Carson McCullers is one of my all-time favorite writers. And Reflections in a Golden Eye is my favorite book by her. (I think I've read that book at least a dozen times by now.) Anyhow, I thought I'd share this passage from the Virginia Spencer Carr biography of Carson McCullers. I titled the passage "Carson McCullers and Terence".

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Carson McCullers and Terence

Carson wrote in her essay "The Flowering Dream: Notes on Writing":

I am so immersed in them that their motives are my own. When I write about a thief, I become one; when I write about Captain Penderton [the protagonist in Reflections in a Golden Eye], I become a homosexual man; when I write about a deaf mute, I become dumb during the time of the story. I become the characters I write about and I bless the Latin poet Terence who said, "Nothing human is alien to me."

--Virginia Spencer Carr, The Lonely Hunter: A Biography of Carson McCullers, The University of Georgia Press, 1975, page 90.

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This passage helped me appreciate even more the sentence "Nothing human is alien to me". I'd heard it before, but didn't know that it was ancient or that it's by Terence (195/185 - c. 159? BC). To me, the sentence "Nothing human is alien to me" says a lot about what topics are open to artists. Essentially, it says that ALL topics are open to artists! I like that concept, very much. And I like that Carson McCullers wrote about all kinds of people, in all kinds of complex situations, and that she wrote about these people with great insight, sensitivity, and understanding.

I highly recommend The Lonely Hunter: A Biography of Carson McCullers by Virginia Spencer Carr.

--Carl Miller Daniels