#Reeves McCullers

[ronnydeschepper]

Carson McCullers (1917-1967)

Het is vandaag al 55 jaar geleden dat de Amerikaanse schrijfster Carson McCullers is gestorven. Ze was amper vijftig jaar oud (foto Carl Van Vechten – Van Vechten Collection at Library of Congress). Continue reading Untitled

[mercymornsimpathizer]

ngl I think everyone on the internet with a rosy view of "lavender marriages" should be physically compelled to read about carson & reeves mccullers 👍

[warningsine]

War and Peace by Leo Tolstoy (also rec’d by André Leon Talley, Bob Dylan, Brian Eno, Ernest Hemingway, Martin Luther King Jr. & Nelson Mandela)

“Tolstoy is considered by almost everyone as the greatest novelist that ever lived, and I can only say, me too. From his first beautiful book on [war] and [Sebastopol,] all through his long and marvelously productive life he stands alone as a writer…It is interesting to me to think of the seeds of his stories, ‘his illuminations.’ Anna Karenina was evolved because he had heard of a woman who had jumped in front of a moving train and died. The grandeur of [War and Peace], a historical novel, which must have brought Tolstoy almost daily illuminations. He was fastidious as Proust in his realism of the styles and fashions of the times, and like Proust he was working on an immense canvas.” -CM

The Idiot by Fyodor Dostoevsky (also rec’d by Grimes & Ralph Steadman)

“The next and possibly one of the strongest influences in my reading life is [Dostoevsky] – Tolstoy, of course, is at the top… One is just swept away from one incredible scene to another incredible scene. The scene when [Nastasya] lights a fire to burn up the bank notes in front of [Ganya] is almost like a [True Story] fiction, but in spite of it, the emotions of the scene make it so real.” -CM

My Life by Isadora Duncan

“When I was fourteen years old, the great love of my life, which influenced the whole family, was Isadora Duncan. I read [My Life,] not only read it but preached it. My daddy, who believed with my mother, that a child should read without censorship, could not help but be amazed by my preaching of ‘free love’ to the family at large, and anyone else who would listen. One nosy neighbor criticized my parents for letting me speak so precociously about [Isadora] Duncan and her love life.” -CM

Dubliners by James Joyce (also rec’d by Cheryl Strayed, Ernest Hemingway, Hozier, Jim Morrison & Leonard Cohen)

“This week I’ve been reading [Dubliners.] How such a spasm of poetry could have come out of the grimy Dublin streets of that time is miraculous to me. [A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man,] I also read every year or so. … Whenever I think of artists having a hard time I think of James Joyce. He had one hell of a time to earn a living for himself and his family. [Dubliners] was suppressed, and at one time burnt, I believe [Ulysses] was suppressed and pirated all over the world, and of course James Joyce did not receive any of the pirated money. He earned only the fame and the grandeur of a noble spirit.” -CM

Tender Is the Night by F. Scott Fitzgerald (also rec’d by Cate Blanchett, Gene Wilder, Henry Rollins, Julianne Moore & Peter Hook)

“…Another lesser writer who is also dear to me. Scott Fitzgerald, always in debt to his agent; with a wife that was mad and confined to institutions. Scott, extravagant, [lovable,] playful and impossible. His genius flourished, and he wrote [Tender is the Night,] in the most appalling psychological situation.” -CM

The Beast in the Jungle by Henry James (also rec’d by Susan Sontag)

“It’s a bleak white January day, and I’ve been drinking cup after cup of hot tea and reading Henry James. I’d never realized how really good he is. One is quite willing to stumble through pages of ambiguities for those sudden, exquisite lines, those almost unexpected revelations. I’d never realized how deeply he has influenced the present poets—Eliot, Auden, etc. I want us to read the Beast in the Jungle together.”  -CM

Out of Africa by Isak Dinesen

“[Edwin Peacock and John Ziegler] insisted that I read a book called [Out of Africa,] and since I thought it was about big game hunting, I insisted just as firmly I didn’t want to read it. In the end they got their way, for when Reeves and I were in the car on our way to Fayetteville, they slipped two books in my lap; they were [Out of Africa] and [Seven Gothic Tales.] I started [Out of Africa] in the car and read until sundown. Never had I felt such enchantment. After years of reading this book, and I have read it many times, I still have a sense of both solace and freedom whenever I start it again. I have naturally read all of her books, but these particular two are my favorites.” -CM

Black Boy by Richard Wright (also rec’d by Howard Zinn)

“Another writer who was particularly dear to me is Richard Wright. … Dick and I often discussed the South, and his book, [Black Boy,] is one of the finest books by a Southern [Negro.]” -CM

