Written in the months of 1967 leading up to her death, Illumination & Night Glare (edited by Carlos L. Dews and published in 1999) was Carson McCullers’ final attempt to shape the mythology of her own persona, to create the legacy of herself she wished to leave to the world and to record her own perception of herself. Rather than taking the structure of a typical biographical account, McCullers’ narrative of her own life is fluid, shifting between the stages of her life in a sweetly sentimental ramble. Perhaps it is the unfinished nature of the manuscript, but Illumination & Night Glare feels like sitting in the same room as Carson McCullers and listening to her tell all the interesting little tales that make up her life story.

The illuminations of the title are the flashes and bursts of inspiration and creativity that defined her direction with her work when she least expected it. The inspirations were strange and unpredictable to her, but she appreciated it them coming as they did after months of struggle. The night glares are the periods of debilitating illness and harrowing setbacks and life circumstances. She never bemoans the fact of her illnesses, in fact she points to other creative individuals who also overcame physical impediment to achieve great works, taking instead great pride in the ability to overcome.

My life has been almost completely filled with work and love, thank goodness. Work has not always been easy, nor has love, may I add.

McCullers is surprisingly open about the disappointing sexual dimension of her relationship with Reeves, yet rather coyly ambiguous when it comes to her other affections, especially Annemarie Clarac-Schwarzenbach, although it appears their relationship was just as fraught. As she approaches her remarriage to Reeves, she becomes shyly reticent, claiming often that she didn’t know why she went back to him, a sentiment which is betrayed by her tender letters to him during the war. Carson’s portrayal of Reeves is much kinder than any to be found in other biographical accounts, or from comments from people who were close to the pair. She creates a more sympathetic image of a deeply troubled man.

It was a shock, the shock of pure beauty, when I first saw him; he was the best looking man I had ever seen. he also talked of Marx and Engels, and I knew he was a liberal, which was important, to my mind, in a backward Southern community. Edwin, Reeves and I spent whole days together, and one night when Reeves and I were walking alone, looking up at the stars, I did not realize how time had passed, and when Reeves brought me home, my parents were distressed, as it was two o’clock in the morning. However, my mother was also charmed by Reeves, and he would bring her beautiful records. [...] I was eighteen years old, and this was my first love.

The manuscript ends on a wistful recollection of happier times, and the important, if complex, position Reeves held in her emotional life.

“But you must [have] had happy times,” she said.
“Yes,” I said, “I remember one night we climbed up on the mansard roof of our house just to see the moon. We had good times, and that’s what made it so difficult. If he had been all bad, it would have been such a relief because I would have been able to leave him without so much struggle. And don’t forget, he was of enormous value to me at the time I wrote [The Heart is a Lonely Hunter] and [Reflections in a Golden Eye.] I was completely absorbed in my work, and if the food burned up he never chided me. More important, he read and criticized each chapter as it was being done. Once I asked him if he thought [Heart] was any good. He reflected for a long time, and then he said, ‘No, it’s not good, it’s great.’”

While providing an honest account of Reeves McCullers, it also shows Carson as she wanted to be seen – not the victim of a number of physical ailments or damaged relationships, but first and foremost as a writer. From her nurtured childhood – revealing that the moment her mother thought she was a genius, young Lula Carson sat at the piano and played a song she’d heard only hours before, was actually premeditated and practiced beforehand – to her stunted musical career, success in her early twenties, her complex relationships and friendships, and the disappointments of her later works. She writes enthusiastically of her own literary inspirations – Katherine Mansfield, Thomas Wolfe, Dostoyevsky, Tolstoy and E.M. Forster. The lively days of 7 Middagh Street – the house in which she lived with W.H. Auden, Gypsy Rose Lee, George Davis and Richard Wright among others – seems an idyllic creative atmosphere, although it resulted more in partying than being conducive to a positive writing environment.

Buffered by the truly touching and often desperate letters between Reeves and Carson during the time between their marriages while Reeves was serving his country in World War Two, and McCullers’ original outline for The Heart is a Lonely Hunter, Illumination & Night Glare is a amicable recollection of a tumultuous life told with the requisite hope and understanding one has come to expect from McCullers.