Carson McCullers' undiagnosed childhood bout with rheumatic fever plagued her throughout her life and often sent her to bed for long periods of convalescence. Unable to pursue her mother's dreams of her becoming a concert pianist, Carson found a new profession waiting in the pages of Tolstoy, E.M. Forster, Dostoevsky and Proust just to name a few.
In her unfinished autobiography Illumination and Night Glare, which was dictated to a host of faithful "secretaries" as she was recovering from a stroke, McCullers jokes, "I read everything; books on house decorations; catalogues on flowers; cookbooks which I especially enjoy, and like the [New York Times,] everything that's fit to print."

What are McCullers's favorite books from a lifetime of reading?
Published 04/21/2004

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