Swann’s Way by Marcel Proust (also rec’d by St. Vincent)

“After the postman comes this afternoon I’ll read Proust. Today I was thinking of the immense debt I owe to Proust. It’s not a matter of his ‘influencing my style’ or anything like that—it’s the rare good fortune of having always something to turn to, and great book that never tarnishes, never become[s] dull from familiarity.” -CM

Where Angels Fear to Tread by E.M. Forster

“Another author whom I read constantly is E.M. Forster. One of the most enjoyable times I’ve ever had was when Mary Mercer read aloud [Where Angels Fear to Tread.] We both went into fits of laughter.” -CM

[47burlm]

June 4, 1940

On this day, 22-year-old Carson McCullers’ first novel, The Heart Is a Lonely Hunter, is published. The novel, about misfits in a Georgia mill town, is an instant success.

McCullers, born Lula Carson Smith in Columbus, Georgia, in 1917, was strongly encouraged in her childhood artistic endeavors by her mother, who believed she was an artistic genius. McCullers planned to be a concert pianist. Meanwhile, she began writing plays for her siblings to perform. At age 17, she went to New York to study at Juilliard, but on the subway, she lost all the money her parents had saved for her tuition. She supported herself for a year at school, then gave up music for writing and returned to Georgia.

In 1937, she married a soldier named Reeves McCullers. Three years later, her first novel was published to great acclaim. Her fame, and her husband’s own thwarted ambitions, strained the marriage, as did their mutual sexual ambiguity. Both tended to fall passionately in love with members of both sexes. In 1940, the couple separated, and McCullers took an apartment in a Victorian house in Brooklyn Heights shared by other prominent writers as well as musicians such as Aaron Copland and artists like Salvador Dali. Reeves McCullers returned to the Army, becoming an esteemed war hero, and the couple remarried, but Reeves later drank heavily and killed himself in a Paris hotel room.

McCullers continued to churn out popular novels and stories, including The Member of the Wedding (1946), which became a successful stage play and movie. Playwright Edward Albee dramatized her novella The Ballad of the Sad Cafe (1951) in 1963.  McCullers died at age 50, after battling breast cancer and a series of paralyzing strokes. 

** note I have read the book and have the movie (DVD)- both I recommend

[beersfromthebleachers]

2019 Regular Season Predictions

Opening Day is right around the corner, and Spring Training this year has been dramatically inclined with another crazy free agency in baseball. The off season has been a restless one as teams statistically get their rosters primed for the season. I feel that this is an acceptable time to make the bold preseason predictions for the 2019 season. For each division, I will name the potential champion and how they will fair in the post season, going all the way to see who will be raising the World Series trophy this fall.

AL East – New York Yankees

If there is one general “rule of thumb” that has been a pattern of a routine is the fact that the World Series Champion nurses the “hangover” and does not repeat going back to back as world champs. As the Red Sox became champions at the end of the season, the Yankees watched from afar , enraged that they saw an early exit in the ALDS. So what do you do when your rivals become champions? You go out and get bigger and badder pieces for the “Baby Bombers, Murderers Row 3.0, Evil Empire” Yankees. Adding pieces DJ LeMahieu and Troy Tulowitzki were big splashes the team was looking to contribute towards the recording breaking team that accumulated 265 team home runs. Trading for James Paxton to replace Sonny Gray was a tremendous upgrade. Expect this team to do more than enough damage to teams as they did last year and then some.

1st - NY Yankees

2nd - Boston Red Sox

3rd – Tampa Bay Rays

4th – Toronto Blue Jays

5th – Baltimore Orioles

AL Central – Cleveland Indians

What has been an unanimous agreement from baseball writers new and old across the country is considering the situation that the status of the American League Central has become the least entertaining division in baseball. The Indians attempted to break that tension by sending off Edwin Encarnacion to the Seattle Mariners that involved a trade to welcome back Carlos Santana to Progressive Field. The trade also included reeving Jake Bauers from the Tampa Bay Rays, who is a promising first baseman that will slide Santana in a mandatory designated hitter role. The trades may not stop for the Indians there, with the lingering chances of Corey Kluber, who has been going back and forth with the team since last season. Key departures also included Michael Brantley and Andrew Miller, but even without those pieces, they have a strong chance of repeating as division champions for the fourth year in a row.

