Hi, welcome to Seriously, with Me Testament.

Let me tell you about Carson McCullers.

She was an American novelist, short story writer, playwright, essayist and poet.

She has perhaps never been as popular or as acclaimed as that of her contemporaries like Harper Lee and Tennessee Williams, but nonetheless she remains one of the most remarkable

and individual writers to come out of 20th century America.

She only wrote a few works in large part because rheumatic fever left her paralyzed in her left arm and she was

beset by ill health and alcoholism for many of her 50 years.

But the writing she did produce was enormously sensuous filled with the sights sounds and smell of the American South.

Her style was also full of musicality, perhaps due to her years spent training as a classical

pianist. In this program, we join Jarvis Cocker as he reveals his

personal devotion to Carson and meet others who are drawn to her ability to

bypass the brain and connect direct with the heart. This is Jarvis on the colours.

I'm an American naturally and I'm a southerner and that all I guess. In that order, yes.

Thomas Martin said that a writer is a person to whom writing is very hard, comes very hard.

And that's me. So I've just been watching an old BBC film interview of Carson McCullers talking to Jane Howard back in 1962 five years before her death.

It's very interesting to see that.

It's got a very frightening smile.

She obviously wasn't in the best of health.

She was plagued by ill health throughout

a life and you can kind of see that.

My girlfriend, maybe the first girlfriend I ever had was into a, but I think the first book I attempted with Ballard of the Sad Cafe

I found that look so exaggerated and grotesque or whatever that it just kind of put me off and it wasn't until a long time later I was coming up to 40 years old.

...