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Elizabeth Spencer: Novels & Stories: The Voice at the Back Door / The Light in the Piazza / Knights and Dragons / Stories
On her centennial, a contemporary of Flannery O’Connor and Harper Lee joins the Library of America with a volume that restores to print her searing novel about the late Jim Crow South
Elizabeth Spencer (1921-2019) was a major figure of the Southern Renaissance, though today her many books and stories are scattered or out of print. This Library of America volume brings together the very best of her writing--three novels and nineteen stories--from a career spanning more than six decades.
The Voice at the Back Door (1957), greeted by The New Yorker as "a practically perfect novel" and here restored to print, portrays small-town life in Mississippi during the late Jim Crow era and the self-interest and hatred that kept injustice firmly in place. Published two years after the Emmett Till lynching, it captures the spitting vehemence of its white characters' speech and may have been proven too potentially controversial for the Pulitzer board (which awarded no prize in 1957). Also included in this volume are The Light in the Piazza (1960), Spencer's most famous work, a deftly poignant comedy about Americans abroad that was adapted to the screen by Guy Green; and a second superb Italian novella, Knights and Dragons (1965), reminiscent of Henry James's novels in its atmosphere, interiority, and concern with transplanted Americans.
Spencer excelled in the short story form and this volume presents a career-spanning selection by editor Michael Gorra that ranges from the early "First Dark" (1959), a kind of ghost story about a spectral oversized house in a Southern town, to the valedictory "The Wedding Visitor" (2013), about the refusal to let the all-enveloping world of place, family, and childhood define one's adult life. Spencer's special focus was families, and few writers have so brilliantly plumbed the passions that unite them and the inner upheavals that can tear them apart.
Elizabeth Spencer (1921-2019) was a major figure of the Southern Renaissance, though today her many books and stories are scattered or out of print. This Library of America volume brings together the very best of her writing--three novels and nineteen stories--from a career spanning more than six decades.
The Voice at the Back Door (1957), greeted by The New Yorker as "a practically perfect novel" and here restored to print, portrays small-town life in Mississippi during the late Jim Crow era and the self-interest and hatred that kept injustice firmly in place. Published two years after the Emmett Till lynching, it captures the spitting vehemence of its white characters' speech and may have been proven too potentially controversial for the Pulitzer board (which awarded no prize in 1957). Also included in this volume are The Light in the Piazza (1960), Spencer's most famous work, a deftly poignant comedy about Americans abroad that was adapted to the screen by Guy Green; and a second superb Italian novella, Knights and Dragons (1965), reminiscent of Henry James's novels in its atmosphere, interiority, and concern with transplanted Americans.
Spencer excelled in the short story form and this volume presents a career-spanning selection by editor Michael Gorra that ranges from the early "First Dark" (1959), a kind of ghost story about a spectral oversized house in a Southern town, to the valedictory "The Wedding Visitor" (2013), about the refusal to let the all-enveloping world of place, family, and childhood define one's adult life. Spencer's special focus was families, and few writers have so brilliantly plumbed the passions that unite them and the inner upheavals that can tear them apart.
- GenresFiction
860 pages, Kindle Edition
First published June 1, 2021
About the author
Elizabeth Spencer
86 books58 followersElizabeth Spencer was an American writer. Spencer's first novel, Fire in the Morning, was published in 1948. She has written a total of nine novels, seven collections of short stories, a memoir (Landscapes of the Heart, 1998), and a play (For Lease or Sale, 1989). Her novella The Light in the Piazza (1960) was adapted for the screen in 1962 and transformed into a Broadway musical of the same name in 2005. She is a five-time recipient of the O. Henry Award for short fiction.
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Displaying 1 - 3 of 3 reviews
November 23, 2022
This is a review of The Voice at the Back Door only. I haven’t read this whole volume yet, but added it so I could access my highlights.
4.5
The Voice at the Back Door is of its time (the ‘50s)—which isn’t to say it’s not relevant; unfortunately, it is—perfectly capturing a small Mississippi town, called Lacey in the novel.
Spencer is an “old-fashioned” novelist in that she writes from the viewpoints of several members of the community, black and white, and none of them with authorial intrusion. After finishing, I thought of Eudora Welty and I’m not surprised that Welty admired Spencer. Their styles are different, but they share the same preoccupations, including the (dark) history of their shared state. Only once did I sense an overall narratorial voice. The starting point is a character thinking of how the gathering to hear election speeches has a similar feel to a pregame rally for the college football team, one in which a “Rebel yell” will arise amidst the crowd. Perfection.
The racial slur used throughout the book comes out of characters’ mouths casually and maliciously. It’s hard to read, and I can’t even imagine how hard it would be to hear. Of course Spencer’s hometown of Carrollton, Mississippi, didn’t like this book. If it wasn’t challenged/banned then, it likely would be now: It’s part of the cover-up.
4.5
The Voice at the Back Door is of its time (the ‘50s)—which isn’t to say it’s not relevant; unfortunately, it is—perfectly capturing a small Mississippi town, called Lacey in the novel.
Spencer is an “old-fashioned” novelist in that she writes from the viewpoints of several members of the community, black and white, and none of them with authorial intrusion. After finishing, I thought of Eudora Welty and I’m not surprised that Welty admired Spencer. Their styles are different, but they share the same preoccupations, including the (dark) history of their shared state. Only once did I sense an overall narratorial voice. The starting point is a character thinking of how the gathering to hear election speeches has a similar feel to a pregame rally for the college football team, one in which a “Rebel yell” will arise amidst the crowd. Perfection.
The racial slur used throughout the book comes out of characters’ mouths casually and maliciously. It’s hard to read, and I can’t even imagine how hard it would be to hear. Of course Spencer’s hometown of Carrollton, Mississippi, didn’t like this book. If it wasn’t challenged/banned then, it likely would be now: It’s part of the cover-up.
May 15, 2023
A treasured writer who turned out finely observed and intricate stories both as "Southern" writer and expatriate in Italy. but I think the perfect short stories might be better than the novels (which include Light in the Piazza- made into a broadway musical). Adding her work alongside Eudora Welty in the American grain makes a lot of sense. Her women characters find their way to freedoms despite but also because of the southern moral environments they inhabit.
July 8, 2021
I finished the first novel in this volume, set in the Jin Crow south of the 50's. Very searing, a new writer for me, in a genre I have enjoyed so much...the Southern Renaissance.
Displaying 1 - 3 of 3 reviews