Carson McCullers

by Carson McCullers

  It is not certain that McCullers typed or necessarily even examined typescript D, so the text of the “Sojourner” teleplay printed here is based on typescript C—consisting of nineteen leaves and a cover sheet—which she read closely, inserting many revisions in longhand. The text presented here contains a few changes to that of typescript C. The most significant concerns the title: all of the typescripts at the Harry Ransom Center are entitled “The Invisible Wall,” but this was a working title that McCullers thought inferior to “The Sojourner.” A letter from Bonnie Novick of the Ford Foundation to McCullers dated October 29, 1953, records that she and the show’s script editor, Leo Davis, had come to agree with McCullers that “The Sojourner” “seems to be a richer, more meaningful title.”

  Other changes made to typescript C involve passages that are incoherent due to editorial errors. The text from “BILLY is fooling” to “coffee table.)” (314.9–15) has been inserted from typescript D; otherwise Bailey’s asking Billy about the “awful songs” just below would make no sense (the incomplete typescript B has the same passage and the handwritten note “Billy’s song here”). The line “Very pretty.” at 316.22 is taken from typescript D: in typescript C, Elizabeth’s question “Is she pretty?” was a handwritten addition to the typed text just before deleted lines spoken by Ferris; it seems that when Ferris’s lines were crossed out McCullers simply neglected to include Ferris’s response. Elizabeth’s line “What brings you back here, Johnny?” (315.1) is taken from the broadcast version, because she is referring to Ferris’s current stay in the U.S., so the corresponding line in the typescript, “Were you here long?” is confusing.

  In addition, a few passages of the text have been changed due to internal contradictions in the script. In scene 1, at 304.31, “early this morning” has been changed to “yesterday evening,” because Papa Ferris’s death, as related later by his widow, occurred after his bath “that evening.” Similarly, Ferris gives Valentin’s age as five at 316.19; this has been emended to accord with the boy’s age of six as given in the list of characters and in one other mention in the teleplay.

  For a transcription of “The Sojourner” as it was broadcast live on CBS television on the afternoon of December 27, 1953, see the Appendix (pages 605–19 of the present volume).

  THE SQUARE ROOT OF WONDERFUL

  McCullers wrote a rough draft of the play that would become The Square Root of Wonderful while at Yaddo, in Saratoga Springs, New York, from April 20 to July 3, 1954. She then wrote “Who Has Seen the Wind?,” a short-story treatment of the same material, from the fall of 1954 to the spring of 1955. (For the text of the story, see pages 174–96 of the present volume.) While working on “Who Has Seen the Wind?” she made the acquaintance, in New York City, of Arnold Saint-Subber, an American theatrical producer (known professionally as Saint Subber) whose credits included the Cole Porter musical Kiss Me, Kate (1948) and Truman Capote’s play The Grass Harp (1952). It immediately became Saint Subber’s ambition to produce McCullers’s follow-up to The Member of the Wedding.

  For much of the next three years, from late 1954 to the summer of 1957, Subber, whom McCullers would later remember as “the most insistent and persevering man I’d ever known in my professional life,” worked with McCullers almost daily at her home in Nyack. From the summer of 1956 to the summer of 1957 they were often joined by the director and dramaturge Albert Marre, whom Subber hoped to hire as the play’s director but who, in the end, was unavailable due to other commitments. Together the team created six drafts of the play, none of which quite satisfied McCullers, though she thought the final draft the best.

  In the spring of 1957 Subber found a co-producer, Figaro, Inc. (a film-and-stage production company founded by Robert Lantz and Joseph L. Mankiewicz), hired a director, José Quintero (later replaced by George Keathley), and announced that the play was opening in the fall. Rehearsals began in New York on September 2, 1957. There was a four-performance tryout at the McCarter Theatre, Princeton, New Jersey, on October 10–12, 1957, followed by a two-week engagement at the Walnut Street Theatre, Philadelphia, beginning October 14. McCullers, Saint Subber, Quintero, and (after October 23) Keathley continued to tinker with the first and third acts of the play until the eve of its Broadway premiere.

  The Square Root of Wonderful opened at the National Theatre, 208 West Forty-first Street, New York, on October 30, 1957, and closed on December 7. There were forty-five Broadway performances.