1st - Cleveland Indians

2nd - Minnesota Twins

3rd – Chicago White Sox

4th – Kansas City Royals

5th – Detroit Tigers

AL West – Houston Astros

The season after bringing the first franchise World Series to the city of Houston, the Astros lost in the American League Pennant Championship Series to the Red Sox, who would go on and win the World Series. The Astros came close to become the first team to go back-to-back as champions since the Yankees did it nearly two decades ago. The downfall of staying competitive this offseason was losing three of their starting pitchers in their rotation with Dallas Keuchel, Charlie Morton, and Lance McCullers Jr. (not released, but is out for the year due to injury). Wade Miley signed to a one-year deal as a replacement and the club looks to promote pitching prospects from the farm system, like Forrest Whitley or Josh James. The competition of the West is getting closer to the Astros, they will definitely be giving a run for their money trying to return to the playoffs again.

1st - Houston Astros

2nd - Oakland Athletics

3rd – Los Angeles Angels

4th – Seattle Mariners

5th - Texas Rangers

NL East – Washington Nationals

Losing Bryce Harper to a division rival should hurt your team potentially, but in the wake of Harper testing free agency was the Washington Nationals’ gain in the end. Rookie outbreak star Juan Soto displayed a wonderful performance in his first call up year, and a promotion of Victor Robles will have everyone saying, “Who’s Bryce Harper?” once he makes the roster at the major league level. The Nats also won free agency with the best pitching asset on the free agent market by signing Patrick Corbin after a career year to a long-term contract.The addition of Brian Dozier to second base after the lingering issues of Daniel Murphy last season patches a hole in the middle of the infield and a better on base career hitter. A loaded, talented National League East makes the division more than entertaining and competitive. Was losing Bryce Harper the ultimate sacrifice for a team to be successful in the playoffs? Only time will tell.

1st- Washington Nationals

2nd- Philadelphia Phillies

3rd – Atlanta Braves

4th – New York Mets

5th – Miami Marlins

NL Central – Chicago Cubs

Say what you want about all the key acquisitions in the National League Central, the Chicago Cubs still have the best rotation in their division…that is when they’re healthy. After Losing Game 163 and an early exit from the playoffs in the Wild Card game, the Cubs licked their wounds in order to get healthy over the off season. The Cubs made no big splashes during winter and are starting to lift some eyebrows across the league and more importantly, with their division rivals who have loaded up on talent on each team. Javier Baez had a breakout performance year that gave him merits for almost the league MVP, but fell short to Christian Yelich. Baez’s supreme batting power will be great additions to Anthony Rizzo and a healthy Kris Bryant. The lingering problems for the Cubs come with an ailing bullpen, but with young players that are still under rookie-sized contracts, expect a mid-season move for the Cubbies to gain a solid closer who will have a stellar year.

1st- Chicago Cubs

2nd- St. Louis Cardinals

3rd – Milwaukee Brewers

4th – Cincinnati Reds

5th – Pittsburgh Pirates

NL West - Los Angeles Dodgers

Coming up short two straight years in row at the peak of competition always leaves a bad taste in your mouth, especially if you are trying to end a title drought for your franchise. The Dodgers are on the brink of facing the greatest competition yet in their division as they watched Manny Machado sign for division rivals, the San Diego Padres. With the Colorado Rockies and the Arizona Diamondbacks displaying a great deal of farm talent, the Dodgers followed suit with displaying the flamethrower that is Walker Buehler; who displayed an ERA of 2.95 and a record of 9-5 in a promotional year. With a full season ahead of him, Julio Urias, and veteran Clayton Kershaw will lead the duties of the starting rotation. A returning Corey Seager after a season ending injury will also be a huge x-factor alongside the young bats of Max Muncy, Chris Taylor, and Cody Bellinger. The Dodgers have the right pieces moving forward, but they must hold their ground if they want to finally end their title drought.

1st- Los Angeles Dodgers

2nd- Colorado Rockies

3rd – San Diego Padres

4th – Arizona Diamondbacks

5th – San Francisco Giant

[baredmirror]

