Abstract
Skaggs explores the relationship between Carson McCullers and Mary Tucker, her piano teacher in Columbus, Georgia, incorporating recently acquired archival materials in the Margaret S. Sullivan Papers and the Dr. Mary E. Mercer/Carson McCullers Collection at Columbus State University, including the transcripts of McCullers’ therapy sessions with Mary Mercer. By examining letters exchanged between and about McCullers and Tucker, Skaggs invites us to reexamine McCullers’ persistent but unresolved efforts to find acceptance and approval from her childhood mentor and muse. Previous biographers and scholars have attempted to quantify the importance of Tucker’s influence on McCullers, and Skaggs’ consideration provides important new contexts for understanding the complexity of their relationship and the development of the writer’s own artistic identity.
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Works Cited
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Trammell Skaggs, C. (2016). Musings between the Marvelous and Strange: New Contexts and Correspondence about Carson McCullers and Mary Tucker. In: Graham-Bertolini, A., Kayser, C. (eds) Carson McCullers in the Twenty-First Century. American Literature Readings in the Twenty-First Century. Palgrave Macmillan, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-40292-5_5
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