  During the winter of 1957–58 McCullers, working with the editor John Leggett of Houghton Mifflin Company, edited the sixth and final preproduction draft of the play for publication in book form. At this time she also wrote a “personal preface” to the play. The Square Root of Wonderful, by Carson McCullers, was published, in hardcover, by Houghton Mifflin Company, Boston, on June 24, 1958. (A British edition, printed from the U.S. plates, was published, in hardcover, by the Cresset Press, London, in 1958.) The text of the first Houghton Mifflin printing is used here.

  ESSAYS AND OTHER WRITINGS

  Under the rubric “Essays and Other Writings” are collected nineteen short works of nonfiction prose that McCullers published in books and periodicals between 1940 and 1966, together with two works (“A Hospital Christmas Eve” and “The Great Eaters of Georgia”) that were edited and published posthumously. They have been organized under six headings: “Christmas,” “The War Years,” “American Places, American Identity,” “Books and Authors,” “The Writer’s Work,” and “The Theater.” The organization of these essays loosely follows that used by Margarita G. Smith in the “Essays and Articles” section of The Mortgaged Heart (1971), which comprised fifteen essays under three headings: “The War Years,” “Christmas,” and “Writers and Writing.” None of these short nonfiction works were collected in book form by McCullers during her lifetime.

  Gathered under the heading “Christmas” are three memoirs, all of which concern recollections of Christmases past.

  “Home for Christmas” first appeared in Mademoiselle, December 1949, 53, 129–32. It was collected, posthumously, by Margarita G. Smith in The Mortgaged Heart (1971). The text from The Mortgaged Heart is used here.

  “The Discovery of Christmas” first appeared in Mademoiselle, December 1953, 54–55, 118–20. It was collected, posthumously, by Margarita G. Smith in The Mortgaged Heart (1971). The text from The Mortgaged Heart is used here.

  “A Hospital Christmas Eve,” the last piece of writing that McCul­lers completed, first appeared in McCall’s, December 1967, 96–97. It was collected, posthumously, by Margarita G. Smith in The Mortgaged Heart (1971). The text from The Mortgaged Heart is used here.

  Gathered under the heading “The War Years” are five essays from the home front written for women’s magazines circa 1940–45.

  “Look Homeward, Americans,” McCullers’s first published work of nonfiction prose, appeared in Vogue, December 1, 1940, 74–75. It was collected, posthumously, by Margarita G. Smith in The Mortgaged Heart (1971). The text from The Mortgaged Heart is used here.

  “Night Watch Over Freedom” first appeared in Vogue, January 1, 1941, 29. It was collected, posthumously, by Margarita G. Smith in The Mortgaged Heart (1971). The text from The Mortgaged Heart is used here.

  “We Carried Our Banners—We Were Pacifists, Too” first appeared in Vogue, July 15, 1941, 42–43. It was collected, posthumously, by Margarita G. Smith in The Mortgaged Heart (1971). The text from The Mortgaged Heart is used here.

  “Love’s Not Time’s Fool,” signed pseudonymously “by a War Wife,” first appeared in Mademoiselle, April 1943, 95, 166–68. The text from Mademoiselle is used here.

  “Our Heads Are Bowed” first appeared in Mademoiselle, November 1945, 131, 229. It was collected, posthumously, by Margarita G. Smith in The Mortgaged Heart (1971). The text from The Mortgaged Heart is used here.

  Gathered under the heading “American Places, American Identity” are three domestic travel essays.

  “Brooklyn Is My Neighbourhood�
�� first appeared in Vogue, March 1941, 62–63, 138. It was collected, posthumously, by Margarita G. Smith in The Mortgaged Heart (1971). The text from The Mortgaged Heart is used here.

  “Loneliness . . . An American Malady” first appeared in This Week, a Sunday magazine supplement syndicated nationally by the publishers of the New York Herald Tribune (December 19, 1949), 18–19. It was collected, posthumously, by Margarita G. Smith in The Mortgaged Heart (1971). The text from The Mortgaged Heart is used here.