All of the major themes of [McCullers'] works—love triangles, unrequited love, freakishness, physical alienation, a yearning for membership, etc.—mirror themes of her life, alongside familiar settings with seemingly familiar characters. The case of gender aberrance in the face of social coercion is no different story; the very nature of McCullers’ unrelenting nonconformity seems to have stemmed from her childhood aversion to compulsory gender roles, which carried through into adulthood. McCullers’ childhood friend, Helen Jackson, recalls that ‘at the age of nine Lula Carson hated more than anything else being made to do “sissy things with sissy little girls.”’ She was often involved in ‘tomboyish sports’ with the other neighborhood children, and by the time she was a young adult (of about sixteen or seventeen years of age), she was dressing consistently in masculine clothing. In her group of friends, ‘[u]sually Carson was the only girl, but she dressed in dungarees or a pair of [her male friend’s] fatigues.’ McCullers’ masculine affinity carried over into her habits as well, as she embraced heavy liquor drinking and smoking publicly in spite of social decorum. Her masculine attire and habits continued up to and after her marriage to Reeves, when McCullers was typically found in ‘a man-tailored coat’ or dress shirt. Like Frankie, however, McCullers did not dress consistently as a man or a woman, but blurred the lines, sometimes wearing a long skirt and sometimes Reeve’s shirts. She idolized the ‘masculine female’ like film star Greta Garbo and friends Erika Mann and Annemarie Clarac-Schwarzenbach who behaved in similar fashions. For her entire life, McCullers never relegated herself to one gender or another, living beyond the classifications in a transgressive, albeit unintelligible, state. Her novels, especially The Member of the Wedding, reveal the tension between attempting to live a gender-transcendent life in a gender-coercive matrix that enforces normalization.

Claire Lenviel, "‘At the Expense of Normalcy’: A Queer Reading of Carson McCullers' Middle Works"

[lecturesdefemmes]

JOUR 281 - Reflets dans un oeil d’or, Carson McCullers

Des états de demi-conscience d’être humain. États de consciences latents, imprévisibles, en formation. Ils sentent confusément que quelque chose est à l’oeuvre autour d’eux et, pire, en eux. Mais quoi ? Il leur faudrait plus d’intelligence, plus de courage surtout peut-être, pour se pencher dessus et l’observer vraiment. Ils vivent dans des circonstances et une société qui maintiennent aussi un brouillard sur ce flou qui cherche à émerger en eux. C’est ce qui arrive à certains des personnages de ce roman, et c’est magnifiquement décrit.

Tout commence de manière la plus anodine. Le capitaine d’une caserne demande à ce qu’on désherbe une partie de son jardin. C’est un autre soldat que celui prévu qui vient ; celui-ci est en charge des écuries. Il fait du zèle, coupe les branches d’un arbre qu’il n’aurait pas dû élaguer. C’est perturbant pour le capitaine.

Comment, de ce point de départ minime, arrive-t-on à des scènes emplies de sens et de portée ? Je ne peux pas dire grand chose ; lentement, lentement, on s’immerge avec eux, le petit cercle du capitaine et de sa femme, de leurs voisins et leur domestique, du soldat d’écurie. Je ne dirais pas que ces personnages, à deux exceptions près, soient attachants. Mais ils donnent le sentiment d’exister. Ils font vivre des moments de joie farouche ; de haine retenue ou de frustration en lente explosion.

« Derrière lui, il y avait une histoire de splendeur barbare, de décadence financière et de morgue héréditaire. Mais la génération dont il faisait partie n’était pas arrivée à grand-chose : l’unique cousin du capitaine était agent de police à Nashville. Très snob, mais dépourvu de vraie dignité, le capitaine attachait une importance disproportionnée au passé disparu. »

L’autrice approche, et cerne, aigle acéré, les plaques tectoniques à l’oeuvre à l’intérieur de ses personnages. On sent pour eux des tremblements de terre, mais à l’extérieur seuls de maigres signaux transparaissent. De quoi sont-ils capables ? On n’en est pas sûrs ; et eux ne le savent pas, ne cherchent pas à le savoir. Le creux où bouillonnent, moisissent, agissent des émotions qui nous laissent… quel libre-arbitre au juste ? 

« Le capitaine avait trois mots au coeur. N’ayant pas assez de souffle pour les articuler, il les formait sur ses lèvres tremblantes : « Me voilà perdu. » Or, ayant renoncé à survivre, voici que le capitaine revint soudain à la vie. Il sentit sourdre en lui un immense élan de joie. »

Lecture marquante comme une lente détonation. 

G.C.

Reflets dans un oeil d’or, Carson McCullers. Traduit de l’anglais par Pierre Nordon. Editions Stock. 2001. Publication originale : 1941.

