Editing Carson McCullers (section)

==Later life==
Carson and Reeves McCullers divorced in 1941. After separating from Reeves she moved to New York to live with [[George Davis (editor)|George Davis]], the editor of ''Harper's Bazaar''. She became a member of [[February House]], an art commune in Brooklyn.<ref>Tippins, Sherill (2005).  ''February House: The Story of W. H. Auden, Carson McCullers, Jane and Paul Bowles, Benjamin Britten, and Gypsy Rose Lee, Under One Roof in Brooklyn''. Houghton Mifflin Harcourt. {{ISBN|0-61841911-X}}.</ref> Among her friends were [[W. H. Auden]], [[Benjamin Britten]], [[Gypsy Rose Lee]] and the writer couple [[Paul Bowles]] and [[Jane Bowles]]. After [[World War II]] McCullers lived mostly in Paris. Her close friends during these years included [[Truman Capote]] and [[Tennessee Williams]]. During this period of separation, Reeves had a relationship with the composer [[David Diamond (composer)|David Diamond]], and the two lived together in [[Rochester, New York]].<ref name=":0">{{Cite news|url=https://www.thenation.com/article/archive/mccullers-canon-fodder/|title=McCullers: Canon Fodder?|author=[[Sarah Schulman]]|magazine=[[The Nation]]|access-date=2023-11-24}}</ref>

McCullers fell in love with a number of women and pursued them sexually with great determination<!-- , but seems not to have succeeded in finding mutual attraction -->. Love letters written to McCullers from [[Annemarie Clarac-Schwarzenbach]] are at the [[Harry Ransom Center]] at the [[University of Texas at Austin]].<ref name="nytimes-mccullers-shapland">{{cite news |last1=O'Grady |first1=Megan |title=She Found Carson McCullers's Love Letters. They Taught Her Something About Herself. |url=https://www.nytimes.com/2020/02/04/books/review/autobiography-carson-mccullers-jenn-shapland.html |access-date=8 August 2022 |work=[[The New York Times]] |date=4 February 2020 |quote=Shapland was an intern at the Harry Ransom Center, a writers' and artists' archive at the University of Texas at Austin, when she discovered love letters written to McCullers from [[Annemarie Schwarzenbach]], a Swiss heiress with whom McCullers had an affair.}}</ref> Her most documented and extended love obsession was with Annemarie Schwarzenbach, of whom she once wrote "She had a face that I knew would haunt me for the rest of my life." In her autobiography, McCullers reports that the two shared one kiss. McCullers's passion, however, was not reciprocated, and the two remained friends with McCullers dedicating her next novel, ''[[Reflections in a Golden Eye (novel)|Reflections in a Golden Eye]]'', to her.<ref name=":0" /><ref name=Whitt>{{Cite journal|last=Whitt|first=Jan|date=1999|title=The 'we of me': Carson McCullers as lesbian novelist|journal=[[Journal of Homosexuality]]|issn=0091-8369|volume=37|issue=1|pages=127–139|doi=10.1300/j082v37n01_09|pmid=10203074}}</ref> [[Sarah Schulman]] writes:
<blockquote>There is the infamous obsession with [[Katherine Anne Porter]] and a much-implied ongoing "friendship" with [[Gypsy Rose Lee]]. But if Carson ever actually had sex with a woman, even Tennessee [Williams] didn't hear of it. According to McCullers's brilliant biographer, [[Virginia Spencer Carr]], Carson did brag to her male cousin that she'd had sex with Gypsy once. But if that was the case, she never mentioned it to any of her gay friends. In the absence of reciprocated lesbian love and the inability to consummate lesbian sex, McCullers still wore a lesbian persona in literature and in life. She clearly wrote against the grain of heterosexual convention, wore men's clothes, was outrageously aggressive in her consistently failed search for sex and love with another woman, and formed primary friendships with other gay people.<ref name=":0" /></blockquote>

In 1945, Carson and Reeves McCullers remarried. Three years later, while severely depressed, she attempted suicide. In 1953, Reeves tried to persuade her to commit suicide with him, but she fled and Reeves killed himself in their Paris hotel with an overdose of sleeping pills.<ref>Dews, Carlos (2005). [http://www.georgiaencyclopedia.org/nge/ArticlePrintable.jsp?id=h-557 Carson McCullers (1917–1967)] {{Webarchive|url=https://web.archive.org/web/20130408024825/http://www.georgiaencyclopedia.org/nge/ArticlePrintable.jsp?id=h-557 |date=April 8, 2013 }}. ''The New Georgia Encyclopedia''.</ref> Her bittersweet play ''The Square Root of Wonderful'' (1957) drew upon these traumatic experiences. In the 1950s, McCullers was in therapy for a variety of reasons, and discussed with her therapist, Dr. Mary A. Mercer, the possibility of being a lesbian.<ref>{{Cite book|last=Shapland|first=Jenn|author-link=Jenn Shapland|title=[[My Autobiography of Carson McCullers]]|publisher=Tin House Books|year=2020|isbn=978-1-947793-28-6|location=Portland, Oregon|pages=1–2}}</ref>

McCullers dictated her unfinished autobiography, ''Illumination and Night Glare'' (1999), during the final months of her life. Her [[Carson McCullers House|home from 1945 to 1967]] in [[South Nyack, New York]], was listed on the [[National Register of Historic Places]] in 2006.<ref name="nris">{{NRISref|2009a|refnum= 06000562}}</ref><ref name= "natarchives">{{NARA catalog record|75321466 |New York SP McCullers, Carson, House}}</ref>