  “The Great Eaters of Georgia” was commissioned by Holiday magazine in June 1953 but was never published by the magazine. McCul­lers traveled from her home in Nyack, New York, to her native state of Georgia to do research for the piece and completed the writing in early 1954. McCullers’s various untitled drafts of the piece are now in the Carson McCullers Collection at the Harry Ransom Center of the University of Texas, Austin (“Article on Georgia,” TXRC98–A16, Box I, folders 2–5). In 2004 Carlos L. Dews and James G. Mayo prepared portions of the piece for publication, as “The Great Eaters of Georgia,” in Oxford American, Spring 2005, 80–85. (The title was supplied by the editors.) The text from Oxford American is used here.

  Gathered under the heading “Books and Authors” are four essays on books and authors central to McCullers’s life as a writer.

  “Books I Remember” first appeared in Harper’s Bazaar, April 1941, 82, 122, 125. The text from Harper’s Bazaar is used here.

  “The Russian Realists and Southern Literature” first appeared in Decision 2 (July 1941), 15–19. It was collected, posthumously, by Margarita G. Smith in The Mortgaged Heart (1971). The text from The Mortgaged Heart is used here.

  “Isak Dinesen: Winter’s Tales” first appeared in The New Republic, June 7, 1943, 768–69. It was collected, posthumously, by Margarita G. Smith in The Mortgaged Heart (1971). The text from The Mortgaged Heart is used here.

  “Isak Dinesen: In Praise of Radiance” first appeared in The Saturday Review, March 16, 1946, 29, 83. It was collected, posthumously, by Margarita G. Smith in The Mortgaged Heart (1971). The text from The Mortgaged Heart is used here.

  Gathered under the heading “The Writer’s Work” are three essays by McCullers on her own oeuvre.

  “How I Began to Write” first appeared in Mademoiselle, September 1948, 256–57. It was collected, posthumously, by Margarita G. Smith in The Mortgaged Heart (1971). The text from The Mortgaged Heart is used here.

  “Author’s Outline of ‘The Mute’” was written in Charlotte, North Carolina, in 1938, as part of McCullers’s application for that year’s Houghton Mifflin Literary Fellowship Award. (“The Mute” was first runner-up for the prize, earning McCullers a publication contract with Houghton Mifflin and a five-hundred-dollar advance against sales. The novel was published, as The Heart Is a Lonely Hunter, in June 1940.) The outline first appeared, with the consent of the author, in Oliver Evans, Carson McCullers: Her Life and Work (London: Peter Owen, 1965), 195–215. The U.S. edition, The Ballad of Carson McCullers, was published by Coward-McCann, New York, in 1966, in a text reflecting U.S. rather than British orthography. The text of “Author’s Outline of ‘The Mute’” was reprinted from The Ballad of Carson McCullers by Margarita G. Smith in The Mortgaged Heart (1971) and, under the title “Outline of ‘The Mute,’” by Carlos L. Dews in Illumination and Night Glare (1999). The text from The Mortgaged Heart is used here.

  “The Flowering Dream: Notes on Writing” first appeared in Esquire, December 1959, 162–64. It was collected, posthumously, by Margarita G. Smith in The Mortgaged Heart (1971). The text from The Mortgaged Heart is used here.

  Gathered under the heading “The Theater” are three essays by McCullers on her experience of writing for the stage.

  “The Vision Shared” first appeared in Theatre Arts, April 1940, 23–30. It was collected, posthumously, by Margarita G. Smith in The Mortgaged Heart (1971). The text from The Mortgaged Heart is used here.

  “Playwright Tells of Pangs” first appeared in the Sunday edition of the Philadelphia Inquirer (October 13, 1957), D1, 5. The text from the Philadelphia Inquirer is used here.

  “The Dark Brilliance of Edward Albee” first appeared in Harper’s Bazaar, January 1963, 98–99. (It was published with a complementary essay, “Carson McCullers: The Case of the Curious Magician,” by Edward Albee.) The text from Harper’s Bazaar is used here.

  POEMS

  Under the rubric “Poems” are collected the five extant poems that McCul­lers completed during her lifetime. (Her book of humorous verse for children, Sweet as a Pickle and Clean as a Pig [Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1964; London: Jonathan Cape, 1965], is not reprinted here.)

