A well-researched, sensitive literary biography.
The triumphs and tragedies of an American writer.
Drawing on abundant archival material, much not available to earlier biographers, Dearborn offers a thorough, passionate recounting of the life of Carson McCullers (1917-1967), a writer with an “unerring instinct for the outsider’s life.” As a young child, Carson (born Lula Carson Smith in Columbus, Georgia) “was marked out as special.” Her parents decided she would become a concert pianist, a goal Carson energetically pursued, though she expressed interest in being a composer or writer. In 1934, she went to New York, apparently intending to enroll at Juilliard, but she wound up taking writing classes at Columbia instead. Soon after, on a visit home, she met the handsome James Reeves McCullers, also an aspiring writer, and, like Carson, a heavy drinker. They clicked immediately, although, Dearborn notes, “in their relationship, she was emphatically the beloved.” Carson, tall and gangly, preferred to dress in men’s clothes, which she said she found more comfortable. She and Reeves married in 1937, but Carson’s most passionate attractions were to women. Her first awakening to love was for her piano teacher; she later became obsessed with the Swiss writer Annemarie Schwarzenbach, harbored “erotic feelings” for producer Cheryl Crawford, and fell in love with her therapist, a married woman. Bisexual and androgynous, Carson made gender fluidity “a thread through her major works.” Dearborn chronicles Carson’s rise to fame, including the 1940 publication of The Heart Is a Lonely Hunter, her friendships with the likes of Tennessee Williams and Truman Capote, and the severe health issues and alcoholism that undermined her. Strep throat in childhood led to rheumatic fever and, by the time she was 30, two major, disabling strokes. Alive to “the dangers and ecstasies of otherness,” Carson, Dearborn writes, was defined by queerness, as an artist and a woman.
A well-researched, sensitive literary biography.Pub Date: Feb. 27, 2024
ISBN: 9780525521013
Page Count: 512
Publisher: Knopf
Review Posted Online: Nov. 11, 2023
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Dec. 15, 2023
A virtuoso performance and an ode to an undervalued medium created by two talented artists.
The veteran actor, comedian, and banjo player teams up with the acclaimed illustrator to create a unique book of cartoons that communicates their personalities.
Martin, also a prolific author, has always been intrigued by the cartoons strewn throughout the pages of the New Yorker. So when he was presented with the opportunity to work with Bliss, who has been a staff cartoonist at the magazine since 1997, he seized the moment. “The idea of a one-panel image with or without a caption mystified me,” he writes. “I felt like, yeah, sometimes I’m funny, but there are these other weird freaks who are actually funny.” Once the duo agreed to work together, they established their creative process, which consisted of working forward and backward: “Forwards was me conceiving of several cartoon images and captions, and Harry would select his favorites; backwards was Harry sending me sketched or fully drawn cartoons for dialogue or banners.” Sometimes, he writes, “the perfect joke occurs two seconds before deadline.” There are several cartoons depicting this method, including a humorous multipanel piece highlighting their first meeting called “They Meet,” in which Martin thinks to himself, “He’ll never be able to translate my delicate and finely honed droll notions.” In the next panel, Bliss thinks, “I’m sure he won’t understand that the comic art form is way more subtle than his blunt-force humor.” The team collaborated for a year and created 150 cartoons featuring an array of topics, “from dogs and cats to outer space and art museums.” A witty creation of a bovine family sitting down to a gourmet meal and one of Dumbo getting his comeuppance highlight the duo’s comedic talent. What also makes this project successful is the team’s keen understanding of human behavior as viewed through their unconventional comedic minds.
A virtuoso performance and an ode to an undervalued medium created by two talented artists.Pub Date: Nov. 17, 2020
ISBN: 978-1-250-26289-9
Page Count: 272
Publisher: Celadon Books
Review Posted Online: Aug. 30, 2020
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Sept. 15, 2020
PERSPECTIVES
An ebullient nature lover’s paean to birds.
A charming bird journey with the bestselling author.
In his introduction to Tan’s “nature journal,” David Allen Sibley, the acclaimed ornithologist, nails the spirit of this book: a “collection of delightfully quirky, thoughtful, and personal observations of birds in sketches and words.” For years, Tan has looked out on her California backyard “paradise”—oaks, periwinkle vines, birch, Japanese maple, fuchsia shrubs—observing more than 60 species of birds, and she fashions her findings into delightful and approachable journal excerpts, accompanied by her gorgeous color sketches. As the entries—“a record of my life”—move along, the author becomes more adept at identifying and capturing them with words and pencils. Her first entry is September 16, 2017: Shortly after putting up hummingbird feeders, one of the tiny, delicate creatures landed on her hand and fed. “We have a relationship,” she writes. “I am in love.” By August 2018, her backyard “has become a menagerie of fledglings…all learning to fly.” Day by day, she has continued to learn more about the birds, their activities, and how she should relate to them; she also admits mistakes when they occur. In December 2018, she was excited to observe a Townsend’s Warbler—“Omigod! It’s looking at me. Displeased expression.” Battling pesky squirrels, Tan deployed Hot Pepper Suet to keep them away, and she deterred crows by hanging a fake one upside down. The author also declared war on outdoor cats when she learned they kill more than 1 billion birds per year. In May 2019, she notes that she spends $250 per month on beetle larvae. In June 2019, she confesses “spending more hours a day staring at birds than writing. How can I not?” Her last entry, on December 15, 2022, celebrates when an eating bird pauses, “looks and acknowledges I am there.”
An ebullient nature lover’s paean to birds.Pub Date: April 23, 2024
ISBN: 9780593536131
Page Count: 320
Publisher: Knopf
Review Posted Online: Jan. 19, 2024
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Feb. 15, 2024
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SEEN & HEARD
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