Noralee. Stripping Gypsy: The Life of Gypsy Rose Lee. New York: Oxford University Press, 2010.
Goldberg, Natalie. Writing Down the Bones. Boulder: Shambhala, 1986.
Gooch, Brad. Flannery: A Life of Flannery O’Connor. New York: Little, Brown, 2009.
Gornick, Vivian. The Situation and the Story: The Art of Personal Narrative. New York: Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 2002.
Gussow, Mel. Edward Albee: A Singular Journey. New York: Simon and Schuster, 1999.
Hamer, Emily. Britannia’s Glory. London: Cassell, 1996.
Hammond, Harmony. Lesbian Art in America: A Contemporary History. New York: Rizzoli, 2000.
Hemon, Aleksandar. “Stop Making Sense, or How to Write in the Age of Trump.” Village Voice January 2017.
Highsmith, Patricia. Nothing That Meets the Eye: The Uncollected Stories of Patricia Highsmith. New York: W.W. Norton, 2003.
Highsmith, Patricia. Pseudonym Claire Morgan. The Price of Salt; or Carol. New York: Dover Publications, 1952.
Huston, John. Reflections in a Golden Eye (film). Warner Brothers, 1967. DVD.
Johnston, Jill. “Fictions of the Self in the Making.” New York Times Book Review April 1993.
Kaiser, Charles. The Gay Metropolis: The Landmark History of Gay Life in America. New York: Grove, 2007.
Lahr, John. Tennessee Williams: Mad Pilgrimage of the Flesh. New York: W.W. Norton, 2014.
Laing, Olivia. The Trip to Echo Spring: On Writers and Drinking. New York: Picador, 2014.
Lawson, Richard. “The Bittersweet Beauty of Adam Rippon.” Vanity Fair 2018.
Leyda, Jay. The Years and Hours of Emily Dickinson. New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 1970.
Lorde, Audre. Zami: A New Spelling of My Name. Berkeley: Crossing Press, 1982.
Malcolm, Janet. Forty-One False Starts: Essays on Artists and Writers. London: Granta, 2014.
________. In the Freud Archives. London: Granta, 2012.
________. The Silent Woman: Sylvia Plath and Ted Hughes. London: Granta, 2012.
McCullers, Carson. The Ballad of the Sad Café and Other Stories. Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1951.
________. Clock Without Hands. Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1961.
________. The Member of the Wedding. Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1946.
________. Reflections in a Golden Eye. Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1941.
McCullers, Carson, and Carlos L. Dews. Illumination and Night Glare: The Unfinished Autobiography of Carson McCullers. Madison: University of Wisconsin Press, 1999.
McCullers, Carson, and Rita Smith. The Mortgaged Heart: Previously Uncollected Writings. Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1971.
McGee, Micki. Yaddo: Making American Culture. New York: Columbia University Press, 2008.
Milford, Nancy. Zelda: A Biography. New York: Harper and Row, 1970.
Myles, Eileen. Chelsea Girls. New York: Ecco, an Imprint of HarperCollins, 2015.
________. The Importance of Being Iceland: Travel Essays in Art. Los Angeles: Semiotext(e), 2009.
________. Inferno: A Poet’s Novel. New York: OR, 2016.
Nealon, Christopher. Foundlings: Lesbian and Gay Historical Emotion before Stonewall. Durham: Duke University Press, 2001.
Nelson, Maggie. The Argonauts. Minneapolis, MN: Graywolf, 2016.
________. The Red Parts: Autobiography of a Trial. Minneapolis, MN: Graywolf, 2016.
Newton, Esther. Cherry Grove, Fire Island: Sixty Years in America’s First Gay and Lesbian Town. Boston: Beacon, 1995.
Plimpton, George. Truman Capote: In Which Various Friends, Enemies, Acquaintances, and Detractors Recall His Turbulent Career. New York: Anchor, 1998.
Quinn, Susan. Eleanor and Hick: The Love Affair That Shaped a First Lady. New York: Penguin, 2016.
Rausing, Sigrid. Do You Remember. London: Granta, 2014.
Savigneau, Josyane. Carson McCullers: A Life. Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 2001.
Schenkar, Joan. The Talented Miss Highsmith: The Secret Life and Serious Art of Patricia Highsmith. New York: St. Martin’s, 2010.
Schulman, Sarah. “White Writer.” The New Yorker October 2016.
Schwarzenbach, Annemarie, and Dominique Laure. Miermont. La Mort En Perse. Paris: Payot Et Rivages, 2008.
Sears, James. Edwin and John: A Personal History of the American South. Hoboken: Taylor & Francis, 2009.
Stein, Jean. Edited with George Plimpton. Edie: An American Biography. New York: Knopf, 1982
Stein, Marc. Encyclopedia of Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, and Transgender History in America. New York: Charles Scribner’s Sons/Thomson/Gale, 2004.
Tippins, Sherill. February House. London: Pocket, 2006.
Weiss, Andrea. In the Shadow of the Magic Mountain: The Erika and Klaus Mann Story. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2008.
Wilson, Andrew. Beautiful Shadow: A Life of Patricia Highsmith. New York: Bloomsbury, 2003.
Wineapple, Brenda. Genêt: A Biography of Janet Flanner. Omaha: University of Nebraska Press, 1992.
PHOTO © CHRISTIAN MICHAEL FILARDO
JENN SHAPLAND is a writer living in New Mexico. Her nonfiction has been published in O, The Oprah Magazine, Tin House, Outside online, and elsewhere. She won the 2019 Rabkin Foundation Award for art journalism, and her essay “Finders, Keepers” won a 2017 Pushcart Prize. She has a PhD in English from the University of Texas at Austin.
Copyright © 2020 Jenn Shapland
All rights reserved. No part of this book may be used or reproduced in any manner whatsoever without written permission from the publisher, except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical articles or reviews. For information, contact Tin House Books, 2617 NW Thurman St., Portland, OR 97210.
Published by Tin House Books, Portland, Oregon
Distributed by W. W. Norton & Company
Cover Design: Jakob Vala
The Library of Congress has cataloged the printed edition as follows:
Names: Shapland, Jenn, 1987- author.
Title: My autobiography of Carson McCullers / Jenn Shapland.
Description: Portland : Tin House Books, 2020. | Includes bibliographical references.
Identifiers: LCCN 2019031475 | ISBN 9781947793286 (hardcover) | ISBN 9781947793293 (ebook)
Subjects: LCSH: Shapland, Jenn, 1987- | Lesbians—United States—Biography. | McCullers, Carson, 1917-1967.
Classification: LCC HQ75.4.S53 A3 2020 | DDC 306.76/63092 [B]—dc23
LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2019031475
First US Edition 2020
Interior design by Jakob Vala
www.tinhouse.com
My Autobiography of Carson McCullers Page 16
