Jarvis on McCullers

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BBC Radio 4 Extra - Jarvis on McCullers

Jarvis Cocker celebrates the life and work of literary wunderkind Carson McCullers.

4 Extra Debut. Jarvis Cocker looks at a favourite author the American Carson McCullers - famous at 23 but who went on to lead a troubled life.

American author Carson McCullers, has never been as well known as contemporaries Harper Lee and Tennessee Williams, but nonetheless she remains a most remarkable and individual writer.  

She only wrote a few works, in large part because rheumatic fever left her paralysed in her left arm, and she was beset by ill health and alcoholism for many of her fifty years. She also married a man twice who commited suicide and tried to get her to do the same.

But her writing style was filled with the heat, sounds and smells of the American south, and the characters who populated books like 'The Ballad of the Sad Cafe', 'The Heart is a Lonely Hunter' and 'A Member of the Wedding' - were most commonly troubled misfits. 

Musician Jarvis Cocker hears from a number of Carson McCullers' fans , including academic Carlos Dews, author Laura Barton and musician Suzanne Vega, who has not only written and starred in three versions of a play about Carson, but often feels herself to be in conversation with her spirit.

Jarvis explains his own personal devotion, explaining how Carson's ability to bypass the brain and connect straight to the heart is what makes her such an important figure to him.

Produced by Geoff Bird.

First broadcast on BBC Radio 4 in February 2016.

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