The Interior Castle

by Ann Hulbert

This is a biography of the writer, Jean Stafford. She is often grouped with that generation of writers who include Robert Lowell (to whom she was famously married), John Berryman, Delmore Schwartz and others. This work shows how her charmed, but painful life informed her work.

Genres: Biography, Nonfiction

464 pages, Paperback

First published January 1, 1992

Reviews

[JimZ · Rating 5 out of 5]

Have read some two dozen literary bio's, of such authors as E. Wharton, J. Updike, I. Murdoch, M. Spark, P. Roth, W. Faulkner, W. Cather, W. Stegner, G. Eliot, E. Welty, C. McCullers, J. Rhys, A. Chekhov, and the Bronte's. I read the bio's after first reading the author's works.

Ann Hulbert's 'The Interior Castle: The Art and Life of Jean Stafford' ranks right up there with the best. I suspect that writing a lit. bio. is damn hard work, even if the subject's letters, unfinished manuscripts, etc., are available, and there are still friends and aquaintances living for the biographer to interview. She is attempting to make sense of not only a life, but of a literary life. She is trying to write objectively but critically on a subject that, like the art and the genius behind it, can be interpreted any number of ways.

For me as a reader, Hulbert's bio. probably answered more questions (per page of the subject's published work?) than just about any of the bio's I've read. The book helped put the pieces of a complex puzzle into place. A complex life; a curious body of work. I was certainly struck by Stafford's magnificent writing style. Until reading Hulbert's bio., I wasn't sure I understood Stafford's stories and novels. Authors say, don't study my life, read my stuff. Fair enough, but in the case of Jean Stafford, it seems especially necessary to get to know the woman and the writer as it is to read her works.

Great job, well worth a read.

[Pepper · Rating 3 out of 5]

Made an interesting life boring. More a not-insightful eye on the work than on the life.