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Millay in Greenwich Village
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Displaying 1 - 3 of 3 reviews
May 27, 2022
This book is terrible in a few ways. I read it through to the end because it's short and because there are some quotes from letters that are interesting, but ugh. I give the author a modicum of benefit of the doubt because it was written in 1975, so it's possible that she didn't have access to a lot of information about Millay's life that we have now.
However...
It reads like a high school term paper. I lost count of how many times she restated the same ideas with slightly different wording in successive paragraphs, like a student trying to reach a word count.
The book is introduced as a "psychological biography", which was a red flag for me from the beginning and turned out to be as convoluted and frankly, laughable, as I imagined.
I don't think many people would do this kind of Freudian analysis of a major poet any more, and if they did, I don't think they would be able to get away with the mental gymnastics required to fit the works and letters into the psychological framework the author has constructed.
This book suffers more than the others I've read from a desire to explain Vincent's "lesbian tendencies" and love affairs with "homosexuals" as immature steps in her psychosexual development into a mature (read: 100% hetero/monogamous) woman.
It's an outdated and frustrating take on a fascinating, free, full life. Despite the title, it doesn't really provide any information about Vincent's time in the Village that isn't covered much better by Milford and Epstein.
I honestly can't think of a reason to recommend this book to anyone, unless you are in the mood to get angry at sloppy freudianism.
However...
It reads like a high school term paper. I lost count of how many times she restated the same ideas with slightly different wording in successive paragraphs, like a student trying to reach a word count.
The book is introduced as a "psychological biography", which was a red flag for me from the beginning and turned out to be as convoluted and frankly, laughable, as I imagined.
I don't think many people would do this kind of Freudian analysis of a major poet any more, and if they did, I don't think they would be able to get away with the mental gymnastics required to fit the works and letters into the psychological framework the author has constructed.
This book suffers more than the others I've read from a desire to explain Vincent's "lesbian tendencies" and love affairs with "homosexuals" as immature steps in her psychosexual development into a mature (read: 100% hetero/monogamous) woman.
It's an outdated and frustrating take on a fascinating, free, full life. Despite the title, it doesn't really provide any information about Vincent's time in the Village that isn't covered much better by Milford and Epstein.
I honestly can't think of a reason to recommend this book to anyone, unless you are in the mood to get angry at sloppy freudianism.
June 16, 2010
Examines Millay's at her most productive and the men who influenced her poetry. It is a great companion to Nancy Milford's "Savage Beauty."
Displaying 1 - 3 of 3 reviews