Savage Beauty: The Life of Edna St. Vincent Millay
by Nancy Milford
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Book Summary Information
Author: Nancy MilfordEdition: Paperback
Audio: English (Original Language); English (Unknown); English (Published)
Published: 2002-09-10
ISBN: 0375760814
Number of pages: 608
Publisher: Random House Trade Paperbacks
Product features:
- ISBN13: 9780375760815
- Condition: NEW
- Notes: Brand New from Publisher. No Remainder Mark.
- Click here to view our Condition Guide and Shipping Prices
Book Reviews of Savage Beauty: The Life of Edna St. Vincent Millay
Book Review: Intriging, sad, very well done
Summary: 5 Stars
I was engulfed by the book in a profound sense. I like how Milford allows the reader to see exactly what the "players" wrote themselves. I don't like having things spelled out. Her method allows you to evaluate not only Mallay, but her siblings and mother, husband.
The only reason Norma is so highlighted is that she gave over her own intention (probably not very strong) to write about her sister's life herself by letting Milford have all the papers. And Norma was, at the time, the only one left in the family.
I came to some conclusions from the gathered details. It was a tale of women without men through the generations. I felt more sympathy for the mother, Cora, than for Millay herself. Cora's disire to be an established poet was completely thwarted, but she passed it on (or infected) her daughters with an overwhelmning desire for attention and recognition. Millay was the one chosen (or self-chosen) to carry on the literary hopes of the female line. She was cossetted and extolled, her mother and siblings made sure to elaborate her sense of destiny as privelged treatment. But the story isn't that simple either. Millay had a long lonely period in High School where she created an imaginary boyfriend whom she would regale with her stories, and she served him as a perfect wife, this boyfriend. It wasn't hard to see that she was longing for the return of the exiled father. The pitiful letters he would send, never able to send any money, the various excuses, would not make it easy for her to trust relationship in general.
There is so much to this book. So many odd turns of fate. It was Norma who was directly responsible for Edna getting into Vassar. Norma was working for a hotel and insisted Edna come to a party there, where Edna read her poem: Rennaisance. A wealthy woman heard her and decided to pay her way to Vassar. This would not have happened without Norma.
The Vassar years served to further deform Millay's sense of herself as special because she was older and more experienced than her peers. The other girls followed Millay around, lavished their love-lorn wishes on her and Millary developed a fine-tuned ability to manipulate and be the love-object without herself being moved. This did not work out as intended, but a reader can see many layers in this book, and draw many final conclusions from it.
I recommend it highly as a psychologically profound study of a complex family.
Summary of Savage Beauty: The Life of Edna St. Vincent Millay
Thomas Hardy once said that America had two great attractions: the skyscraper and the poetry of Edna St. Vincent Millay. The most famous poet of the Jazz Age, Millay captivated the nation: She smoked in public, took many lovers (men and women, single and married), flouted convention sensationally, and became the embodiment of the New Woman.Thirty years after her landmark biography of Zelda Fitzgerald, Nancy Milford returns with an iconic portrait of this passionate, fearless woman who obsessed America even as she tormented herself. Chosen by USA Today as one of the top ten books of the year, Savage Beauty is a triumph in the art of biography. Millay was an American original-one of those rare characters, like Sylvia Plath and Ernest Hemingway, whose lives were even more dramatic than their art.
Fans of Zelda, Nancy Milford's groundbreaking (and bestselling) biography of F. Scott Fitzgerald's tortured wife and muse, have been waiting impatiently since 1970 for Milford's promised follow-up about poet Edna St. Vincent Millay (1892-1950). It's finally here, and they will not be disappointed. Milford's vivid narrative limns an electric personality with psychological acuity while capturing the freewheeling atmosphere of America in the turbulent years following World War I. After "Renascence" was published (when she was only 20) and she moved to Greenwich Village, Millay was the queen of bohemia, taking lovers with zest and voicing the reckless gaiety of a generation in her famous lyric, "My candle burns at both ends; / It will not last the night; / But, ah, my foes, and, oh, my friends-- / It gives a lovely light." With her flame-red hair, milk-white skin, and a voice that thrilled audiences (making her poetry readings a welcome source of income), Millay was the archetypal "new woman": powerful, passionate, and not to be ignored. But Milford makes it clear that her first loyalty was to her mother and sisters, and her deepest commitment to her writing. This juicy chronicle has famous names aplenty--critic Edmund Wilson and Masses editor Floyd Dell were among the men devastated by her refusal to be faithful--and lots of dissipation: Millay drank heavily and became addicted to morphine. It also takes a perceptive look at how an artist draws material from her life and at the strategies she uses to protect the wellsprings of creativity. Brief passages interspersed throughout delineating Milford's interactions with Norma Millay, the poet's younger sister and literary executor, might have been self-indulgent and self-aggrandizing; instead they offer intriguing snapshots of the complex process by which biography is made. The resulting book is a tour de force, and wildly entertaining as well. --Wendy Smith
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