Carson McCullers, née Lula Carson Smith (1917-1967), est une romancière et nouvelliste américaine. Après des études à l'Université Columbia, puis à l'Université de New York, elle publie, en 1936, une nouvelle intitulée Wunderkind et commence à travailler sur son premier roman Le cœur est un chasseur solitaire, initialement intitulé Le Muet. En 1937, elle épouse Reeves McCullers et s'installe à Charlotte, Caroline du Nord, où elle achève Le Muet, publié sous le titre Le cœur est un chasseur solitaire en 1940 : elle a alors 23 ans. L'année suivante, en 1941, paraît un deuxième roman, Reflets dans un œil d'or. En 1946, elle publie son troisième roman, Frankie Addams, rencontre Tennessee Williams et part voyager en Europe avec son mari. À la suite de problèmes de santé, elle tente de se suicider en 1947 et est hospitalisée à New York. En 1952, elle s'installe en France avec son mari, dans l'Oise, à Bachivillers. L'année suivante, après le suicide de son mari, elle rentre aux États-Unis. Son quatrième et dernier roman, L'Horloge sans aiguilles, est publié en 1961. Elle meurt des suites d'une hémorragie cérébrale en septembre 1967.

[laescrituradesatada]

Carson McCullers | Con Reeves, su marido

[365daysoflesbians]

FEBRUARY 19: Carson McCullers (1917-1967)

Today: the Queen of Southern Gothic, Carson McCullers herself.

Her first and most famous novel, The Heart is a Lonely Hunter, set the stage for the kind of things that Carson explores in her fiction: isolation, the experience of social misfits and outcasts, forces of oppression and their consequences on a personal level.

Carson McCullers photographed by Carl Van Vechten, 1959.

She was born Lula Carson Smith in Georgia. She learned piano when she was a child, and started getting into writing around 15, when her father gave her a typewriter. After graduating high school, she took off for NY. Her plan was to study piano at Juilliard there, but this was cut short by a bout of rheumatic fever. After returning from Columbus, GA, where she’d gone to recuperate, she worked a series of menial jobs while in parallel actively pursuing a writing career and attending night classes at Columbia. Her first story, an autobiographical piece, was published when she was just 19. She married Reeves McCullers, another aspiring writer, the following year, and they moved to Georgia but they divorced in 1941, at which point she headed back to NY and formed close friendships with many of the writers there. After WW2, she lived mostly in Paris, and in 1945, she remarried Reeves.

The later part of her life was overshadowed by chronic illness, alcoholism, and depression. In 1948, she attempted suicide; in 1953, Reeves tried to convince her to commit a double suicide with him. She fled but he did go through it. By her early thirties, she had complete paralysis on her left side, a consequence of the strokes she endured in her youth. She ultimately died of a brain hemorrhage in 1967.

Carson may have been married to Reeves, but she certainly performed a lesbian persona in her public life. She wore men’s clothes, and aggressively pursued women, though it appears that none of her attempts to seduce women were successful. Her most famous love was the Swiss writer Annemarie Schwarzenbach. In an article for The Nation, Sarah Schulman writes about McCullers’s complicated relationship with women, gender, and sexuality:

In the absence of reciprocated lesbian love and the inability to consummate lesbian sex, McCullers still wore a lesbian persona in literature and in life. She clearly wrote against the grain of heterosexual convention, wore men’s clothes, was outrageously aggressive in her consistently failed search for sex and love with another woman, and formed primary friendships with other gay people.

Schulman actually develops her exploration of McCullers’s identity and modes of identification in a New Yorker article, noting that

I started to realize that McCullers’s gender trouble was not of the homosexual kind, and it slowly dawned on me that, had she been alive today, not only would McCullers (and Williams and Capote) have probably been in A.A. and on antidepressants, she might have been living as a transgender man. She did once tell Capote, “I think I was born a boy,” which doesn’t, in and of itself, mean much—but how many of us, as little girls, have never had that thought? Most.

McCullers’s memory is notably honored through the McCullers Center for Writers and Musicians. Suzanne Vega even devoted an entire album to her. Read her works online at the Open Library.

- AK

[list-of-literature]

