The Arrested Development of Carson McCullers

Since her untimely death, in 1967, at the age of fifty, biographers have tended to be similarly forgiving. In her 1975 biography, Virginia Spencer Carr presents McCullers as a sensitive and well-meaning dreamer, coddled from a young age and adored by the literati—how could she not be a bit self-important? Josyane Savigneau, whose biography of McCullers was translated from French into English in 2001, defends the novelist at nearly every turn, explaining that “a writer lives differently from people who don’t write.” And, in a more recent study of McCullers’s life, Jenn Shapland attributes both the writer’s protracted adolescence and her substance abuse to her queerness. (Though McCullers was married to a man for many years, her most significant romantic relationships were with women.) Given how lesbianism was pathologized, Shapland argues, it’s not surprising that McCullers turned to drink.The Best Books of 2024