The Life She Wished to Live: A Biography of Marjorie Kinnan Rawlings, author of The Yearling
-
-
3.7 • 3 Ratings
-
-
- $14.99
-
- $14.99
Publisher Description
A comprehensive and engaging biography of Marjorie Kinnan Rawlings, Pulitzer Prize–winning author of the beloved classic The Yearling.
Washington, DC, born and Wisconsin educated, Marjorie Kinnan Rawlings was an unlikely author of a coming-of-age novel about a poor central Florida child and his pet fawn—much less one that has become synonymous with Florida literature writ large.
Rawlings was a tough, ambitious, and independent woman who refused the conventions of her early-twentieth-century upbringing. Determined to forge a literary career beyond those limitations, she found her voice in the remote, hardscrabble life of Cross Creek, Florida. There, Rawlings purchased a commercial orange grove and discovered a fascinating world out of which to write—and a dialect of the poor, swampland community that the literary world had yet to hear. She employed her sensitive eye, sharp ear for dialogue, and philosophical spirit to bring to life this unknown corner of America in vivid, tender detail, a feat that earned her the Pulitzer Prize in 1938. Her accomplishments came at a price: a failed first marriage, financial instability, a contentious libel suit, alcoholism, and physical and emotional upheaval.
With intimate access to Rawlings’s correspondence and revealing early writings, Ann McCutchan uncovers a larger-than-life woman who writes passionately and with verve, whose emotions change on a dime, and who drinks to excess, smokes, swears, and even occasionally joins in on an alligator hunt. The Life She Wished to Live paints a lively portrait of Rawlings, her contemporaries—including her legendary editor, Maxwell Perkins, and friends Zora Neale Hurston, Ernest Hemingway, and F. Scott Fitzgerald—and the Florida landscape and people that inspired her.
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
Novelist Marjorie Kinnan Rawlings (1896–1953) proves to be an elusive subject in McCutchan's comprehensive if bloodless latest (after Where's the Moon). Using Rawlings's letters, drafts, and memoirs, McCutchan attempts to show how the writer "created the life she wished to live as a writer with a poetic, philosophical impulse toward art-making." Born in Washington, D.C., Rawlings adored her father and had a troubled relationship with her mother. After college, she pursued journalism and moved to Florida, where she ran an orange grove and was described by her second husband as three people, one "prim," one an "absolute bawd," and one a "hard-working writer." Her first novel, South Moon Under, received "glowing reviews" when it was published in 1933, though it wasn't until the success of The Yearling in 1938 that she achieved fame. McCutchan poignantly captures how Rawlings's friendship with Zora Neale Hurston sensitized her to her own racism, and how Rawlings's growing passion for racial equality put her at odds with her neighbors. But while readers see the facts of her life through the "freewheeling '20s" as she falls into alcoholism, McCutchan isn't able to get into the head or heart of her subject, leaving it vague as to what drove and tormented her. Those new to Rawlings's work will find it admirably researched, but this glimpse into a consequential writer's life will leave readers wanting.