25/03/2016

The Woman in the Dunes, Kobo Abe Things Fall Apart, Chinua Achebe The Jolly Postman or Other Peoples Letters, Janet & Allan Ahlberg The Wolves Of Willoughby Chase, Joan Aiken The Wanderer, Alain-Fournier Commedia, Dante Alighieri Skellig, David Almond The President, Miguel Angel Asturias Alcools, Guillaume Apollinaire It's Not About The Bike - My Journey Back to Life, Lance Armstrong Behind The Scenes At The Museum, Kate Atkinson The Handmaid's Tale, Margaret Atwood Jonathan Livingstone Seagull, Richard Bach Go Tell It on the Mountain, James Baldwin The Ghost Road, Pat Barker Carrie's War, Nina Bawden Molloy; Malone Dies; The Unnamable, Samuel Beckett Waiting for Godot, Samuel Beckett The Adventures of Augie March, Saul Bellow G, John Berger Noughts And Crosses, Malorie Blackman Mister Magnolia, Quentin Blake Forever, Judy Blume The Magic Faraway Tree, Enid Blyton Five On A Treasure Island, Enid Blyton The Enchanted Wood, Enid Blyton A Bear Called Paddington, Michael Bond Ficciones, Jorge Luis Borges The Boy In The Striped Pyjamas, John Boyne The Snowman, Raymond Briggs Flat Stanley, Jeff Brown Gorilla, Anthony Browne The Good Earth, Pearl S. Buck The Pilgrim's Progress, John Bunyan A Clockwork Orange, Anthony Burgess Junk, Melvin Burgess Would You Rather?, John Burningham The Soft Machine, William S. Burroughs The Way of All Flesh, Samuel Butler Possession, A.S. Byatt The Princess Diaries, Meg Cabot If on a Winter's Night a Traveler, Italo Calvino Invisible Cities, Italo Calvino The Stranger, Albert Camus Oscar and Lucinda, Peter Carey Nights at the Circus, Angela Carter Looking For JJ, Anne Cassidy Journey to the End of the Night, Louis-Ferdinand Céline Wild Swans: Three Daughters of China, Jung Chang Papillon, Henri Charriere The Canterbury Tales, Geoffrey Chaucer "Clarice Bean, That's Me", Lauren Child I Will Not Ever Never Eat a Tomato, Lauren Child Les Liaisons Dangereuses, Pierre Choderlos de Laclos Disgrace, J.M. Coetzee Waiting for the Barbarians, J.M Coetzee Princess Smartypants, Babette Cole Nostromo, Joseph Conrad The Public Burning, Robert Coover Millions, Frank Cottrell Boyce The Power Of One, Bryce Courtenay That Rabbit Belongs To Emily Brown, Cressida Cowell House Of Leaves, Mark Z. Danielewski The Black Sheep, Honoré de Balzac Old Man Goriot, Honoré de Balzac The Second Sex, Simone de Beavoir The Story of Babar, Jean De Brunhoff The Little Prince, Antoine De Saint-Exupery White Noise, Don DeLillo Slouching Towards Bethlehem, Joan Didion Sybil, Benjamin Disraeli Hairy Maclary from Donaldson's Dairy, Lynley Dodd The 42nd Parallel, John Dos Passos The Brothers Karamzov, Fyodor Dostoevsky An American Tragedy, Theodore Drieser The Name Of The Rose, Umberto Eco My Naughty Little Sister, Dorothy Edwards Invisible Man, Ralph Ellison The Horse Whisperer, Nicholas Evans The Siege of Krishnapur, J.G Farrell The Sound and the Fury, William Faulkner "Absalom, Absalom!", William Faulkner Light in August, William Faulkner Take it or Leave It, Raymond Federman Magician, Raymond E. Feist Flour Babies, Anne Fine Madam Bovary, Gustav Flaubert A Passage to India, E. M. Forster The Diary of a Young Girl, Anne Frank Cross Stitch,  Diana Gabaldon That Awful Mess on the Via Merulala, Carlo Emilio Gadda JR, William Gaddis The Graveyard Book, Neil Gaiman One Hundred Years Of Solitude, Gabriel García Márquez Love In The Time Of Cholera, Gabriel García Márquez Maggot Moon, Sally Gardner The Owl Service, Alan Garner In the Heart of the Heart of the Country & Other Stories, William H. Gass Coram Boy, Jamila Gavin Once, Morris Gleitzman The Conservationist, Nadine Gordimer Asterix The Gaul, Rene Goscinny The Tin Drum, Günter Grass Sunset Song, Lewis Grassic Gibbon Little Mouse's Big Book of Fears, Emily Gravett Lanark, Alasdair Gray The Quiet American, Graham Greene Life and Fate, Vasily Grossman The Curious Incident Of The Dog In The Night-Time, Mark Haddon Jude The Obscure, Thomas Hardy The Scarlet Letter, Nathaniel Hawthorne Stranger in a Strange Land, Robert A. Heinlein The Sun Also Rises, Ernest Hemingway For Whom the Bell Tolls, Ernest Hemingway The Old Man And The Sea, Ernest Hemingway The Blue Lotus, Hergé The Adventures Of Tintin, Hergé The Glass Bead Game, Herman Hesse Where's Spot?, Eric Hill The Secret Garden, Frances Hodgson Burnett The Odyssey, Homer High Fidelity, Nick Hornby Point Blanc, Anthony Horowitz Skeleton Key, Anthony Horowitz Dogger, Shirley Hughes Journey To The River Sea, Eva Ibbotson Little House In The Big Woods, Laura Ingalls Wilder A Prayer For Owen Meany, John Irving Goodbye to Berlin, Christopher Isherwood The Portrait of a Lady, Henry James The Ambassadors, Henry James Finn Family Moomintroll, Tove Jansson Lost and Found, Oliver Jeffers The Far Pavilions, M. M. Kaye A Confederacy of Dunces, John Kennedy Toole The Tiger Who Came To Tea, Judith Kerr One Flew Over The Cuckoo's Nest, Ken Kesey In Praise of Hatred, Khaled Khalifa Gate of the Sun, Elias Khoury It, Stephen King The Queen's Nose, Dick King-Smith The Sheep-Pig, Dick King-Smith Diary Of A Wimpy Kid, Jeff Kinney Kim, Rudyard Kipling I Want My Hat Back, Jon Klassen Darkness at Noon, Arthur Koestler The Unbearable Lightness of Being, Milan Kundera The Milly-Molly-Mandy Storybook, Joyce Lankerster Brisley Women