  “The Mortgaged Heart” first appeared, in somewhat different form, in James Laughlin, ed., New Directions in Prose and Poetry 10 (New York: New Directions, 1948), 509. The present version appeared in Voices 149 (September–December 1952), 12. It was collected, posthumously, by Margarita G. Smith in The Mortgaged Heart (1971). The text from The Mortgaged Heart is used here.

  “When We Are Lost” first appeared, in somewhat different form, in James Laughlin, ed., New Directions in Prose and Poetry 10 (New York: New Directions, 1948), 509. The present version appeared in Voices 149 (September–December 1952), 12. It was collected, posthumously, by Margarita G. Smith in The Mortgaged Heart (1971). The text from The Mortgaged Heart is used here.

  “The Dual Angel: A Meditation on Origin and Choice” was begun on Fire Island, New York, in the summer of 1950 and completed in Paris in early 1952. It appeared simultaneously in Mademoiselle, July 1952, 54–55, 108, and the multilingual Italian journal Botteghe Oscure 9 (1952), 213–18. It was collected, posthumously, by Margarita G. Smith in The Mortgaged Heart (1971). The text from The Mortgaged Heart is used here.

  “Stone Is Not Stone” first appeared, in somewhat different form, as “The Twisted Trinity,” in Decision 2 (November–December 1941), 30. (The text of “The Twisted Trinity” was set to music by the American composer David Diamond and published, as a song for voice and piano, by Elkan-Vogel, Philadelphia, in 1946.) The present version of the poem appeared, as “Stone Is Not Stone,” in Mademoiselle, July 1957, 43. It was collected, posthumously, by Margarita G. Smith in The Mortgaged Heart (1971). The text from The Mortgaged Heart is used here.

  “Saraband” was written before the fall of 1957, when it was recorded, together with “When We Are Lost” and “Stone Is Not Stone,” for the single-disk spoken-word LP Carson McCullers Reads from “The Member of the Wedding” and Other Works (M-G-M Arcady Series E 3619), released in January 1958. (On the LP label and liner notes the three poems are identified not by their present titles but by their first lines.) The poem first appeared, posthumously, as “Saraband” in Margarita G. Smith, ed., The Mortgaged Heart (1971), 294. The text from The Mortgaged Heart is used here.

  AUTOBIOGRAPHY

  In February 1967 Carson McCullers, bedridden with paralysis after a long series of strokes, spent the week of her fiftieth birthday in a suite at the Park Plaza Hotel, in New York City. During an interview there with Rex Reed, published in the April 16 edition of The New York Times, she announced that she was working on an autobiography. “I think it is important for future generations of students to know why I did certain things,” she told Reed, “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 prepare future artists to accept it better.”

  The autobiography, which she gave the working title “Illumination and Night Glare,” was begun in 1966, but the bulk of it was dictated to a corps of friends, nurses, and student secretaries from mid-April to early August of 1967. McCullers suffered a final massive cerebral hemorrhage on August 15, and died forty-seven days later, on September 29, 1967.

  After the
publication of The Mortgaged Heart in 1971, the bulk of McCullers’s papers were sold by the Estate of Carson McCullers to the Humanities Research Center (now the Harry Ransom Center) at the University of Texas, Austin. These papers included two copies of a 128-page typescript entitled “Illumination and Night Glare,” each emended and corrected by McCullers’s various assistants following her oral instructions. These typescripts provided the basis of the text of “Illumination and Night Glare” that was published by Carlos L. Dews in Illumination and Night Glare: The Unfinished Autobiography of Carson McCullers (Madison: University of Wisconsin Press, 1999), 3–78. (A prepublication excerpt from “Illumination and Night Glare” appeared, as “Flashes of Inspiration: From the Unpublished Autobiography of Carson McCullers,” in The Women’s Review of Books 16 [July 1999], 20.)

  The 1999 text of “Illumination and Night Glare” was edited using scholarly conventions. All editorial changes to the text were noted in brackets, and all of McCullers’s dictated emendations and corrections were listed in an appendix. The editor also supplied sixty-three footnotes, most of which identified persons named by McCullers.