"Illumination and Night Glare is an extraordinary document. Dictated in an idiomatic, associative style, it exposes the doubleness of [Carson] McCullers's life. . . . A rich mine of information for anyone interested in McCullers, and American literary life in the 1950s, these memoirs are also a testament to the courage and sheer love of life of their author."--Richard Gray, Times Literary Supplement
"Though described as an 'autobiography, ' [Illumination and Night Glare] is rather more of an informal, unselfconscious memoir organized on the principle of association of ideas, not by chronology or theme; it's touching, conversational, inevitably disjointed. . . . One can see why an editor would want to present the attenuated manuscript for publication, for it is all that remains of the unpublished work."--Joyce Carol Oates, London Review of Books
"The mundane circumstances of [McCullers's] epiphanies--pacing on her living room rug or going on a brisk walk after a Thanksgiving meal--take on an otherworldly wonder in her hands. . . . McCullers's memoir is a testament to her struggle to write 'in sickness or in health.'"--Catherine Saint Louis, New York Times Book Review
"[Illumination and Night Glare] reveals the woman Gore Vidal once described as a 'vain, querulous . . . genius, ' but it also gives evidence of the indomitable spirit that commanded the enduring friendship of Tennessee Williams, John Huston, Edith Sitwell, et al. . . . The volume will be must reading for all students, scholars, and aficionados of McCullers."--Choice