in Love, D.H. Lawrence Seven Pillars of Wisdom, T.E Lawrence A Wrinkle in Time, Madeleine L'Engle The Golden Notebook, Doris Lessing Tristes Tropiques, Claude Lévi-Strauss Pippi Longstocking, Astrid Lindgren The Call of the Wild, Jack London Nightmare Abbey, Thomas Love Peacock Under the Volcano, Malcolm Lowry The Good Soldier, Ford Madox Ford The Cairo Trilogy, Naguib Mahfouz The Naked and the Dead, Norman Mailer Man's Fate, Andre Malraux The Magic Mountain, Thomas Mann Wolf Hall, Hilary Mantel The Road, Cormac McCarthy The Kite Rider, Geraldine McCaughrean The Heart Is A Lonely Hunter, Carson McCullers "Not Now, Bernard", David McKee Tent Boxing: An Australian Journey, Wayne McLennan No One Sleeps in Alexandria, Ibrahim Abdel Meguid A Fine Balance, Rohinton Mistry The Cruel Sea, Nicholas Monsarrat Private Peaceful, Michael Morpurgo Beloved, Toni Morrison Song of Solomon, Toni Morrison The Wind-Up Bird Chronicle, Haruki Murakami Under the Net, Iris Murdoch The Worst Witch, Jill Murphy Pale Fire, Vladimir Nabokov A Bend in the River, V.S Naipaul Their Eyes Were Watching God, Zora Neale Hurston A Monster Calls, Patrick Ness The Knife Of Never Letting Go, Patrick Ness The Borrowers, Mary Norton Master And Commander, Patrick O'Brian The Silent Cry, Kenzaburo Oe My Name is Red, Orhan Pamuk Gormenghast, Mervyn Peake Night Watch, Terry Pratchett The Colour Of Magic, Terry Pratchett The Truth, Terry Pratchett Witches Abroad, Terry Pratchett Truckers, Terry Pratchett Life: An Exploded Diagram, Mal Prett Paroles, Jacques Prévert The Shipping News, Annie Proulx In Search of Lost Time, Marcel Proust The Ruby In The Smoke, Philip Pullman Eugene Onegin, Alexander Pushkin Gravity's Rainbow, Thomas Pynchon Live and Remember, Valentin Rasputin Witch Child, Celia Rees Mortal Engines, Philip Reeve Clarissa: Or the History of a Young Lady, Samuel Richardson How I Live Now, Meg Rosoff I Want My Potty!, Tony Ross Portnoy's Complaint, Philip Roth The God Of Small Things, Arundhati Roy Midnight's Children, Salman Rushdie Holes, Louis Sachar Blindness, Jose Saramango Being and Nothingness, Jean-Paul Sartre Nausea, Jean-Paul Sartre Austerlitz, W.G. Sebald Revolver, Marcus Sedgwick Where The Wild Things Are, Maurice Sendak The Silver Sword, Ian Serraillier Katherine, Anya Seton Come over to My House, Dr Seuss Daisy-Head Mayzie, Dr Seuss Great Day for Up!, Dr Seuss Hooray for Diffendoofer Day!, Dr Seuss Horton and the Kwuggerbug and More Lost Stories, Dr Seuss Hunches in Bunches, Dr Seuss I Am NOT Going to Get Up Today!, Dr Seuss I Can Lick 30 Tigers Today! and Other Stories, Dr Seuss I Had Trouble in Getting to Solla Sollew, Dr Seuss My Book about ME, Dr Seuss My Many Colored Days, Dr Seuss "Oh, the Thinks You Can Think!", Dr Seuss On Beyond Zebra!, Dr Seuss The Bippolo Seed and Other Lost Stories, Dr Seuss The Butter Battle Book, Dr Seuss The Cat's Quizzer, Dr Seuss The Pocket Book of Boners, Dr Seuss The Seven Lady Godivas, Dr Seuss The Shape of Me and Other Stuff, Dr Seuss What Pet Should I Get?, Dr Seuss You're Only Old Once!, Dr Seuss Dr Seuss's Book of Bedtime Stories, Dr Seuss Special shapes: A flip-the-flap book, Dr Seuss Dizzy days: A flip-the-flap book, Dr Seuss The Tale of Genji, Murasaki Shikibu A Town Like Alice, Nevil Shute I Capture The Castle, Dodie Smith "The Gulag Archipelago, 1918-1956: An Experiment in Literary Investigation", Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn Memento Mori, Muriel Spark The Prime of Miss Jean Brodie, Muriel Spark Heidi, Johanna Spyri The Making of Americans, Gertrude Stein The Charterhouse of Parma, Stendhal "The Life and Opinions of Tristram Shandy, Gentleman", Laurence Sterne Driving Over Lemons: An Optimist in Andalucia, Chris Stewart Goosebumps, R.L. Stine Ballet Shoes, Noel Streatfeild The Home and the World, Rabindranath Tagore The Arrival, Shaun Tan The Secret History, Donna Tartt The Ragged Trousered Philanthropists, Robert Tressell Fathers and Sons, Ivan Turgenev Adventures of Huckleberry Finn, Mark Twain Froth on the Daydream, Boris Vian Creation, Gore Vidal Slaughterhouse-Five, Kurt Vonnegut Breakfast of Champions, Kurt Vonnegut The Color Purple, Alice Walker Scoop, Evelyn Waugh The War Of The Worlds, H.G. Wells The Time Machine, H.G Wells The Once And Future King, T.H. White Double Act, Jacqueline Wilson Vicky Angel, Jacqueline Wilson Girls In Love, Jacqueline Wilson The Illustrated Mum, Jacqueline Wilson The Dare Game, Jacqueline Wilson Bad Girls, Jacqueline Wilson Lola Rose, Jacqueline Wilson Girls In Tears, Jacqueline Wilson Sleepovers, Jacqueline Wilson Secrets, Jacqueline Wilson Girls Out Late, Jacqueline Wilson Dustbin Baby, Jacqueline Wilson The Code of the Woosters, P.G. Wodehouse Native Son, Richard Wright Going Native, Stephen Wright The Day Of The Triffids, John Wyndham The Dream of the Red Chamber, Cao Xueqin Red Sorghum: A Novel of China, Mo Yan Revolutionary Road, Richard Yates We, Yevgeny Zamyatin Germinal, Emile Zola Amazing Grace, Mary Hoffman & Caroline Binch Horrid Henry, Francesca Simon & Tony Ross Meg And Mog, Helen Nicholls & Jan Pienkowski Ten Little Fingers and Ten Little Toes, Mem Fox & Helen Oxenbury The Elephant And The Bad Baby, Elfrida Vipont & Raymond Briggs The True Story Of The Three Little Pigs, Jon Scieszka & Lane Smith

