The Secret Life of Emily Dickinson is the culmination of Chrayn's life-long love of the poet. "I never quite recovered from reading her," he writes in the "Author's Note".
His portrayal of the poet will shatter your received image of Emily Dickinson. Narrated by Emily herself, the novel imagines the men and women who rocked her world and inspired her explosive output of secret love poetry.
Emily's voice is singular and alive, studded with images from her poems. The poems themselves do not appear, but are clandescently scribbled off-screen, although some were secreted into the public's hands against her wishes. We don't need them much; Emily's voice speaks her poetry.
Solving the mystery of Emily's love life has long baffled her readers. Was she lesbian, her sister-in-law Sue or their friend Kate Scott Turner Anthon her great love? Or was she enthralled by 'her Philadelphia', the Rev. Charles Wadsworth of Arch Street Presbyterian Church? She heard him preach while passing through Philly and corresponded with him. Or was it her mentor Thomas Wentworth Higginson who was a rare chosen recipient of her poetry? Or local newspaperman Sam Bowles?
Or someone lost to history? Like a handsome handyman at Mount Holyoke seminary?
She falls for the lowly orphaned handyman (later turned thief and circus clown). She would have eloped with the Amherst College tutor. She wants to hold the Rev. Wadsworth's hands, scarred from the manual labor that paid his way through school. Society--and the Dickinson patriarch--deem these men unfit for Emily's hand.
In the novel, Emily stalks the objects of her desire. She arranges secret meetings and roams the streets. She is wracked with unfulfilled desire, willing to cross Victorian lines of propriety.
The novel is an amazing marriage of fact and poetry and imagination that might just blow the top of your head off.
I purchased a paperback copy.
The Secret Life of Emily Dickinson
by Jerome Charyn
W. W. Norton & Co.
Paperback Price$14.95
ISBN: 978-0-393-33917-8
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