[metteivieharrison]

Carson McCullers “McCullers later recalled trying to roast a chicken, not realizing that she had to clean the bird first. When Reeves came home, he asked her about the awful smell in the house; Carson, absorbed in her writing, hadn’t even noticed.”

This is sometimes a serious problem for me (and my family) when I am deeply into a novel. There is nothing else in the world, I am so intensely focused on the book. Hours will pass without me noticing. Cooking food during this time can be tricky for multiple reasons. I am often mentally and emotionally exhausted once I turn off the computer and shouldn’t be trusted to do anything other than eat food and keep breathing. (I am exaggerating slightly here.)

I sometimes wonder what it would be like to be someone who doesn’t struggle with an intense focus problem. It makes writing easier, but it makes being a normal human being, well, less easy. I like spending a lot of time alone, in my own made up world. I like talking to my imaginary book friends and don’t always need other human interaction.

I work hard to have an “off” switch on the writing, so that when I turn my laptop off, I can do real world stuff and talk to my kids and my husband. It works sometimes better than others. If you’re a writer, it can be useful to be able to put on and take off different hats (editor, creator, parent, worker, etc). I’m not someone who believes that artists are excused from being required to act as moral persons in the real world, but it may not be our forte.

[laescrituradesatada]

Carson McCullers | Con Reeves, su esposo